research topics in circular economy

Global Resources Outlook 2024

April 10th, 2024

Australian research plays a key role in shaping the United Nations Environment Programme’s International Resource Panel’s Flagship Report: The Global Resources Outlook 2024.

UN headquarters, Nairobi

The challenge

Globally, resource consumption exceeds 100 billion tonnes of materials each year. This includes biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores and non-metallic minerals obtained from mining, quarrying, agriculture, forestry and fisheries. If the world continues its current trajectory the global economy is expected to demand around 160 billion tonnes of materials by 2060. The current patterns of material use are driving the triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

How can we bend the curve of ever-increasing material consumption and its associated environmental toll through ambitious and well-designed policies for resource efficiency, greenhouse gas abatement and waste and pollution reduction?

Our response

We are leading an international collaboration of research institutes to develop comprehensive global datasets for the International Resource Panel’s (IRP) Global Resources Outlook . This project compiled detailed records of material use, greenhouse gas emissions, water, and land use across every nation over the past 50 years.

By tracking both direct material use and the broader material footprints of crucial materials, sectors, and products, we can categorise them under essential provision systems: housing, mobility, food, and energy. This approach helps us dissect and understand the material requirements of human wellbeing across different countries, within seven major world regions, and among four distinct income groups.

This includes forecasting future material demands, setting up two distinct scenarios for analysis: the ‘Historical Trends’ baseline and an alternative ‘Sustainability Scenario.’ The latter investigates the extent to which policy initiatives can mitigate environmental pressures while still achieving substantial human well-being outcomes, along with significantly reduced environmental costs.

The Global Resources Outlook 2024 marks the second edition of the flagship report by the UNEP International Resource Panel (IRP), launched at the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi, March 2024.

Esteemed as the authoritative resource for global material use data, the IRP has gained recognition alongside prominent science-policy panels such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

This follows the inaugural publication of the Global Resources Outlook in 2019 , setting a precedent for comprehensive environmental analysis and policy guidance.

Circular economy

Research and innovation in the circular economy, funding opportunities, collaboration and jobs, projects and results, scientific publications and news  

Why the EU supports circular economy research and innovation

We use 8 gigatonnes of materials each year in Europe. Most of it quickly ends up as waste - less than 10% is reused or recycled.

Extracting, processing, producing and consuming materials and products is responsible for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe and a third globally. This creates an enormous environmental footprint.

The Green Deal is the EU’s policy response to the environmental degradation that comes with continued economic acceleration. It is about fundamentally changing how we see and use materials and moving quicker to a circular economy. A circular economy means maintaining the economic value of materials and minimising their environmental impacts.

More about circular economy research and innovation

Policy focus

• Circular cities and regions initiative

Funding opportunities

On this page you can find more information, the work programme and a link to circular economy-related calls

Loans and grants available to support reforms and investments undertaken by EU countries for a sustainable recovery

Environment research related calls may be found in this programme, particularly in the European regional development fund

The ECBF is part-funded by the Commission and invests in late-stage bioeconomy start-ups

Funding supporting the deployment of biobased solutions in carbon intensive sectors

The EU's funding instrument for the environment and climate action

Projects and results

Thematic collections of innovative EU-funded research results in the circular economy

The Commission's primary portal for the results of EU-funded research projects

Stories of particularly successful EU-funded circular economy research projects

Compilation of circular economy-relevant projects 2016-2018

Latest news, interviews and features about thought-provoking science and innovative research projects funded by the EU

Access to real-time programme data with the ability to filter by country, region, theme and more

Platform where framework programme participants present their results for you to search, contact their owners, and form partnerships

Collaboration and jobs

CBE is a €2 billion partnership between the European Union and the Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC) that funds projects advancing competitive circular bio-based industries under Horizon Europe, the EU’s research and innovation programme. CBE JU is the legal and universal successor of BBI JU.

is an ERA-Net Cofund Action under Horizon 2020, which aims to strengthen the European Research Area in the field of biotechnology

Find partners for open EU calls for proposal

Researcher jobs in the field of circular economy

Scientific publications, tools and databases

Online library of EU research publications on the circular economy

You can access all scientific publications from Horizon 2020 via OpenAIRE

Scientific research publications on the circular economy published by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Single point of access to open data produced by the EU institutions - all data free to use for commercial and non-commercial purposes

• News article
• 14 December 2022

The Circular Economy Package II proposed the revision of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive - based on scientific evidence

• 5 September 2022

The 20th edition of EURegionsWeek under the motto ‘New Challenges for Europe’s cohesion’ is approaching and registrations are now open!

• 22 June 2021

This guide supports public authorities in identifying the most suited incentives to speed up the transition towards a circular economy

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Recent Research Topics in Circular Economy

Circular economy introduction

What is a circular economy?

Other available languages

• Circular economy explained

The circular economy is a system where materials never become waste and nature is regenerated. In a circular economy, products and materials are kept in circulation through processes like maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, recycling, and composting. The circular economy tackles climate change and other global challenges, like biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution, by decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources.

The circular economy is based on three principles, driven by design:

Eliminate waste and pollution.

Circulate products and materials (at their highest value)

Regenerate nature

In our current economy, we take materials from the Earth, make products from them, and eventually throw them away as waste – the process is linear. In a circular economy, by contrast, we stop waste being produced in the first place.

We must transform every element of our take-make-waste system: how we manage resources, how we make and use products, and what we do with the materials afterwards. Only then can we create a thriving circular economy that can benefit everyone within the limits of our planet.

A way to transform our system

What will it take to transform our throwaway economy into one where waste is eliminated, resources are circulated, and nature is regenerated?

The circular economy gives us the tools to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss together, while addressing important social needs.

It gives us the power to grow prosperity, jobs, and resilience while cutting greenhouse gas emissions, waste, and pollution.

How the circular economy works

Get the basics or explore the circular economy in detail.

The butterfly diagram: visualising the circular economy

The 'butterfly diagram' shows the continuous flow of materials in a circular economy.

Explaining the circular economy: re-thinking progress

Watch our beginner's guide to understanding how a circular economy works.

Circular economy key ideas

Get up to speed with the fundamentals of the circular economy with these content pills or dive deep...

Circular economy principles

A circular economy is based on three principles, all driven by design.

The first principle of the circular economy is to eliminate waste and pollution....

Circulate products and materials

The second principle of the circular economy is to circulate products and materials at their...

By shifting our economy from linear to circular, we shift the focus from extraction to...

Circular economy examples

See the circular economy in action with these case studies from brands, businesses and policy makers.

Natura Brazil

Working with nature to make food last longer

Apeel is a company that has come up with an innovative way to eliminate single-use shrink wrap plastic packaging on fresh fruit and veg, while at the same time tackling food waste.

Apeel is a layer of edible, plant-based coating applied to fresh products that mimics and enhances the natural defences of fruit and vegetables. This slows down the two main things that cause spoilage – water loss and oxidation.

Case studies

Our curated collection of case studies presents circular economy success stories from around the...

Ellen MacArthur Foundation FILMS

In this series of circular economy events, experts discuss how circular economy solutions are...

Podcast: What is the circular economy?

Ellen MacArthur discusses a range of topics in a conversation about the circular economy.

Circular Economy: The Big Idea

Delve into the concepts of the circular economy to understand its origin, design, and importance...

Circular economy courses

If you want to deepen your knowledge of the circular economy, learn how to stay ahead of the game...

Video series: What is the circular economy?

Building a Regenerative, Restorative Economy

An Introduction to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation

Basics of a circular economy

Our team discuss what the circular economy means to them.

Discussing Circular Economy and What It Means

In this live conversation, members of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation team will discuss and debate...

What If We Don’t Buy Products and We Buy Service? Circular Economy Explained

With the price of resources and energy becoming increasingly volatile, can today's linear economy...

Explore the circular economy by topic

Biodiversity

Biodiversity and the circular economy

This topic area examines how the circular economy can help shape a nature-positive future.

Built Environment

Built environment and the circular economy

In a circular economy our built environment can be a force for good

Cities and the circular economy

This topic area looks at the role cities play in the transition to a circular economy.

Design and the circular economy

Design is a force for change. From innovative products or disruptive business models to entire...

Climate and the circular economy

This topic area looks at how fixing the economy can help fix climate change.

Fashion and the circular economy

This topic area explores how the circular economy works for the fashion industry.

Finance and the circular economy

This topic area looks at the role of the financial sector in the shift to a circular economy.

Food and the circular economy

This topic area shows how moving to a circular economy for food will help people and nature thrive.

Plastics and the circular economy

This topic area shows how the circular economy can help keep plastic in the economy and out of the...

Government and policy for a circular economy

The circular economy provides a framework which allows governments and cities to realise many of...

Education and learning towards a circular economy

We support circular economy learning across a growing global community of schools, colleges and...

Business and the circular economy

A circular economy transformation will empower us with the tools to tackle global challenges, and...

News and updates from The Ellen MacArthur Foundation

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation works to accelerate the transition to a circular economy. We develop and promote the idea of a circular economy, and work with business, academia, policymakers, and institutions to mobilise systems solutions at scale, globally.

Charity Registration No.: 1130306

OSCR Registration No.: SC043120

Company No.: 6897785

Ellen MacArthur Foundation ANBI RSIN nummer: 8257 45 925

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4 charts to show why adopting a circular economy matters

In a circular economy, waste is avoided or minimized. Image:  Unsplash/Sigmund

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Stay up to date:, climate and nature.

• In a circular economy, waste is reduced, reused, recycled or remade.
• If the world adopts a circular economy approach, by 2050, the volume of municipal solid waste could reduce from more than 4.5 billion tonnes a year to less than 2 billion tonnes, according to a new UN report.
• The World Economic Forum’s circular economy initiative Consumers Beyond Waste aims to free the world of plastic waste by driving the adoption of reusable packaging.

Waste from homes and businesses, including food waste, packaging, electronics, furniture and clothing, is growing.

Every year, more than 2 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste like this is generated globally – an amount that would stretch to the moon and back, according to a new report.

And as economies and populations grow, this waste is predicted to grow more than 50% to 3.8 billion tonnes a year by 2050.

This is bad news for Earth – because waste contributes to the “triple planetary crisis” of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

And it’s why a circular economy is so essential.

Have you read?

How one argentinian city overhauled its waste management to tackle one of the world's largest rubbish dumps , reducing waste is critical for building a circular economy: here's how local solutions can get us there, our resources are running out. these charts show how urgently action is needed, what is a circular economy.

In a circular economy, products and materials are designed to be reused, recycled, recovered or remade, to keep them in the economy for as long as possible. Waste is avoided or minimized. Greenhouse gas emissions are cut as a result, along with unsustainable use of the planet’s resources.

The Global Waste Management Outlook 2024 , published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), underlines the critical role of this circular economy approach in minimizing waste.

The report looks at three scenarios:

1. Continuing with current waste generation and management practices.

2. Improving management and reducing waste.

3. Moving to a fully zero waste circular economy model, where 60% of all municipal solid waste – the rubbish local authorities collect from homes and businesses – is recycled and the rest is managed safely.

How the circular economy can help to cut waste

If the world adopts the third scenario, by 2050, a circular economy approach could reduce the volume of municipal solid waste from more than 4.5 billion tonnes a year to less than 2 billion tonnes, the report finds.

The same scenario also eradicates uncontrolled waste – waste that is dumped or burned in open fires – and cuts landfill waste by more than 40% to around 630,000 tonnes by 2050.

This would not only help tackle the climate crisis, but would improve human health, too.

The heath case for a circular economy in waste

Waste consumer products such as toys, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, food additives and plastic debris can contaminate the environment with toxic compounds that get into waterways and the human food chain.

These contaminants include compounds that mimic, block, or interfere with the body's hormones, known as endocrine-disrupting chemicals, the report says.

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals, such as cadmium, asbestos and arsenic, increase health risks including cancer, cognitive conditions, obesity and reproductive impairment in both women and men.

Circular waste practices cost less

A circular economy approach to the management of municipal solid waste would also bring big cost savings, the report finds.

Continuing with current waste management practices would cost more than $417 billion a year by 2050 – a rise of $165 billion from 2020 costs.

In the circular economy scenario, which includes reducing waste and increasing recycling, the estimated costs would be less than $255 billion a year.

This circular approach would prevent “runaway waste management costs” and also deliver a “vastly better environmental performance,” the report’s authors say.

World Economic Forum projects are helping to drive circular economy change

The World Economic Forum has various circular economy initiatives underway, including the Circular Transformation of Industries Initiative , which looks beyond waste management to wider systems change across industry.

Partnerships are key to driving circularity in industry , the Forum says. This includes collaborating to share circular economy knowledge, case studies, products and materials.

The World Economic Forum Centre for Nature and Climate is actively promoting the transition to a circular economy through various initiatives. The objective is to create a more sustainable and resilient economic system by reducing waste and maximizing resource efficiency.

• The Circular Transformation of Industries initiative engages leaders from industry, government, academia, and civil society to drive circularity across sectors and economies. It consolidates information from previous efforts, shares best practices and creates new partnerships. Learn more about Unlocking New Value in a Resource-Constrained World .
• The Circular Cars Initiative aims to create a climate-friendly automobility system by minimizing lifecycle emissions, particularly in manufacturing. Its goal is the development of a convenient, affordable, 1.5°C-aligned system by 2030. Discover the benefits of circular economy in the car industry here .
• The Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) brings together global stakeholders to promote the transition to a circular plastics economy. GPAP provides a platform for global learning and local action in nine countries coordinating efforts and maximizing impact. Learn more in our Impact Report .

Another Forum circular economy initiative is Consumers Beyond Waste . This aims to free the world of plastic waste by driving the adoption of reusable packaging.

The Consumers Beyond Waste initiative is supported by a community of consumer companies, start-ups, non-profit organizations and governments, including Coca-Cola, Greenpeace, Walmart and the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

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License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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There’s an Explosion of Plastic Waste. Big Companies Say ‘We’ve Got This.’

Big brands like Procter & Gamble and Nestlé say a new generation of plants will help them meet environmental goals, but the technology is struggling to deliver.

Recycled polypropylene pellets at a PureCycle Technologies plant in Ironton, Ohio. Credit... Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Supported by

By Hiroko Tabuchi

• Published April 5, 2024 Updated April 8, 2024

By 2025, Nestle promises not to use any plastic in its products that isn’t recyclable. By that same year, L’Oreal says all of its packaging will be “refillable, reusable, recyclable or compostable.”

And by 2030, Procter & Gamble pledges that it will halve its use of virgin plastic resin made from petroleum.

To get there, these companies and others are promoting a new generation of recycling plants, called “advanced” or “chemical” recycling, that promise to recycle many more products than can be recycled today.

So far, advanced recycling is struggling to deliver on its promise. Nevertheless, the new technology is being hailed by the plastics industry as a solution to an exploding global waste problem.

The traditional approach to recycling is to simply grind up and melt plastic waste. The new, advanced-recycling operators say they can break down the plastic much further, into more basic molecular building blocks, and transform it into new plastic.

PureCycle Technologies, a company that features prominently in Nestlé, L’Oréal, and Procter & Gamble’s plastics commitments, runs one such facility, a $500 million plant in Ironton, Ohio. The plant was originally to start operating in 2020 , with the capacity to process as much as 182 tons of discarded polypropylene, a hard-to-recycle plastic used widely in single-use cups, yogurt tubs, coffee pods and clothing fibers, every day.

But PureCycle’s recent months have instead been filled with setbacks: technical issues at the plant, shareholder lawsuits, questions over the technology and a startling report from contrarian investors who make money when a stock price falls. They said that they had flown a drone over the facility that showed that the plant was far from being able to make much new plastic.

PureCycle, based in Orlando, Fla., said it remained on track. “We’re ramping up production,” its chief executive, Dustin Olson, said during a recent tour of the plant, a constellation of pipes, storage tanks and cooling towers in Ironton, near the Ohio River. “We believe in this technology. We’ve seen it work,” he said. “We’re making leaps and bounds.”

Nestlé, Procter & Gamble and L’Oréal have also expressed confidence in PureCycle. L’Oréal said PureCycle was one of many partners developing a range of recycling technologies. P.&G. said it hoped to use the recycled plastic for “numerous packaging applications as they scale up production.” Nestlé didn’t respond to requests for comment, but has said it is collaborating with PureCycle on “groundbreaking recycling technologies.”

PureCycle’s woes are emblematic of broad trouble faced by a new generation of recycling plants that have struggled to keep up with the growing tide of global plastic production, which scientists say could almost quadruple by midcentury .

A chemical-recycling facility in Tigard, Ore., a joint venture between Agilyx and Americas Styrenics, is in the process of shutting down after millions of dollars in losses. A plant in Ashley, Ind., that had aimed to recycle 100,000 tons of plastic a year by 2021 had processed only 2,000 tons in total as of late 2023, after fires, oil spills and worker safety complaints.

At the same time, many of the new generation of recycling facilities are turning plastic into fuel, something the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t consider to be recycling, though industry groups say some of that fuel can be turned into new plastic .

Overall, the advanced recycling plants are struggling to make a dent in the roughly 36 million tons of plastic Americans discard each year, which is more than any other country. Even if the 10 remaining chemical-recycling plants in America were to operate at full capacity, they would together process some 456,000 tons of plastic waste, according to a recent tally by Beyond Plastics , a nonprofit group that advocates stricter controls on plastics production. That’s perhaps enough to raise the plastic recycling rate — which has languished below 10 percent for decades — by a single percentage point.

For households, that has meant that much of the plastic they put out for recycling doesn’t get recycled at all, but ends up in landfills. Figuring out which plastics are recyclable and which aren’t has turned into, essentially, a guessing game . That confusion has led to a stream of non-recyclable trash contaminating the recycling process, gumming up the system.

“The industry is trying to say they have a solution,” said Terrence J. Collins, a professor of chemistry and sustainability science at Carnegie Mellon University. “It’s a non-solution.”

‘Molecular washing machine’

It was a long-awaited day last June at PureCycle’s Ironton facility: The company had just produced its first batch of what it describes as “ultra-pure” recycled polypropylene pellets.

That milestone came several years late and with more than $350 million in cost overruns. Still, the company appeared to have finally made it. “Nobody else can do this,” Jeff Kramer, the plant manager, told a local news crew .

PureCycle had done it by licensing a game-changing method — developed by Procter & Gamble researchers in the mid-2010s, but unproven at scale — that uses solvent to dissolve and purify the plastic to make it new again. “It’s like a molecular washing machine,” Mr. Olson said.

There’s a reason Procter & Gamble, Nestlé and L’Oréal, some of the world’s biggest users of plastic, are excited about the technology. Many of their products are made from polypropylene, a plastic that they transform into a plethora of products using dyes and fillers. P.&G. has said it uses more polypropylene than any other plastic, more than a half-million tons a year.

But those additives make recycling polypropylene more difficult.

The E.P.A. estimates that 2.7 percent of polypropylene packaging is reprocessed. But PureCycle was promising to take any polypropylene — disposable beer cups, car bumpers, even campaign signs — and remove the colors, odors, and contaminants to transform it into new plastic.

Soon after the June milestone, trouble hit.

On Sept. 13, PureCycle disclosed that its plant had suffered a power failure the previous month that had halted operations and caused a vital seal to fail. That meant the company would be unable to meet key milestones, it told lenders.

Then in November, Bleecker Street Research — a New York-based short-seller, an investment strategy that involves betting that a company’s stock price will fall — published a report asserting that the white pellets that had rolled off PureCycle’s line in June weren’t recycled from plastic waste. The short-sellers instead claimed that the company had simply run virgin polypropylene through the system as part of a demonstration run.

Mr. Olson said PureCycle hadn’t used consumer waste in the June 2023 run, but it hadn’t used virgin plastic, either. Instead it had used scrap known as “post industrial,” which is what’s left over from the manufacturing process and would otherwise go to a landfill, he said.

Bleecker Street also said it had flown heat-sensing drones over the facility and said it found few signs of commercial-scale activity. The firm also raised questions about the solvent PureCycle was using to break down the plastic, calling it “a nightmare concoction” that was difficult to manage.

PureCycle is now being sued by other investors who accuse the company of making false statements and misleading investors about its setbacks.

Mr. Olson declined to describe the solvent. Regulatory filings reviewed by The New York Times indicate that it is butane, a highly flammable gas, stored under pressure. The company’s filing described the risks of explosion, citing a “worst case scenario” that could cause second-degree burns a half-mile away, and said that to mitigate the risk the plant was equipped with sprinklers, gas detectors and alarms.

Chasing the ‘circular economy’

It isn’t unusual, of course, for any new technology or facility to experience hiccups. The plastics industry says these projects, once they get going, will bring the world closer to a “circular” economy, where things are reused again and again.

Plastics-industry lobbying groups are promoting chemical recycling. At a hearing in New York late last year, industry lobbyists pointed to the promise of advanced recycling in opposing a packaging-reduction bill that would eventually mandate a 50 percent reduction in plastic packaging. And at negotiations for a global plastics treaty , lobby groups are urging nations to consider expanding chemical recycling instead of taking steps like restricting plastic production or banning plastic bags.

A spokeswoman for the American Chemistry Council, which represents plastics makers as well as oil and gas companies that produce the building blocks of plastic, said that chemical recycling potentially “complements mechanical recycling, taking the harder-to-recycle plastics that mechanical often cannot.”

Environmental groups say the companies are using a timeworn strategy of promoting recycling as a way to justify selling more plastic, even though the new recycling technology isn’t ready for prime time. Meanwhile, they say, plastic waste chokes rivers and streams, piles up in landfills or is exported .

“These large consumer brand companies, they’re out over their skis,” said Judith Enck, the president of Beyond Plastics and a former regional E.P.A. administrator. “Look behind the curtain, and these facilities aren’t operating at scale, and they aren’t environmentally sustainable,” she said.

The better solution, she said, would be, “We need to make less plastic.”

Touring the plant

Mr. Olson recently strolled through a cavernous warehouse at PureCycle’s Ironton site, built at a former Dow Chemical plant. Since January, he said, PureCycle has been processing mainly consumer plastic waste and has produced about 1.3 million pounds of recycled polypropylene, or about 1 percent of its annual production target.

“This is a bag that would hold dog food,” he said, pointing to a bale of woven plastic bags. “And these are fruit carts that you’d see in street markets. We can recycle all of that, which is pretty cool.”

The plant was dealing with a faulty valve discovered the day before, so no pellets were rolling off the line. Mr. Olson pulled out a cellphone to show a photo of a valve with a dark line ringing its interior. “It’s not supposed to look like that,” he said.

The company later sent video of Mr. Olson next to white pellets once again streaming out of its production line.

PureCycle says every kilogram of polypropylene it recycles emits about 1.54 kilograms of planet-warming carbon dioxide. That’s on par with a commonly used industry measure of emissions for virgin polypropylene. PureCycle said that it was improving on that measure.

Nestlé, L’Oréal and Procter & Gamble continue to say they’re optimistic about the technology. In November, Nestlé said it had invested in a British company that would more easily separate out polypropylene from other plastic waste.

It was “just one of the many steps we are taking on our journey to ensure our packaging doesn’t end up as waste,” the company said.

Hiroko Tabuchi covers the intersection of business and climate for The Times. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years in Tokyo and New York. More about Hiroko Tabuchi

Learn More About Climate Change

Have questions about climate change? Our F.A.Q. will tackle your climate questions, big and small .

“Buying Time,” a new series from The New York Times, looks at the risky ways  humans are starting to manipulate nature  to fight climate change.

Big brands like Procter & Gamble and Nestlé say a new generation of recycling plants will help them meet environmental goals, but the technology is struggling to deliver .

The Italian energy giant Eni sees future profits from collecting carbon dioxide and pumping it  into natural gas fields that have been exhausted.

New satellite-based research reveals how land along the East Coast is slumping into the ocean, compounding the danger from global sea level rise . A major culprit: the overpumping of groundwater.

Did you know the ♻ symbol doesn’t mean something is actually recyclable ? Read on about how we got here, and what can be done.

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Case Studies in Circular Economy

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Here we present the ‘Case Studies in Circular Economy’, a Research Topic series dedicated to showcasing research papers that demonstrate direct applications of sustainability research methodologies, concepts, and hypotheses. Case Studies provide an opportunity for researchers to assess phenomena ...

Keywords : circular economy, case study, circularity, business models, circular design, circular applications

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