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Circular economy is a way of organizing production and consumption, which is based on sharing, reuse, repair, renewal and recycling of the existing materials and products for as long as possible.
This extends the product life and reduces the amount of waste. When a product comes the end of its life, the material from which it is made is retained in the economy to the greatest extent possible. Thus, they can be reused over and over again with a profit, creating even more value.
It happens more and more frequently that local economies depend on resources outside their local environment to meet their needs for energy, water and food, while growing populations in other regions also compete for the same. Local communities find themselves under great pressure because they are on the search for these resources and, consequently, they need to find a way how to handle the resulting waste and emissions. In 2015, Slovenia imported an average of 71% of raw materials for domestic production. More than 90% of the used raw materials are not reused. Limited resources and the ever-increasing pressure on these resources show that with the current economic model, we will need an additional planet of resources by 2035 or we need to find a radically changed, more responsible waste management.
With the current linear economic model of production and consumption, only a small part of the produced waste is reused, recycled or traded as a secondary raw material. The vast majority of waste, including valuable and rare materials, goes to landfill or is incinerated. In light of limited natural resources and a growing world population, economies will no longer be able to rely on these linear models of production and consumption.
Circular economy is an alternative to these models, based on a systemic approach to economic development that is designed in a way that the economy, society and the environment benefit from it. It is based on three principles: to remove waste and pollution from the production process through innovative process design; keep products and materials in the value chain for a longer period, after the end of their useful life, use the products as a source of raw materials for further use; regeneration of degraded environment.
The circular economy model distinguishes between technical and biological cycles. In circular economy, resources are consumed only in biological cycles, where spent food and bio-based materials (for example cotton or wood) are fed back into the system through processes such as composting and anaerobic digestion. These cycles regenerate living systems (like soil) that provide renewable energy resources for the economy. In technical cycles, products, components and materials are recovered and restored through strategies that include reuse, repair, rework and (as a last resort) recycling.
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