A holistic Circular Economy comes with many advantages. The Circular Economy contributes to saving resources, protecting biodiversity, decreasing emissions, and preventing waste from being landfilled. It also reduces the need to extract raw materials from the ground and consequently mitigates the devastating consequences and side-effects of extractivism.
The recent political pushes for a Circular Economy in the EU are thus highly welcome. Its benefits potentially extend beyond the EU. For example, preventing waste from being landfilled would counter the environmental problems that arise due to waste exports to third countries. Reduced raw materials consumption might not only reduce the pressure on communities in mining regions, but also enable more equitable access to resources across the globe.
Despite this, current ambitions to transform the European economy to become circular are not a sure-fire success with regards to a globally Just Transition. This is due to risks such as low-income and lower-middle-income countries being left behind and no longer partaking in circular value creation and trade, or the continuation of poor and hazardous working conditions and environmental harm in these countries. This study gives an overview of opportunities and risks for a Just Transition associated with the transformation to a Circular Economy.
