TY - JOUR
T1 - Is life cycle assessment enough to address unintended side effects from Circular Economy initiatives?
AU - Niero, Monia
AU - Jensen, Charlotte L.
AU - Fratini, Chiara Farné
AU - Dorland, Jens
AU - Jørgensen, Michael S.
AU - Georg, Susse
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by Yale University
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/10
Y1 - 2021/10
N2 - Despite the spread of policy and business initiatives aiming at transitioning to a Circular Economy (CE), the concept is criticized in the scientific literature for its lack of emphasis on social contexts. Implementing CE initiatives to production systems can indeed lead to “unintended side effects,” that is, both rebound effects and other indirect shifts in consumption patterns. In this forum article we address the question: “How to make the unintended side effects of implementing CE initiatives knowable and actionable?” We argue that the ability of life cycle assessment (LCA) to address unintended side effects from CE initiatives is limited, as LCA can model how different product systems interact with each other, but does not attend to the socio-technical dynamics taking place within and across different life cycle phases. To extend the potential of LCA in supporting decision-making, our suggestion is to complement LCA with other types of analytical approaches, such as Practice Theory (PT) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which can improve our understanding of the unintended side effects of CE initiatives. These theories consider societal dynamics as socio-technical and focus on the processes and practices through which production and consumption dynamics change. Thus, they can provide analyses of whether and how CE initiatives are capable of realizing novel relations within/among socio-technical systems. Ultimately, they can provide explanations on why things end up the way they do, thus supporting LCA in the investigation of more "real" rather than ideal scenarios.
AB - Despite the spread of policy and business initiatives aiming at transitioning to a Circular Economy (CE), the concept is criticized in the scientific literature for its lack of emphasis on social contexts. Implementing CE initiatives to production systems can indeed lead to “unintended side effects,” that is, both rebound effects and other indirect shifts in consumption patterns. In this forum article we address the question: “How to make the unintended side effects of implementing CE initiatives knowable and actionable?” We argue that the ability of life cycle assessment (LCA) to address unintended side effects from CE initiatives is limited, as LCA can model how different product systems interact with each other, but does not attend to the socio-technical dynamics taking place within and across different life cycle phases. To extend the potential of LCA in supporting decision-making, our suggestion is to complement LCA with other types of analytical approaches, such as Practice Theory (PT) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which can improve our understanding of the unintended side effects of CE initiatives. These theories consider societal dynamics as socio-technical and focus on the processes and practices through which production and consumption dynamics change. Thus, they can provide analyses of whether and how CE initiatives are capable of realizing novel relations within/among socio-technical systems. Ultimately, they can provide explanations on why things end up the way they do, thus supporting LCA in the investigation of more "real" rather than ideal scenarios.
KW - Actor-Network Theory
KW - Circular Economy
KW - industrial ecology
KW - life cycle assessment (LCA)
KW - Practice Theory
KW - rebound effect
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85103918818&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/jiec.13134
DO - 10.1111/jiec.13134
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85103918818
SN - 1088-1980
VL - 25
SP - 1111
EP - 1120
JO - Journal of Industrial Ecology
JF - Journal of Industrial Ecology
IS - 5
ER -