Assessing the impacts of Circular Economy: a framework and an application to the washing machine industry

The literature usually depicts circular economy as a path to embrace sustainability into economic systems. Shifting from a linear to a circular economy leads to environmental and social benefits. However, despite a growing attention from academia, policymakers and businesses, circular economy implementation projects are still scarce. One of the reasons is that circular economy scenarios may be challenging from an economic perspective. In order to spur a transition towards circular economy, new methods to support the assessment of economic, environmental and social impacts of circular economy scenarios are needed. This paper presents a systemic framework to support a simplified evaluation of circular economy scenarios. The framework, developed specifically for durable goods, is applied to the washing machine industry, thanks to a case study. The application results show how the framework adoption may contribute to reduce the uncertainties that are often an obstacle to the transition towards circular economy