The trends of population growth, demand growth and consequent pressure on natural resources have been underlining the need for modern societies to move towards a more sustainable consumption system, an economy that ensures economic development, improved living and employment conditions. , not forgetting the control over the exploitation and consumption of everything that nature puts at our disposal, often called "natural capital".


🔴 It is a strategic concept that covers materials and energy and defines a waste management hierarchy that starts with reduction, and goes through reuse, recycling, recovery and only in exceptional cases, elimination.


🔴 It is a key element to promote decoupling between economic growth and increased consumption of resources. It is characterized as a dynamic process that requires technical and economic compatibility (capacities and productive activities) but also requires a social and institutional framework (incentives and values).

🔴 It goes beyond the scope and strict focus of waste management and recycling actions, aiming at a broader action, from the redesign of processes, products and new business models to the optimization of the use of resources ("circulating" as efficiently as possible products, components and materials in technical and/or biological cycles). It thus aims at the development of new economically viable and ecologically efficient products and services, rooted in ideally perpetual cycles of upstream and downstream reconversion. It materializes in minimizing resource extraction, maximizing reuse, increasing efficiency and developing new business models.


🔴 There is a significant set of tools to deal with this matter, which will also depend on the type of business and the defined strategy. The most commonly used, just to name a few, are Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) , Materials Passport , Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR) .