The circular economy in China

Abstract

This article makes an attempt to answer the three questions of why China is devoting its full effort to promoting a circular economy, what a circular economy is, and how to implement a circular economy in China. The evolutionary process of a circular economy in China, from introduction of the concept and the relevant actions of national decision making to demonstration of the system nationwide, has taken only around 6 years, with strong encouragement from politicians and the urgent need to cope with environmental pollution and a severe shortage of natural resources. The circular economy in China is now being actively implemented at three levels: enterprises, eco-industrial parks, and regions. The consolidated theoretical bases of ecology and economics have helped the circular economy to defi ne its position as a new economic model to effectively resolve the problems of resources and the environment. In this regard, material fl ow management is naturally a unique planning and management method for implementation of a circular economy, and eco-effi ciency is a good indicator to measure circular economic activities. Of particular signifi cance has been initiation of the legislative process for the Circular Economy Law, which is among a number of initiatives developing core policies for a circular economy in China. Stringent enforcement of a set of policies for energy saving and pollution abatement nowadays in China will certainly create an enabling environment for the development of a circular economy.

Supply Chain Configurations in the Circular Economy: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Studies on the macro-level of cities [44][45][46], economic areas [47,48], and national and global industries, particularly logistics and waste [7,14,[49][50][51][52], were only included if they informed implementation on the meso-level, as per the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Other implementation studies focus on reviewing and informing policy [13,16,17,[53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67], specifically on product design for the CE [8,9,14,[64][65][66] as well as assessments of firms' [67,68], consumers' [69][70][71], and officials' [72] awareness of and attitudes towards the CE's concepts and its components. Two contributions are concerned with business model research [73,74].…”

The Involvement of Future Generations in the Circular Economy Paradigm: An Empirical Analysis on Aluminium Packaging Recycling in Spain

“…In this sense, Yong [7] affirms that "the 3Rs principle-well known as reduce, reuse, and recycle-is a good principle guiding how to implement the circular economy in practice". In this way, the implementation of circular economy facilitates that waste of some agents become valuable resources for others, achieving the recovery of materials and energy [8].…”

Cascading Utilization of Wood: a Matter of Circular Economy?

“…In particular, the annual number of publications significantly increased from 2005 to 2015. The largest share of CE research has focused on China (e.g., [20][21][22][23]), but many other geographically-independent studies, as well as studies in other regions such as Europe or Thailand [17•, 24••], did research referring to CE.…”

“…A CE is basically based on the three principles, widely known as the 3R principles, namely, reduction, reuse, and recycling [23]. Within the CE theory, the term cascade is also used.…”

“…2 Number of publications per year on CU (n = 57) and CE (n = 136). The CE literature is taken from the review of Lieder and Rashid [23] quality, the greater its potential to carry out more highly demanding tasks^ [8, p. 216]. The quality loss per application should be minimized to increase the overall lifetime of a resource in use [62].…”