Abstract
Circular economy is gaining steady momentum from last few years. On the other hand it widely varies depending on the problems being addressed. Looking beyond the current exhaustive industrial model, it aims for sustainable growth focusing on positive society-wide benefits. This economy model is based on three principles, that is, designing out of the polluted waste material, keeping the materials in use, and regenerating natural sustainable ecosystem. Guided by these principles, novel technologies can create more opportunities for the society. This is a complex system where many real-world elements such as people, plants, business, and ecosystem are strongly linked to each other leading to some viable consequences. Circular systems encourage biodegradable elements or biological nutrients to reenter the biosphere safely for decomposition for a new cycle. Here designing of products are done with main attention to regenerate new resource value with reusable materials through restorative economy. The energy required to boost circular economy should be always renewable in nature requiring threshold energy level. The environmental impact includes reduction of negative consequences with attention to green emissions, consumption of waste materials, and improvement of land productivity. This chapter discusses about the origin, principles of circular economy, characteristics, development strategies, assessment, practices, challenges, and barriers of circular economy in detail.
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Patel, M., Kumari, S., Kumari, N., Ghosh, A. (2022). Understanding Circular Economy in Solid Waste Management. In: Baskar, C., Ramakrishna, S., Baskar, S., Sharma, R., Chinnappan, A., Sehrawat, R. (eds) Handbook of Solid Waste Management. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4230-2_7
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