Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-11 (section)

=== Box 11.5 | Circular Economy Policy ===

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The implementation of a circular economy relies on the operationalisation of the R-imperatives or strategies which extend from the original 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, with the addition of Refuse, Reduce, Resell/Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose, Recycle, Recover (energy), Re-mine and more (Reike et al. 2018) . The R implementation strategies are diverse across countries (Ghisellini et al. 2016; Kalmykova et al. 2018) but, in practice, the lower forms of retention of materials, such as recycling and recover (energy), often dominate. The lack of policies for higher retention of material use such as Reduce, Reuse, Repair and Remanufacture is due to institutional failures, lack of coordination and lack of strong advocates (Gonzalez Hernandez et al. 2018a) .

Policies addressing market barriers to circular business development need to demonstrate that circular products meet quality performance standards, ensure that the full environmental costs are reflected in market prices and foster market opportunities for circular products exchange, notably through industrial symbiosis clusters and trading platforms (Kirchherr et al. 2018; [[#OECD--2019a|OECD 2019a]] ; Hartley et al. 2020; [[#Hertwich--2020|Hertwich 2020]] ) . Policy levels span from micro (such as consumer or company) to meso (eco-industrial parks) and macro (provinces, regions and cities) (Geng et al. 2019) . The creation of eco-industry parks (‘industrial clusters’) has been encouraged by governments to facilitate waste exchanges between facilities, where by-products from one industry are used as a feedstock to

Box 11.5

another ( [[#Ding--2012|Ding and Hua 2012]] ; [[#Jiao--2014|Jiao and Boons 2014]] ; [[#Shi--2014|Shi and Yu 2014]] ; Tian et al. 2014; Winans et al. 2017) . Systematic assessment of wastes and resources is carried out to assess possible exchange between different supply chains and identify synergies of waste streams that include metal scraps, waste plastics, water heat, bagasse, paper, wood scraps, ash, sludge and others ( [[#Ding--2012|Ding and Hua 2012]] ; Sh i and Yu 2014) .

The development of data collection and indicators is nascent and need to ramp up to quantify the impacts and provide evidence to improve circular economy and materials efficiency policies. Policymakers need to leverage the potential socio-economic opportunities of transitioning to circular economies ( [[#Llorente-González--2020|Llorente-González and Vence 2020]] ), which shows positive GDP growth and job creation by shifting to more labour-intensive recycling plants and repair services than resource-extraction activities (WRAP and Alliance Green 2015; Cambridge Econometrics et al. 2018). The International Labour Organization estimates that worldwide employment would grow by 0.1% by 2030 under a circular economy scenario ( [[#ILO--2018|ILO 2018]] ). However questions remain if the type of jobs created are concentrated in low-wage labour-intensive circular activities which may need targeted policy instruments to improve working conditions ( [[#Llorente-González--2020|Llorente-González and Vence 2020]] ).

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