Circular Economy Offers Sustainable Solution to Resource Use But Faces Barriers to Adoption

A circular economy focuses on reusing and regenerating materials and products to ensure environmentally friendly production and consumption.

It seeks to keep products and materials circulating for as long as possible through reuse, repair, refurbishing, composting, and recycling.

It is based on a systems-level approach to maintain the highest value of resources while minimizing waste.

It incentivizes the reuse of products to reduce the extraction of new resources, which is critical to addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution.

Progress on transitioning to a circular economy has been limited globally, despite increased awareness, posing risks to global resources and planetary boundaries.