Circular Economy

Policy enablers to accelerate the circular economy

WBCSD | Oct 04, 2019

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Image by Martin Reisch

This article was originally published by WBCSD and is republished with permission.

The world is facing the deleterious impacts of climate change as a result of unsustainable depletion of resources and business as usual operations. To ensure our survivability, we need to relook into our system and rethink our operations.

Material extraction and production accounts for more than 50% of global carbon emissions, thus addressing resource use can potentially help mitigate climate risks effectively. Innovating circular systems and products is integral in addressing this issue. Therefore, the transition from a linear to a circular economy is imperative in tackling such challenges.

Over the past couple of years, as companies start to understand the opportunities that lie under the concept of circular economy, the conversation has gained significant momentum. At the same time, governments at the national and regional level are developing frameworks and regulations to promote the circular economy.

“Systemic change is crucial to the continued pursuit of sustainable growth and development.”

Effective policymaking is crucial in accelerating and scaling up circular actions in the economy. They support businesses in overcoming hurdles by stimulating innovative projects and long-term investments in circularity, facilitating collaboration and partnerships, and producing tangible results.

Learning from successful policies can help inform future policies to promote wider actions in other sectors and regions over time.

By highlighting some representative pioneers in circular economy policy, exploring key enablers from these policies, describing how other regions could replicate these enablers and providing recommendations, this publication aims to provide insights from the policy perspective and to feed into the ongoing development of other initiatives and policies related to the circular economy globally.

“By identifying these key enablers, policymakers and businesses can better understand how and why these enablers are effective in expanding circular economy implementation and how they can replicate them in other regions to promote wider and systemic changes to achieve a circular economy.”

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