Sustainable System Transitions toward a Circular Economy

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue focuses on empirical and theoretical studies of systems transitions from linear to circular modes of production, and consumption.  

Governments, industry and society are increasingly recognizing the imperative to transition to a circular economy. Though sometimes viewed as a panacea to the economy versus environment dichotomy, the circular economy paradigm goes against the grain of more than two centuries of economic development and theory. Here, production efficiency is optimized through mono-tasking within siloed areas of resource extraction, process, manufacture, distribution, consumption, disposal, and waste management, where externalities outside each process of the value chain are mostly unaccounted for. On the other hand, the objectives of a circular economy to close, slow, and narrow material flows whilst sustaining natural systems necessitates system-wide approaches and collaboration among various actors along the entire value chain in a way that optimizes social, economic, and environmental performance. This Special Issue seeks to explore the current state of play in the transition of complex systems— both existing, planned, and future—to draw lessons that can be applied to other sectors and jurisdictions.

The Special Issue seeks to include research articles that apply wholistic systems analysis methods from economic, engineering, and/or the social and policy sciences. Cross-disciplinary studies are encouraged. Systems of interest range from the microscale (e.g., organizations, communities), mesoscale (e.g., supply chains, eco-industrial parks, cities) through to the macroscale (sub-national, national, or regional). Systems transitions may be sector-specific (e.g., ag-food systems, manufacture) or focused on materials or products (e.g., rare earth minerals, plastics, textiles, batteries). Approaches might include the application of traditional economic theories (e.g., rational choice theory or behavioral economics) to predict the uptake of CE approaches, products, and services; quantitative systems analyses such as techno-economic and/or life cycle assessments, material flows analyses, and/or environmental accounting; market analyses; sustainability assessments; soft systems methodologies to identify leverage points; triple bottom line models or empirical evaluations of economic, environmental, and social performance; or comparative case analyses of linear and CE systems.

Dr. Jennifer E. Yarnold
Dr. Stephen Jones
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• circular economy
• environmental systems analysis
• systems thinking
• material flows
• resources
• waste management
• cleaner production
• industrial ecology
• sustainable circular economy
• sustainability frameworks
• assessment approaches
• scenarios and pathways
• methods and tools for sustainable circular economy
• policies and incentives for circular economy
• supply chain management
• 4R
• predictive modelling
• measuring circularity
• input–output methods