Project

The concept of the circular economy (CE) is ubiquitously discussed as a vision for more sustainable systems of consumption and production. Changes towards a CE might start with technical or social innovations (e.g. redesign for recycling, extended product life times by reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing, changed consumption behavior), but their path into widespread deployment highly depends on socio-economic preconditions, calling for support through transdisciplinary science. Contributions of a CE are seen in a potential reduction of the environmental impacts of consumption and production, and the (at least relative) decoupling of economic growth from the use of natural resources. However, these effects are not yet scientifically proven and might be reduced or even inverted by unintended side-effects and rebound effects. Thus, potential impacts of CE principles need to be scientifically quantified.

Circularity³ aims to deliver recommendations for a successful implementation of environmentally beneficial circular economy measures. After a thorough conceptualization, the analysis of technological, economic and societal/political interactions within the circular economy will lead to a better understanding of socio-economic preconditions and a quantification of potential environmental benefits. This is achieved by breaking down the complexity of the circular economy concept into comparable but complementary case studies along the dimensions of value chains/implementation logic of CE measures, economic aggregation level and countries. Electronics and electric vehicle batteries serve as one well established and one relatively new value chain, respectively, which will be exemplarily studied. The current state of circularity will be analyzed for these value chains on the innovation/micro, sector/meso and economy-wide/macro level for the participating countries of Germany, Thailand, Turkey, Chinese Taipei and Japan. This overview enables the identification of focus areas. A large toolbox of scientific methods will be used by the partners to conduct case studies and gain a detailed understanding of the technological, economic and societal/political interactions within those focus areas. A comparison of similar case studies (a) in different countries, (b) on different levels and (c) with different application cases will lead to new and systematic insights for the specific focus areas. After consolidation of results and evaluation on the system level, general recommendations will be provided. To ensure the usefulness and applicability of results, the research process is accompanied by a continuous exchange with relevant stakeholders covering the two application cases, the three economic levels and the participating countries. Furthermore, the stakeholders will receive results in the form of practical recommendations on how to advance the circular economy in their specific field of action as well as methods to measure progress and quantify environmental benefits.

01.05.2023 - 30.04.2026

• Belmont Forum
• Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

• Prof. Dr. Christoph Helbig, University of Bayreuth, Germany
• Prof. Dr. Yiğit Kazançoğlu, Yasar University, Türkey
  
• Prof. Hwong-wen Ma, National Taiwan University, Chinese Taipei
• Dr. Mitsutaka Matsumoto, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan
• Prof. Dr. Chanathip Pharino, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand