Systems thinking for a circular economy

Context: The UK's Resources and Waste Strategy as well as the EU Circular Economy Package support a move to the circular economy (CE) which has potential to drive industrial growth and productivity while reducing costs and increasing resilience.
To date, CE research has tended to be siloed amongst definitions, indicators, enablers/barriers, business models, design tools, supply chain and manufacturing operations. Therefore the complexity of how these areas may interact, particularly in the practical context of a manufacturing firm, warrants further investigation. Indeed the academic CE literature highlights the need for an interdisciplinary approach and the use of systems thinking i.e. a move from observations of events to identifying patterns of behaviour, and the fundamental structures that generate them.
Aim: apply systems thinking to understand the leverage points at firm-level that support a rapid transition to a circular economy.
Approach: More specifically, the study achieves this by mapping the current processes and underlying cause and effect relationships inherent in the business system of case study firms, in order to perform system dynamics modelling (SD). SD is a methodology and mathematical modelling technique that helps to frame and understand complex issues and problems, originally being developed to help firms understand their industrial processes. It is therefore an apt approach to take into consideration both CE's complexity and industrial context to better understand how manufacturing firms can transition to a circular economy. Here the SD applied is a novel approach by considering the circularity of firms. Through SD, leverage points can be identified that help to transform business operations and processes in line with increasing circularity i.e. reducing resources and energy intensity, while allowing firms to provide customers with a similar/better value proposition. The project aims to facilitate interdisciplinary approaches (particularly engineering and business management) through system dynamics modelling for a CE using case studies. The project fits in the EPSRC Manufacturing the Future theme and the Resource Efficiency research area.