The circular economy has a branding problem


Photo: 123rf

“CIRCULAR economy” sounds like a buzzword that escaped from a Davos brainstorming session and ran wild through corporate sustainability reports. We hear it constantly. We’re going circular. Increasing circularity. And it’s all driving sustainability. But here’s the uncomfortable truth laid bare by a recent study: most of us have no idea what we’re actually talking about.

The paper by Anteneh D. Sewenet, Youssef Boulaksil, and Paola Pisano, published in the Cleaner Environmental Systems journal, is a necessary intervention. The authors rigorously show that circularity is not the same as sustainability. Not even close.

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