This groundbreaking handbook leads the way in accelerating the transition to a sustainable circular economy by introducing the concept of a catalyst as a positive and enhancing driving force for sustainability. Catalysts create and maintain favourable conditions for complex systemic sustainability transition changes, and a discussion and understanding of catalysts is required to move from a linear economy to a sustainable and circular economy.
With contributions from leading experts from around the globe, this volume presents theoretical insights, contextualised case studies, and participatory methodologies, which identify different catalysts, including technology, innovation, business models, management and organisation, regulation, sustainability policy, product design, and culture. The authors then show how these catalysts accelerate sustainability transitions. As a unique value to the reader, the book brings together public policy and private business perspectives to address the circular economy as a systemic change. Its theoretical and practical perspectives are coupled with real-world case studies from Finland, Italy, China, India, Nigeria, and others to provide tangible insights on catalysing the circular economy across organisational, hierarchical, and disciplinary boundaries.
With its broad interdisciplinary and geographically diverse scope, this handbook will be a valuable tool for researchers, academics, and policy-makers in the fields of circular economy, sustainability transitions, environmental studies, business, and the social sciences more broadly.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
With contributions from leading experts from around the globe, this volume presents theoretical insights, contextualised case studies, and participatory methodologies, which identify different catalysts, including technology, innovation, business models, management and organisation, regulation, sustainability policy, product design, and culture. The authors then show how these catalysts accelerate sustainability transitions. As a unique value to the reader, the book brings together public policy and private business perspectives to address the circular economy as a systemic change. Its theoretical and practical perspectives are coupled with real-world case studies from Finland, Italy, China, India, Nigeria, and others to provide tangible insights on catalysing the circular economy across organisational, hierarchical, and disciplinary boundaries.
With its broad interdisciplinary and geographically diverse scope, this handbook will be a valuable tool for researchers, academics, and policy-makers in the fields of circular economy, sustainability transitions, environmental studies, business, and the social sciences more broadly.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
"For the last 50 years, we have come to realise that there are not only natural resource limits to our economic growth but that our extraction methods are - indisputably - responsible for global warming, ever-increasing levels of pollution, and dire health effects. However, despite all this data, we have been reluctant to act. In the last few years, circular economy initiatives and regulations have emerged as viable remedies to these calamities, but a deeper look often reveals a lack of a true systemic circular transition. This book is closing an urgent gap because it helps us understand the actual catalyzers of circularity and in so doing, once activated, long-term, sustainable change can finally take place."
Gordana Kierans, EntrepreneurCircle.World, Croatia
"An impressive array of experts masterfully help us to understand and expand the role of catalysts to help transition from linear to circular business models across industries, regions, and approaches. This handbook is both guidebook and playbook, and provides both sides of the telescope - informative zoom-ins, as well as insightful zoom-outs to help us take the necessary next steps to begin the transition in earnest."
Alon Rozen, Dean and Professor of Innovation, École des Ponts Business School, France
Gordana Kierans, EntrepreneurCircle.World, Croatia
"An impressive array of experts masterfully help us to understand and expand the role of catalysts to help transition from linear to circular business models across industries, regions, and approaches. This handbook is both guidebook and playbook, and provides both sides of the telescope - informative zoom-ins, as well as insightful zoom-outs to help us take the necessary next steps to begin the transition in earnest."
Alon Rozen, Dean and Professor of Innovation, École des Ponts Business School, France