Understanding the circular economy: From Synthesized Conceptual Foundations to System-Oriented Progress Measurement

The concept of the circular economy has gained traction among scholars, governments, and businesses alike who advocate it as a remedy to the grand sustainability challenges of our time. These challenges include the enormous increase in resource use, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions from increasing production and consumption. Through its linkage with these sustainability challenges, the circular economy concept was transferred to an entirely renewed scale and scope of application within a short period of time. This PhD dissertation responds to calls in the scientific circular economy literature to better conceptualize and measure the circular economy. First, in its new context of application, the circular economy has often been criticized as a melting pot of concepts lacking consensus across scholars and other societal stakeholders. Second, circular economy measurement has thus far mostly been focused on technical aspects of the circular economy, quantitative performance measures and final sustainability impacts, rather than the progress of the transition to a circular economy. As a contribution to circular economy conceptualization, this dissertation synthesizes conceptual foundations of the circular economy into a new circular economy definition and it creates a comprehensive framework of a key circular economy principle, the circular economy value retention options (also called R-strategies). The definition includes the basic principles of circular economy (systems and value retention options), enablers (businesses models and consumers), and aims (sustainable development and an intact resource based for future generations). The framework of circular economy value retention options emerges from a qualitative analysis of 69 academic articles and comprises a 10R hierarchy (R0—Refuse, R1—Reduce, R2—Reuse/Resell, R3—Repair, R4—Refurbish, R5—Remanufacture, R6—Repurpose, R7—Recycle, R8—Recover Energy, R9—Remine). Circular economy measurement in the dissertation focuses on better understanding the circular economy transition in the formative phase through system-oriented measurement of circular economy processes. Two different frameworks are constructed in leaning on the “technological innovation systems” approach and its “seven functions of innovation systems”. The first framework focuses on the analyses of multiple, diverse circular economy solution trajectories emerging in parallel. To assess progress of solution trajectories, the 10R framework is utilized, and two additional innovation system functions are employed (coordination, regime change) to better capture their progress. An empirical mixed-methods study on the “Dutch circular textiles mission” serves to apply the framework. The second system-oriented framework developed is termed “AMOR”. It combines the original seven functions of innovation systems with the “Abilities, Motivations, Opportunities–AMO” framework and the 10Rs framework into a new framework (AMOR) with nine lead indicators. In the dissertation, a macro-level and a micro-level framework are introduced, and results are obtained based on government data from the Netherlands (macro-level) and through corporate sustainability reports from multinational corporations (micro-level). Overall, the dissertation derives advances on the circular economy concept and its measurement combined with empirical insights. It presents further avenues for conceptualization by academics and proposes that practitioners may use the circular economy definition, the 10R framework, and the measurement frameworks as a guideline for circular economy implementation and monitoring.