Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering | Article | Published 2023
There is an urgent need to reduce the climatic and environmental impact of both human production and consumption activities, with the aim of reaching carbon neutrality, decreasing the need for resources and protecting biodiversity, thus advancing towards a fully Circular Economy (CE) (Bocken et al., 2016; Geissdoerfer et al., 2017). The CE is gaining interest as a pathway to sustainable development among scholars, practitioners, and policymakers, fostering CE to achieve sustainable development goals (Pizzi et al., 2020), a clear example being the European Union new Circular Economy Action Plan (COM/2020/98) (European Commission, 2020). The CE seeks an efficient flow of resources - materials, energy, water, information - that conserves the resources in the productive cycle for as long as possible, creating circular loops in which resources are used repeatedly (Aranda-Usón et al., 2018; Yuan et al., 2006). In this scenario, different perspectives recognise the value of the CE as an alternative model to the linear one and as a path towards a low-carbon emission and zero-waste economy based on the convergence of economic and environmental principles (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015b, 2015a; European Commission, 2015, 2020).