| Abstract |
Circular economy is a concept describing an industrial economy, which produces no wastes and no emissions through its design, considering all the phases of the life cycle of products. It has gained worldwide importance in the latest years and the European Commission adopted an ambitious Circular Economy Package, including revised legislation proposals 'to stimulate Europe's transition towards a circular economy, aiming to boost global competitiveness, foster sustainable economic growth and generate new jobs'. In this context, a study has been conducted with the goal of better understanding how can the circularity be improved with main focus on the regulatory barriers, throughout different industry sectors, products and activities. In a world where electronic technologies play a core role, it was considered essential to analyse this sector and how to improve its circularity, especially due to the associated topics arising from the materials used for their manufacturing, such as the scarcity of elements, the conflict minerals and the restrictions on the use of some elements and substances (including legislation associated, like REACH and RoHS), as well as the complexity of the waste management at the end-of-life. This analysis of the electronics sector allows a better understanding on materials, products and activities, unravelling the regulatory barriers to circularity. Potential solutions are identified and discussed. The paper presents examples and the main outcomes of the study, focusing on political and legislative approaches and how to deal with them from the industry perspective. Examples of approaches to deal with the circular economy from a political and legislative perspective are: the ambitious Circular Economy Package from the European Commission to improve circular economy, which intends to revise some existing regulation, such as the RoHS, REACH and Waste Framework Directive; the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) initiative, which is sorted under the umbrella of circular economy and intends to harmonize environmental product related information, in order to allow reliability of information, comparability and benchmarking of environmental aspects of products. Examples of approaches to deal with the circular economy from the industry perspective are: improvement of the product design; sustainable management of the supply chain with focus on circularity; improvement of the corporate circularity; strategies for communicating circularity and influence other stakeholders improving their own circularity. The complexity of these interactions, links and influences will be subject of the paper, providing a framework for understanding circular economy, with focus on the electronics sector. |