Innovation, Developement and Economic Analysis for Sustinability

The importance of balancing the four pillars of sustainability - economic, environmental, social and cultural - taking into account the time dimension, as well as their inter-connections, through a holistic perspective (Witjes and Lozano, 2016) gained momentum. To reach substantial improvements in environmental sustainability and socio-economic development, it is essential to transform the today?s socio-technical systems and go through system (radical) innovations, involving new technologies and their interactions with other elements in the society such as regulation, infrastructures and user contexts and meanings (like competencies, preferences, cultural values, interpretations and practices) (Elzen et al., 2004). Thus, instead of continuing with the traditional ?take-make-waste? model that exploits natural resources beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth and results in: (i) a permanent degradation of the environment, (ii) structural problems in the socio-economic production system arising from our production and consumption patterns; the moment has come to focus on the Circular Economy (CE) that (i) reduces the use of natural resources by reusing and recycling resources in new production, and (ii) transforms production and consumption patterns from ownership to covering societal needs by offering services/functions/performance. Under these circumstances, Circular-IDEAS recognizes the need to focus on challenging issues with huge implications for the circular economy. Among the set of such issues Circular-IDEAS will focus on the future of plastics.