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Article

A Process Oriented MCDM Approach to Construct a Circular Economy Composite Index

by
Ana Garcia-Bernabeu
1,*,
Adolfo Hilario-Caballero
1,
David Pla-Santamaria
1 and
Francisco Salas-Molina
2
1
Escola Politècnica Superior d’Alcoi, Universitat Politècnica de València, P. Ferrándiz y Carbonell 2, 03801 Alcoy, Spain
2
Facultad de Economía, Universitat de València, Av. Tarongers s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2020, 12(2), 618; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12020618
Submission received: 11 December 2019 / Revised: 9 January 2020 / Accepted: 10 January 2020 / Published: 15 January 2020

Abstract

The purpose of this contribution is to develop a Circular Economy Composite indicator to benchmark EU countries performance. Europe is at the forefront of the global transition towards a sustainable and circular economy. To this end, the European Commission has launched in 2015 a Circular Economy Action Plan including a monitoring framework to measure progress and to assess the effectiveness of initiatives towards the circular economy in the European Union (EU) and Member States. Still, this monitoring framework lacks a composite indicator at the national level to aggregate the circular economy dimensions into a single summary indicator. Although there is a wide range of sustainability composite indicators, no aggregate circular economy index exits to this date. We use a multi-criteria approach to construct a circular economy composite index based on TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preferences by Similarity to Ideal Solutions) methodology. In addition, we introduce a novel aggregation methodology for building a composite indicator where different levels of compensability for the distances to the ideal and anti-ideal (or negative-ideal) values of each indicator are considered. In order to illustrate the advantages of this proposal, we have applied it to evaluate the Circular Economy performance of EU Member States for the year 2016. This proposal can be a valuable tool for identifying areas in which the countries need to concentrate their efforts to boost their circular economy performance.
Keywords: circular economy; composite indicators; multi-criteria analysis; sustainability; TOPSIS circular economy; composite indicators; multi-criteria analysis; sustainability; TOPSIS

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Garcia-Bernabeu, A.; Hilario-Caballero, A.; Pla-Santamaria, D.; Salas-Molina, F. A Process Oriented MCDM Approach to Construct a Circular Economy Composite Index. Sustainability 2020, 12, 618. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12020618

AMA Style

Garcia-Bernabeu A, Hilario-Caballero A, Pla-Santamaria D, Salas-Molina F. A Process Oriented MCDM Approach to Construct a Circular Economy Composite Index. Sustainability. 2020; 12(2):618. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12020618

Chicago/Turabian Style

Garcia-Bernabeu, Ana, Adolfo Hilario-Caballero, David Pla-Santamaria, and Francisco Salas-Molina. 2020. "A Process Oriented MCDM Approach to Construct a Circular Economy Composite Index" Sustainability 12, no. 2: 618. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12020618

APA Style

Garcia-Bernabeu, A., Hilario-Caballero, A., Pla-Santamaria, D., & Salas-Molina, F. (2020). A Process Oriented MCDM Approach to Construct a Circular Economy Composite Index. Sustainability, 12(2), 618. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12020618

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