How Circular is the Global Economy?: An Assessment of Material Flows, Waste Production, and Recycling in the European Union and the World in 2005

Summary It is increasingly recognized that the growing metabolism of society is approaching limitations both with respect to sources for resource inputs and sinks for waste and emission outflows. The circular economy (CE) is a simple, but convincing, strategy, which aims at reducing both input of virgin materials and output of wastes by closing economic and ecological loops of resource flows. This article applies a sociometabolic approach to assess the circularity of global material flows. All societal material flows globally and in the European Union (EU‐27) are traced from extraction to disposal and presented for main material groups for 2005. Our estimate shows that while globally roughly 4 gigatonnes per…

• EC
  European Commission