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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Circular economy in Latin America: A systematic literature
review
Claudia Marcela Betancourt Morales
1
| Jhon Wilder Zartha Sossa
2
1
Sustainability Master Program, Universidad
Pontificia Bolivariana, Medellín, Colombia
2
Escuela de Ingeniería, Facultad de Ingeniería
Agroindustrial, Universidad Pontificia
Bolivariana, Medellín, Colombia
Correspondence
Jhon Wilder Zartha Sossa, Escuela de
Ingeniería, Facultad de Ingeniería
Agroindustrial, Universidad Pontificia
Bolivariana, Circular 1 70-01 Campus Laureles,
Medellín, Colombia.
Email: jhon.zartha@upb.edu.co
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to identify circular economy concept trends of Latin
America with regards to Europe, in which a systematic review of literature (SRL) was
made using Scopus data in order to define the search, to select the relevant articles,
and to analyze the results. Seventy-one articles from Scopus were reviewed, and the
analysis was complemented by the analysis with 57 documents from other scientific
Web browsers such as Mendeley, Scopus, Academic Google, ScienceDirect, and
SciELo which sum a total of 128 documents which the majority have come from
Europe. Main concepts were identified, barriers and trends. The main conclusion was
which the current concept is not very clear; in spite of Europe knows that limitation,
Latin America is making the same mistake implementation.
KEYWORDS
circular economy, Latin America, sustainability, sustainable development, systematic literature
review, trend
1|INTRODUCTION
The negative effects caused by the current economic model (Lavola
cosustainability, 2017) based on “extract, transform, and disposing”
and the consumer market trends threaten the stability of the econo-
mies and the integrity of natural ecosystems, which they are essential
for human survival (Ghisellini, Cialani, & Ulgiati, 2016). The circular
economy (CE) as a key tool of sustainable development requires to be
integrated into the equilibrium guidelines of the economic, environ-
mental, technological, and social aspects of an economy; sector or
industrial process; and the interaction between all these aspects
(Brian, 1997).
It is understood that the CE is the key to face the issues in an
economically viable way and besides a mechanism to establish new
social dynamics and techniques which will lead to a responsible con-
sume and production within a system that preserve and optimize the
use of resources used in every process and each stage of material life
(Suazo Páez, 2017). In Latin America, this concept of CE has been gen-
eralized to the waste management as an economical alternative, and
there is no evaluation or legislation on the processes that have gener-
ated the waste, which makes these initiatives eco-efficient and not
eco-effective. On the other hand, others countries, of Europe, Japan,
the United States, Korea, and Vietnam which they already have within
their development policies goals focused on the CE, address their
efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle (Sakai et al., 2011) and to recov-
ery (European Parliament and Council, 2008). The most ambitious goal
of these countries is to achieve synergies with national strategies.
Precisely in the European Union, they have concentrated their
interest in the implementation of CE, and especially small and
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), who have mainly adopted five CE
activities according to a European Commission survey carried out in
2016 between approximately 11,000 companies in the member states
(Katz-Gerro & López Sintas, 2019). The most implemented activity in
SMEs is waste minimization, followed by energy use planning, product
and service redesign, and finally renewable energy use and water use
planning.
Due to the above, there is an absence of a defined concept for
CE implementation in Latin America, which coincides with what was
stated by the director of the Americas Sustainable Development
Foundation (ASDF), Kevin de Cuba, when participating in the First
Latin American Forum held in Montevideo (fEC, 2017), said that the
“greatest challenge facing Latin America in terms of transition is to
Received: 9 January 2020 Revised: 5 April 2020 Accepted: 19 April 2020
DOI: 10.1002/bse.2515
Bus Strat Env. 2020;1–19. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/bse © 2020 ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1
know what it is since it starts CE projects with ideas, concepts and ini-
tiatives but each initiative uses a different language and approach that
lacks coherence and implementation may stagnate.”
Precisely, the case of Latin America is very particular, due to the
fact that the region, although it possesses great natural wealth, has
unfortunately suffered important pressures due to the strategies
employed to overcome the situation of poverty and inequality in
which its population lives, the policy proposals and actions aimed at
the protection and management of the environment are few, or their
compliance is low (Oliva, Rivadeneira, Serrano, & Martín, 2011). It is a
completely real fact that the poorest countries are the ones that have
to suffer most from the consequences of the environmental crisis
(Herrán, 2012).
A shift to a circular model could generate in the next 5 years,
according to the World Economic Forum, a trillion dollars in material
savings alone, generate more than 100,000 new jobs and avoid up to
100 million tons of waste. These figures justify to rethink the transi-
tion to a circular model and should attract the attention of the public
sector and the private sector alike (Peinado, 2017). However, to
design a circular business model (Centobelli, Cerchione, Chiaroni, Del
Vecchio, & Urbinati, 2020), companies have to implement some man-
agement practices for value creation and examine in greater detail dif-
ferent perspectives and research domains, such as organizational
culture, managerial commitment, digital technologies, external envi-
ronment and the community of stakeholders, and the techniques and
approaches that allow the effectiveness of the design of a CE business
model.
The purpose of this document is to provide an answer as to what
are the current barriers and conceptual trends of CE that lead to Latin
American countries not having the same development and implemen-
tation effectiveness as most European countries, mainly from the CE
definition approach. This identification was made through a system-
atic review of literature (SRL) to 128 documents corresponding to
71 Scopus articles and an add-on of 57 documents from other web
browser sources. In Section 3, each stage of development is
described; in Section 4, the data are contrasted and analyzed. In Sec-
tion 5, the topics analyzed were grouped into two axes: concepts and
barriers of the CE and trends. Finally, Section 6 presented the final
observations and recommendations.
2|THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Although it is true that the concept of CE has origins in different per-
spectives and schools of thought, so it is difficult to trace it back to a
specific date or author, it was the economist Kenneth Boulding in
1966 who presented for the first time the idea of an economic model
of circular flows (Scheel & Aguiñaga, 2017). This was followed by
great schools of thought related to the CE, including Walter Stahel's
Functional Services Economics (Economics of Performance;
Stahel, 2010); William McDonough and Michael Braungart's Cradle to
Cradle
®
design philosophy (McDonough & Braungart, 2003); bio-
mimicry articulated by Janine Benyus (Hargroves & Smith, 2006);
industrial ecology by Reid Lifset and Thomas Graedel (Lifset &
Graedel, 2002); Natural Capitalism by Amory and Hunter Lovins and
Paul Hawken (Hawken, Lovins, & Lovins, 2014); or the Blue Economy
systems approach described by Gunter Pauli (Pauli, 2010).
Going through a general revision to the concepts of the CE, the
main areas of knowledge (Korhonen, Honkasalo, & Seppälä, 2018) are
highlighted, which are based on a fragmented collection of ideas
derived from some scientific fields, including emerging fields and
semiscientific concepts. These sources cover, for example, industrial
ecology (Frosch & Gallopoulos, 1989); (Lifset & Graedel, 2002), indus-
trial ecosystems (Jelinski, Graedel, Laudise, McCall, & Patel, 1992) and
industrial symbiosis (Chertow & Ehrenfeld, 2012), cleaner production
(Stevenson & Evans, 2004) including reviews of circular material flows
from manufacturing systems and developments for that purpose
(Lieder & Rashid, 2016), product and service systems (Tukker, 2015),
eco-efficiency (Huppes & Ishikawa, 2009); (Welford, 1998), (Haas,
Krausmann, Wiedenhofer, & Heinz, 2016), cradle to cradle design
(Braungart, McDonough, & Bollinger, 2007); (McDonough &
Braungart, 2002); (McDonough & Braungart, 2003), biomimicry
(Hargroves & Smith, 2006), resilience of socio-ecological systems
(Folke, 2006); (Crépin, Biggs, Polasky, Troell, & de Zeeuw, 2012), the
economics of performance (Stahel, 2010), natural capitalism (Hawken
et al., 2014), the concept of zero emissions (Pauli, 2010) Big Data, arti-
ficial intelligence, and the Internet of things to advance in new busi-
ness models based on the CE.
In order to accelerate the transition towards a CE, in 2010, The
Ellen MacArthur Foundation was born in the United Kingdom with a
commitment to growth models inspired by nature, where all materials
have a utility and reintegrated into the process in a circular and infinite
form. In the book “Towards a Circular Economy—Economic and Busi-
ness Rationale Accelerated Transition”(The Ellen MacArthur Founda-
tion, 2012), a great variety of case examples are described where is
explained implementation benefits, changes, difficulties, risks and par-
adigms, scenarios to consider for a successful circular economy.
But it was not until the Paris Summit (COP 21, 2015) that the call
to the cities in favor of the CE was signed and where commitments
were established through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),
in particular with the aim of guaranteeing sustainable consumption
and production models. This is how in Europe, through the European
Commission, the statement “Close the circle: an EU action plan for
the Circular Economy”(Comisión Europea, 2015) with the aim of
ensuring that the appropriate regulatory framework is available for
the development of the CE. As a result of this Communication from
the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the
European Economic and Social Committee, and the Committee of the
Regions, an integrated approach to sustainable development agenda
2030 action plan of the United Nations and the Alliance it was created
of the G7. Alliance (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 2016) on
resource efficiency, which focuses on production, consumption and
waste management. Based on this background, the British Standards
Institute (BSI, 2017) launched a new Standard for CE called BS
8001:2017: Framework for the Application of Circular Economy Prin-
ciples in Organizations (Pauliuk, 2018).
2BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA
Like all Europe, Latin America has also designed its action plan to
meet the commitments agreed at the Paris Summit (COP 21, 2015).
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
(ECLAC) in document 2030 recommends this environmental “Hori-
zons 2030: Equality at the center of sustainable development”
(CEPAL, 2016). It must be understood that the CE is a trend (Jordi,
Tollin, & Jiménez, 2017), and it represents an opportunity for Latin
America because it could change the current economic diversity and
at the same time to increase the employment rate.
In accordance with the concept and principles that have been
defined for the implementation of the CE, the European Environment
Agency frames the main or most relevant characteristics (European
Environment Agency EEA, 2016) which correspond to the type of sys-
tem according to its nature as listed below:
•reduced inputs and use of natural resources;
•greater sharing of energy and renewable and recyclable resources;
•emissions reduction;
•reduce material and waste losses;
•maintain the value of products, components, and materials in the
economy.
Under these principles, the acceptance of the logic that natural
resources are limited must be balanced with the dominant logic that
successful commercial performance requires growth, with added value
at each stage of a production cycle (Perey, Benn, Agarwal, &
Edwards, 2018).
Simultaneously with the first studies on the concept of CE, the
SRL originally arose from the concept of evidence-based medicine
(EBM; Kitchenham & Charters, 2007), and it was in the early 60s when
conceptual development began (Sur & Dahm, 2011). Later in 1982,
the first to express the concept of “Evidence-Based”was David Eddy
(Eddy, 1982). Then came the explosive development of EBM,
developed by Dr. Gordon Guyatt who in 1990 introduced the new
concept of “Scientific Medicine”(Sur & Dahm, 2011), a concept that
Guyatt himself transformed in 1991 into EBM (Guyatt, 1991), which
refers to decision-making based on experience, professional judgment,
and the most rigorous objective evidence available. It was precisely
from the EBM that what is now known as an SRL emerged with the
aim of improving the decision-making process by reducing the variabil-
ity of practice or experience (Chacaíza Becerra, Riaño Casallas, Rojas
Berrio, & Garzón Santos, 2017).
In this context, SRL is the integrative, observational, retrospec-
tive, secondary study, in which studies that examine the same
combined question. At the same time, within the two forms exist:
“quantitative or meta-analysis”and “qualitative or overview”
(Beltrán, 2005) that represent a fundamental role as a mechanism
to collect, organize, evaluate, and synthesize all the available evi-
dence regarding a phenomenon of interest. But to do so, it must
meet the same quality standards with which the highest quality
primary studies are performed in order to statistically infer more
reliable results than can be obtained by conducting individual
studies (Velásquez, 2014).
According to the foregoing, it is observed that over time multiple
concepts associated with the management of sustainable develop-
ment have emerged; however, there is a gap in the literature about its
relationship between the definition and its application. In the particu-
lar case of Latin America, it is not a new concept, and this lies in the
growing interest in its implementation at the level of State, company,
and society. However, this literature to date has been limited mostly
to define the applicability of the CE unrevised its direct connection to
the ultimate goal of this paradigm: sustainability.
3|METHODOLOGY
By means of the technique of SRL, the relevance of the selection of
the articles was analyzed through the determination of the search
criteria, by means of the following stages:
3.1 |Information sources search stage
In the first phase, the Scopus bibliographic database was systemati-
cally searched and references were selected using explicit and repro-
ducible criteria (search equation), followed by a complementary
random search for keywords in different web browsers.
3.2 |Phase 1: Search in the Scopus bibliographic
database
For this phase, sounding was made through the confirmation of a
search equation using the keywords and modifying it until finding a
number of results according to the revision taking into account the
limitations of exclusions. This search was performed on the Scopus
bibliographic database, and to arrive at the definitive equation, an iter-
ative process was completed to filter the definitive articles according
to the application of the following criteria:
•Keywords: Circular Economy, Sustainability, and Latin America
•Chronological order (5 years)
•Exclusion of conferences, books, abstracts, press articles, surveys,
notes, and book chapters
Thus, in 13 iterations, the total number of articles was filtered and
reduced from 2,981 to seven.
3.3 |Phase 2: Complementary search
This phase consisted of searching for information in the different
Web browsers specialized in scientific sources such as Mendeley,
Google Academic, Scopus ScienceDirect, and SciELO and addition-
ally, in nonspecialized Web browsers such as Google, in order to
identify what has been the current view (trends) that the scientific
BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA 3
community and the nonscientific but specialized in CE, has
addressed and analyzed in some way about the implementation of
CE in Latin America.
For this random search by the different browsers, the keywords
selected for this review were taken into account: Circular Economy,
Sustainability, Systematic Review of literature, and Latin America.
Once it was processed with the search in specific browsers (more
than 100 results), 57 documents related to the keywords were
selected, among scientific articles, news, book chapters, Blogs of spe-
cialists, and press articles that were classified according to Your search
source and type of document.
It is important to mention that the references selected by this
search method were used as a complement to what was definitively
found and selected in the Phase 1.
3.4 |Analysis stage
At this stage, the 71 articles were classified according to their scien-
tific production indicator of the journal to which the article belongs in
the evaluation portal Scimago Journal & Country Rank, and only those
corresponding to the first quartile (Q1) were selected. In short, 42 arti-
cles Q1 resulted. For the analysis, a table was constructed with the
relevant information of each article with the relevant criteria: Author,
name of the article, year of publication, name of the journal, thematic
area, country, and the Quartil according to Scimago Journal &
Country Rank.
Subsequently, the 42 Q1 articles were read in-depth in order to
determine whether or not the article covered the subject matter
addressed in this review. Finally, the number of base articles that have
a direct relationship with the CE corresponds to 32.
As for the scientific articles found randomly (30 articles), these
were also classified by their indicator of the scientific output of the
journal to which the article belongs on the evaluation portal Scimago
Journal & Country Rank.
3.5 |Development stage
For this stage, the statistical analyses of the data were carried out by
means of a descriptive analysis of the Scopus graphs and an analysis
of chi-square independence in the R Statistical Software.
A summary of the methodology applied in this review can be seen
in Figure 1.
4|RESULTS
4.1 |Search equation in Scopus
The analysis of the equation definitive of Scopus was started with the
variable of the countries of origin of the articles, which were grouped
by geographic region, and it was found that, for the 71 articles, the
total number of countries of origin is 38 (Appendix A), where Europe
has a participation in 72 articles corresponding to 69.23%, Asia with
16 (15.38%), and Latin America with participation in five items
(4.81%) Table 1.
Due to the difference significant in the total of countries by geo-
graphical region, the total scientific output cannot be compared.
Therefore, the measure was standardized in order to determine an
average of how many items a country generates by geographic region
(Table 1).
Of the 32 publications of interest for this review, 50% are from
2019, 28% from 2018, 16% from 2017, and 6% from 2016.
Regarding the main theme that each author gave to his research
within the framework of Circular Economy (CE) and Sustainability, 16
different themes were defined for the 32 definitive articles, where it
was found that the most coincident theme would correspond to
Industrial Ecology with 5 articles, followed by the themes of bioengi-
neering, EC concept, and recycling, each with 4 articles as can be seen
in Figure 2.
4.2 |Search complementary
Based on the 57 selected documents of the search complementary,
information was classified according to search source, document type,
country of origin, year, and to the articles of scientific journals; they
were reclassified according to the impact factor or indicator of scien-
tific production of the journal Scimago Journal & Country Rank.
Once the database was organized, analyzed as the first measure,
the source of information where it was found that the Web browser
most consulted was Mendeley with 38 references, followed by
FIGURE 1 Stages of the applied methodology [Colour figure can
be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
4BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA
Google with 10, Google academic with four, ScienceDirect with three,
and with a reference each SciELo and Scopus.
The journal scientific papers also were classified according to an
indicator of journal scientific production Scimago Journal & Country
Rank, and within the 57 selected references, 30 were found to be
Quartil, of which 21 corresponded to Q1, four to Q4, three to Q2, and
two to Q3.
In terms of country of origin, found that in total 23 countries
(Table 2), although the geographical region with the highest number
of contributions was Europe with 52.17% (36 documents), the
country with the highest contribution to this search is the United
States with 14 documents; however, the average number of docu-
ments per country is much lower than in Europe (3.27) than in
North America (14), because this only makes up one country (United
States), unlike Europe, made up of 11 countries, of which the one
with the greatest contribution was the United Kingdom with seven
documents.
Taking into account the topic that each randomly selected docu-
ment developed, in Figure 3, it is shown that for the 57 documents,
19% corresponds to the topic of concept of CE, 14% implementation
of CE, with 11% SRL, and followed by 9% industrial ecology.
In Appendix B, there is a relationship of each year of publication
according to the type of document and its respective subject where
was found that the documents selected for this review by the meth-
odology complementary, data from year 1982 to 2018, and that the
year with the most publications, corresponds to 2017 with 14.
5|DISCUSSION
Once all the selected documents and articles were reviewed, two
discussion axes were grouped according to the topics addressed:
concepts and barriers of CE and trends.
5.1 |Concepts and barriers of CE
For this SRL, it is important to highlight the definition or concept of
CE that each author took as a basis or redefined in its research as well
as their barriers of development that is listed in Appendix C, in order
to provide guidelines for minimizing risks in implementation.
According to what was found in the documentary review, (Jordi,
Tollin, & Jiménez, 2017) makes a reference on the development of the
concept of CE from the 70s with the definition of permaculture, later
in the 80s, the concept was related to industrial ecology and industrial
symbiosis, in the late 90s, with the concept of cradle to cradle and
biomimetism, and finally, mentions the definition of the Ellen
MacArthur Foundation as the radical change. Likewise, Cerdá and
Khalilova (2016) identified the concept of CE through innovative
business models, eco-design, and design for sustainability.
According to the study on the concept of CE by means of a
bibliometric analysis (D'Amato et al., 2017), China has produced the
most literature on CE. The results show that the popularity of CE in
research has steadily increased after 2008, when a national law was
introduced to promote production of waste and recycling in key
industries (Murray, Skene, & Haynes, 2017) through the China
National Development and Reform Commission (CNDR; Guo
et al., 2017). There has also been a notable growth of literature on CE
in other countries from the year 2015, probably driven by the evolu-
tion of European and global policies in this area, such as the 2015
United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) and the 2015
TABLE 1 The ratio of country of origin of the articles of the definitive equation
Geographical
region
No. of
countries/geographical
region
% no. of
countries/geographical
region
No
articles/geographical
region
% no.
articles/geographical
region
Average no.
articles/no. of
countries
Europe 20 52.63 72 69.23 3.60
Asia 7 18.42 16 15.38 2.29
Latin America 4 10.53 5 4.81 1.25
North
America
2 5.26 4 3.85 2.00
Oceania 2 5.26 4 3.85 2.00
Africa 3 7.89 3 2.88 1.00
Total 38 100 104 100
Source: Own preparation.
FIGURE 2 Total number of articles by thematic [Colour figure can
be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA 5
European Union Communication on an CE action plan (European
Commission, 2015).
Additionally, in the article of Kirchherr, Reike, and Hekkert (2017),
where a systematic analysis was made of the definitions selected of
CE for comparing them, it was concluded that the analysis of 114 defi-
nitions provides the first quantitative evidence that the meaning of CE
is variable according to the author, as for example, some authors were
found to equate CE with recycling, whereas the most common con-
ceptualization of “how to”CE is a combination of reducing, reusing,
and recycling, the 3R framework. Also, Nobre and Tavares (2017)
conducted a review of scientific literature between 2006 and 2015 on
the application of big data and internet of things in CE through a
bibliometric study where they used as a tool the database Scopus to
reach the conclusion that Europe leads by far the research articles
associated with CE, whereas Asia shows a great growth, inclusive,
greater than North America in the last years. In South America, growth
was 3.29%, followed by the Middle East with 3.12%, both higher than
in other regions.
The CE is an emerging topic that has attracted increasing interest
in research, and its concept usually gets confused with that of sustain-
ability (Geissdoerfer, Savaget, Bocken, & Hultink, 2017), so it is impor-
tant to highlight that they have different origins, objectives,
motivations prioritizations, institutions, beneficiaries, time frames, and
perceptions of responsibilities. For (De los Rios & Charnley, 2017)
implementation of CE, the skills of human capital are critical to achiev-
ing optimization of one resource.
In an attempt to construct a definition of scientific CE, (Scheel &
Aguiñaga, 2017), using the concept of Planetary Limits and the energy
flow model as the desired vision of the human economy, they have
been able to demonstrate that there is very little information that is
really new in the concept of CE in terms of scientific search of
sustainability; the same conclusion they reached (Murray, Skene, &
TABLE 2 List of the country of origin and number of random search documents
Geographical region/country No documents/country
Participation geographical
region/country
Average no. documents/
geographic region
Europe 36 52,17 3.27
Germany 4 5.80
Austria 1 1.45
Spain 4 5.80
Finland 2 2.90
France 1 1.45
Netherlands 5 7.25
Italy 2 2.90
United Kingdom 7 10.14
Sweden 5 7.25
Switzerland 1 1.45
European Union
a
4 5.80
North America 14 20.29 14
The United States of America 14 20.29
Latin America 12 17.39 2
Brazil 1 1.45
Chile 3 4.35
Colombia 3 4.35
Mexico 3 4.35
Dominican Republic 1 1.45
Uruguay 1 1.45
Asia 6 8.70 1.5
China 1 1.45
Philippines 1 1.45
India 1 1.45
Japan 3 4.35
Oceania 1 1.45 1
Australia 1 1.45
Total 69 100 3
a
Official documents created by the political community of the countries that make up the community.Source: Own preparation
6BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA
Haynes, 2017) by which they suggest that needs a careful definition
of CE.
From another approach, the CE has begun to be integrated into
the corporate sustainability agenda, and in most of the activities
reported in the sustainability reports, the concept of CE is oriented
when towards managing the product and packaging, focusing on the
end of its useful life (Stewart & Niero, 2018). According to Suárez-
Eiroa, Fernández, Méndez-Martínez, and Soto-Oñate (2019), a CE
model established by the European Commission which presents CE as
a system is not considered as an underlying concept and inputs and
outputs are absent.
Despite its academic origins, it has been suggested that the
contemporary conceptualization of CE and its practice have been
predominantly developed by empires and policymakers, for
researchers (Millar, McLaughlin, & Börger, 2019), it is not clear
whether CE can promote economic growth, so for them, it is
uncertain whether CE can be a successful tool for sustainable
development but also whether it is a more sustainable model than
the linear economy.
However, according to the study of Velenturf and Jopson (2019),
whereby means of a review to different cases of CE implementation
study, they found that from the 37 topics identified by experts, the
key points are associated with environmental, social and technical
costs, and governmental aspects. The development towards CE could
be one of the ways to achieve sustainable growth (Schilkowski,
Shukla, & Choudhary, 2019), and the first step to make stakeholders
aware of the need for change is that measuring the current level of
circularity to improve the predictiveness of future actions.
For Walmsley, Ong, Klemeš, Tan, and Varbanov (2019), the con-
cept of circular economics currently lacks robust engineering design
methods, leading many researchers to question its effectiveness.
Although it is considered that the concept of CE is highly standardized
and internalized at all levels of stakeholders (academia, business, gov-
ernment, and society), this review, as well as that of other authors
such as (Millar et al., 2019), agrees that the definition of Kirchherr
et al. (2017) is the most complete but is not yet adequately
implemented, and its effectiveness is very low as it is assured
(Stewart & Niero, 2018).
5.2 |Tendencies
Starting from a statistical analysis of the comparison of methodologies
between the thematic, where it is concluded that the analysis of the
number of articles made for each of the thematic trend because the
results are random, in Figure 4, it is shown that despite the statistical
results, it is possible to see, in a descriptive way, certain prevalence or
behavior of the topics.
In the first 20 years (1982–2002) with respect to the topics
worked on in the documents consulted by both methodologies based
on the development of CE as we know it today, the topics of indus-
trial ecology of the concept were started with Frosch and
Gallopoulos (1989) and from industrial ecosystems with Jelinski
FIGURE 3 Distribution of the different topics
of the documents [Colour figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA 7
et al. (1992) and Lifset and Graedel (2002); also in this decade, the
topics of sustainable development from measurement of ecoefficiency
(Welford, 1998) and finally with (McDonough & Braungart 2002) the
cradle to cradle model were initiated.
In the next stage between the years 2003 and 2014, again
(McDonough & Braungart, 2003), they deal with the topic of “From
cradle to cradle,”but this time focused from the design of the imple-
mentation strategies, and in the year 2007, they integrate the investi-
gator, L. Andrew Bollinger, in research on healthy emissions as a
strategy for product design and eco-efficient systems (Braungart
et al., 2007). In this period, topics of Clean production (Stevenson &
Evans, 2004), based on production efficiency, risk reductions, and pro-
ductivity improvements, were also discussed.
For the years 2006 and 2012, the topic of socioecological sys-
tems was addressed, where Folke (2006) makes an analysis of the
resilience perspective as an approach to understand the dynamics of
socioecological systems, and Crépin et al. (2012) relate the increase of
regime changes in socioecological systems. On the other hand, the
study of Hargroves and Smith (2006) focuses on cultivating the trans-
fer and application of biological knowledge to the company commu-
nity rial by means of biomimetism. In the same years (2006 and 2012),
the documents of European Parliament and Council (2008) and Sakai
et al. (2011) treat the topic of Waste Management, from management
policies, whereas Huppes and Ishikawa (2009) present the topic of
eco-efficiency of technology for sustainability, a topic that precisely
(Stahel, 2010) relates in his book. With Pauli (2010), the Blue Econ-
omy bets on innovation to lower production costs.
The last thematic that was addressed in this period of time
between 2003 and 2014 corresponds to green taxes (Oliva,
Rivadeneira, Serrano, & Martín, 2011), industrial symbiosis
(Chertow & Ehrenfeld, 2012), implementation of CE (The Ellen Mac-
Arthur Foundation, 2012), green economy (Herrán, 2012), and capital-
ism (Hawken et al., 2014) can be observed in Figure 4, unlike the first
decade (1982–2002), this period (2003–2014) is much more diverse
in themes, and only from cradle to cradle is the theme that is repeated
both periods.
As the third and last period between 2015 and 2019, we consul-
ted 60 articles with 21 different topics, of which the most common
(24%) is that of the CE concept with 14 documents with CE concept
with documents. Therefore, its detailed analysis is developed in the
numeral concepts and barriers of the CE.
Within the most common topics, there is also industrial ecology
which is an area of engineering that seeks, among other issues, to
build sustainable societies. Among the most common topics, there is
also Industrial Ecology which is an engineering area that seeks, among
other topics, tobuild sustainable societies. In this context, it considers
the industrial system as an ecosystem, and thus theaffected
(Tukker, 2015) and also (Lieder & Rashid, 2016), through the analysis
of a systemic perspective, as well as explored it (Hussain &
Jahanzaib, 2018) from the perspective of sustainable manufacturing.
For (Lonca, Muggéo, Imbeault-Tétreault, Bernard, &
Margni, 2018) industrial ecology, it is the contribution to CE and this
in turn to sustainability from a balanced relationship between the eco-
sphere and the technosphere, and as such, it is a current challenge for
industry as pointed out by Ingrassia, Lu, Ferrotti, and Canestrari (2019).
In the same vein, Fraccascia (2019) recognizes industrial symbiosis as
an effective practice to support CE and sustainable development, such
as those of food supply chains in emerging economies, especially in
the context of India (Sharma, Mangla, Patil, & Liu, 2019).
Like the Industrial Ecology theme for the period between 2015
and 2019, EC Implementation is also one of the topics most worked
on with a representation of 7 articles of which 2, developed this
theme through the creation of policies public framed towards the
implementation of CE on different fronts such as closing the circle in
the European Union (European Commission, 2015), and the norm for
organizations in the United Kingdom with principles for the applica-
tion of CE in organizations ( BSI, 2017), which precisely (Pauliuk,
2018) makes a critical evaluation aimed at monitoring the implemen-
tation of the CE strategy, which for the author, remains trivial. In the
case of Latin America, efforts have been made for the applicability
and implementation of CE from the different governments of the
region as mentioned in the First Forum of CE in Latin America (fEC,
FIGURE 4 Thematic comparison and year of production [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
8BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA
2017) and its consolidation of a Latin American version of a system, is
one of the most important challenges that the countries of the region
have in relation to inclusive recycling (Herrera, 2018) and to advances
in governments, companies and universities, with concrete and suc-
cessful examples (Weigend, 2017).
The issue of recycling is one of the most related to CE because as
issues related to the “circular economy”and “sustainable develop-
ment”have been promoted worldwide, recycling, reuse, recovery are
becoming popular as it ensures (Pan & Li, 2016), thus in Latin America,
a number growing number of countries are preparing recycling poli-
cies that could minimize the impact of packaging and explore schemes
of shared producer responsibility (Peinado, 2017), as well as has
become aware of the economic value of waste as is the case of the
recovery of metals from electronic waste (Is¸ıldar, Rene, van
Hullebusch, & Lens, 2018), specifically that of electronic boards by
means of dissolution treatments (Tatariants et al., 2018), and as well
as for the successful case of metal extraction in cell phone recycling
that contributes to the campaign “They're Calling on You”in favor of
gorilla conservation (Litchfield, Lowry, & Dorrian, 2018).
Another topic that marked some trend in this documentary
review in this last period of time is la bioengineering, which is related
to the applicability of engineering tools to technical solutions to dif-
ferent biological problem areas, such as nitrogen removal and recov-
ery integrated in wastewater treatment systems (Lin, Guo, Shah, &
Stuckey, 2016), the challenge of finding a substitute for chlorinated
products that meet all sustainability criteria in the extraction of bitu-
minous binder from mineral matter in asphalt mix in the road industry
(Ziyani, Boulangé, Nicolaï, & Mouillet, 2017), generation of high value-
added products from lignocellulose as a suitable alternative to petro-
leum resources in terms of environmental preservation, sustainability
(Piezer et al., 2019) and CE (Cubas-Cano, González-Fernández,
Ballesteros, & Tomás-Pejó, 2018), or how the bio-refinery can be used
to obtain high-value products from organic waste such as ground cof-
fee (Mata, Martins, & Caetano, 2018).
Of the rest of the articles (31), 12 articles deal with an individual
topic, three bioeconomics, and waste management, and with two arti-
cles, the topics of barriers to CE and effectiveness of CE, which were
also addressed in the numeral of concepts and barriers to a CE. The
12 articles of individual topics mark a trend towards the variability of
the concept as such of CE, and within the different topics addressed,
all in group are part of the CE, climate change (COP 21, 2015),
efficiency (Haas et al., 2016), resource management (Ministry of For-
eign Affairs of Japan, 2016), sustainability (CEPAL, 2016), cycle of life
(Rigamonti, Falbo, Zampori, & Sala, 2017), urban agriculture (Piezer
et al., 2019), from cradle to cradle (Diani, Pievatolo, Colledani, &
Lanzarone, 2019), ecodesign (Mendoza, Gallego-Schmid, Schmidt
Rivera, Rieradevall, & Azapagic, 2019), material management (Akanbi
et al., 2019), models of business (Pieroni, McAloone, & Pigosso, 2019),
circular integration (Walmsley et al., 2019), and energy policies
(Millward-Hopkins & Purnell, 2019).
Regarding the topic of bioeconomics (D'Amato et al., 2017), it
stands out that it shares the same common ideal of CE and green
economy to achieve the economic, environmental, and social objec-
tives; however, Näyhä (2019) emphasizes that the opinions on the
concepts of bioeconomics, CE, and sustainability vary according to
the parties involved, promoting new forms of organization of value
chains associated with biodiversity (CEPAL, 2018). It is important that
countries such as Chile through the law REP (Suazo Páez, 2017) and
Bolivia through the planning of sustainable waste management sys-
tems (Ferronato et al., 2019) in order to optimize management to
reduce or mitigate, as far as possible, the negative externalities gener-
ated by its current use within the linear economy model (Molina-
Sánchez, Leyva-Díaz, Cortés-García, & Molina-Moreno, 2018).
Finally, as an exercise to compare the most common topics with
respect to the individual or less than four articles which were grouped,
it could be observed that searching as such for the definition or con-
cept of CE, independently of the search methodology, conceptual var-
iability diverts the object of the search towards its conceptual
derivations framed in the functioning or applicability of its principles
and its own definitions mainly and not, as a complex or conceptual
whole Figure 5, which definitively suggests that a definition as such is
not completely determined, let alone standardized or homogenized.
6|CONCLUSIONS
Through the development of this SRL, it was possible to understand
that the CE is considered as a condition for sustainability from bal-
anced integration of economic performance, inclusion social and envi-
ronmental resilience, although in practice or implementation, the
concept blurs and confuses the recipient who does not find marked
differences in what CE means for sustainability.
FIGURE 5 Thematic trends [Colour
figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.
com]
BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA 9
The results of this SRL in comparative terms between documen-
tary production in Europe and Latin America indicate that Europe con-
tinues to be the leader potential, and despite the fact that a new
search method was included for this study (search complementary)
precisely because of the low production of the topic in Latin America
(10%) with respect to Europe (53%) according to the results of the
Scopus search method, the representativity of production Latin Amer-
ica (17.4%) by the complementary method remained low with respect
to Europe (52%). It is important to emphasize that within this compari-
son Europe and Latin America in terms of the most worked thematic,
Latin America was concentrated mainly in the implementation
whereas Europe, in the concept of CE.
Although documentary production on the subject is broad, it is
unclear implementation because each author defines its own concept
of EC according to its principles and its applicability in each of the case
studies of CE according to its principles and its applicability in each of
the cases studied and focus on very particular issues such as industrial
ecology or recycling or others that also have a part in what represents
the CE, but because of its great variability do not generate a clear trend
that can mark a guide to implementation, which shows that this issue
has not yet reached maturity, since the concept is still being redefined.
However, this review highlights the importance of achieving a
simplification of the concept so that its dissemination and understand-
ing are lowered to all social levels through education, and thus the
transition to CE is faster and more efficient because it would be soci-
ety itself that would pressure industries and governments to generate
new sustainable policies.
As for the conceptual differences of implementation between
Latin America and Europe, it was found that the main source for
Latin America and in Europe, and that, although Europe has been
in this transition much longer, Latin America shows great interest;
however, this region faces other obstacles that Europe has been
gradually overcoming, such as the cultural and political part. Addi-
tionally, in its eagerness to generate change, Latin America is
repeating Europe's mistakes in the implementation of CE which
have to do with the approach that in Latin America is being given
to CE by presenting it as an alternative to generating economic
value through recycling and waste management, conceptual errors
that Europe has identified and that is possibly the reason why they
are still redefining the concept.
From the analysis of the differential concepts of CE and taking
into account specifically the implementation in Latin America, it is per-
tinent for the authors to adjust the CE concept for Latin America, this
is because the cultural and economic differences between Europe and
Latin America are incomparable variables (barriers) under the pretense
of changing a linear to circular economic model. The CE for Latin
America, from the view that it is a necessity in a world overwhelmed
by difficulties (environmental, social, and economic), is the search for
social equality (opportunities and values), it is the need for radical
change in creation of wealth and the production, distribution, and
consumption of goods and services, and the recovery of culture in
order to impregnate CE from the foundations of society as a path to
sustainability.
ORCID
Claudia Marcela Betancourt Morales https://orcid.org/0000-0001-
7262-3088
Jhon Wilder Zartha Sossa https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7766-2780
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BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA 13
APPENDIX A
TABLE A1 Countries of origin of SCOPUS articles
Geographical region/country No documents/country
Europe 72
United Kingdom 15
Spain 12
Italy 7
Netherlands 7
France 6
Germany 4
Denmark 3
Finlandia 3
Czech Republic 2
Portugal 2
Sweden 2
Belarus 1
Belgium 1
Bulgaria 1
Estonia 1
Greece 1
Latvia 1
Lithuania 1
Poland 1
Romania 1
Asia 16
China 8
India 2
South Korea 2
Pakistan 1
Philippines 1
Kuwait 1
Singapore 1
Latin America 5
Mexico 2
Bolivia 1
Chile 1
Colombia 1
North America 4
The United States of America 3
Canada 1
Oceania 4
Australia 3
New Zealand 1
Africa 3
Egipt 1
Nigeria 1
South Africa 1
Total (38 countries/6 Regions) 104
14 BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA
TABLE B1 Year of publication and type of document
Year of publication/type
of document
Press
article
Indexed
document
Web
document Book
Technical
report Magazine
Indexed
magazine Total
1982 11
Systematic Literature
Review
11
1989 11
Industrial ecology 11
1991 11
Evidence-based medicine 11
1992 11
Industrial ecology 11
1997 1 1
Sustainable agriculture 1 1
1998 11
Sustainable development 11
2002 11 2
From cradle to cradle 11
Industrial ecology 1 1
2003 11
From cradle to cradle 11
2004 11
Cleaner production 11
2005 11
Systematic Literature
Review
11
2006 22
bio mimesis 11
Socio-ecological systems 11
2007 11 2
From cradle to cradle 11
Systematic Literature
Review
11
2008 1 1
Waste management 1 1
2009 11
Eco-efficiency 11
2010 22
Blue Economy 1 1
Sustainability 1 1
2011 1 2 3
Waste management 11
Green taxes 1 1
Systematic Literature
Review
11
2012 1 3 4
Circular Economy 11
(Continues)
APPENDIX B
BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA 15
TABLE B1 (Continued)
Year of publication/type
of document
Press
article
Indexed
document
Web
document Book
Technical
report Magazine
Indexed
magazine Total
Green economy 1 1
Industrial simbiosis 11
Socio-ecological systems 11
2014 11 2
Capitalism 1 1
Systematic literature review 11
2015 3 1 4
Climate Change 1 1
Circular Economy 2 1 3
2016 3 1 2 1 7
Circular Economy 2 1 1 1 5
Resource management 1 1
Cleaner production 11
2017 1 5 1 7 14
Circular Economy 4 1 6 11
Waste management 11
Recycling 1 1
Systematic Literature
Review
1 1
2018 1 1 2 4
Bioeconomics 1 1
Circular Economy 1 23
Overall total 1 1 16 6 1 31 1 57
Source: Own preparation
16 BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA
TABLE C1 Table of concepts and barriers
Author Concept base Barriers
Cerdá and Khalilova, (2016) -Preserve and increase natural capital by
controlling finite stocks and balancing
renewable resource flows.
-Optimize resource efficiency, always
circulating products, components, and
materials at their highest level of
usefulness, in the technical and biological
cycles.
-Promote the effectiveness of the system
by patenting and projecting to eliminate
negative externalities.
Jordi, M., Tollin, N., & Jiménez, L. (2017) The circular economy (CE) represents a
radical change in current production and
consumption systems. The change must
be towards systems that are regenerative
from their design to maintain the value of
resources (materials, water, soil, and
energy) and products and to limit,
exponentially, the inputs of raw materials
and energy. This will prevent the creation
of waste and the negative impacts
derived from it, mitigating negative
externalities for the environment, the
climate, and human health.
Legislation and regulations: vertical
integration and harmonization between
policies
Economy/Finance: Medium-term fiscal
reform, including measures to steer
society towards sustainability.
Education and training: profound change
not only in production systems but also in
consumption systems.
Technology: to encourage the development
of technologies that can favor the
reduction of raw materials and favor
reuse and recycling.
Business models: promotion and
development of existing economic
activities, as well as for the creation of
new ones.
Scheel and Aguiñaga (2017) The two contributions of the CE concept
are (a) CE highlights the importance of
high value and high-quality material
cycles in a new version and (b) shows the
possibilities of shared economy and
sustainable production for a more
sustainable production and consumption
culture.
Dinámica del lenguaje, la definición de los
límites del sistema de CE, los desafíos en
la gobernanza, la gestión. of energy and
material flows interorganizational and
intersectoral. All of the challenges
identified relate to understanding the
actual environmental impacts of CE
activities.
Guo et al. (2017) Inspired by the waste management and
recycling initiatives of the German and
Japanese authorities, the Chinese
government created its own pattern of
CE development. In China, the original
concept of CE has ranged from recycling
waste to controlling for broad efficiency
during closed-loop material flows in all
stages of production, distribution, and
consumption.
Policy, financial and technological support
to promote the recycling of recovered
wastewater, support the implementation
of an integrated approach to waste
management, as well as encourage the
participation of local residents.
Kirchherr et al. (2017) It is an economic system that replaces the
concept of “end of life”by the reduction,
reuse, recycling and recovery of materials
in the processes of production,
distribution, and consumption, with the
objective of achieving sustainable
development, simultaneously creating
environmental quality, economic
prosperity and social equity, for the
benefit of current and future generations.
CE means many different things as for some
authors who equate CE completely with
recycling, as well as limit CE to economic
growth above profit
social-environmental, and even exclude
the consumer perspective within the
value chain.
(Continues)
APPENDIX C
BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA 17
TABLE C1 (Continued)
Author Concept base Barriers
Geissdoerfer et al. (2017) The regenerative system in which the
resource centers, as well as the waste,
emissions, and energy leaks, are
minimized and slowed down (prolonged
use), close (reuse, recycling), and reduce
(reduction of resources, efficiency) the
cycles of energy and materials. This can
be achieved through design,
maintenance, repair, reuse,
remanufacturing, restoration, and
long-term recycling.
Confusion of the concept of CE with
sustainability, in the commitments,
objectives, and interests behind the use
of terms that differ greatly.
De Los Rios and Charnley (2017) CE as a path to product sustainability is a
benefit or to companies mainly in savings
from materials, decreased supply risks,
increased customer loyalty and the
development of new sources of income.
The CE has also drawn the attention of
governments, researchers and NGOs as a
plausible path to sustainable social
growth by “closing cycles”and renewing
both biological and technical materials.
Low training and education.
Stewart and Niero (2018) CE is seen as a condition for achieving
sustainability; a beneficial relationship
means that CE is seen as one way, among
others, to move towards sustainability;
and a committed relationship means that
CE is seen as leading to sustainability
commitments (both benefits and negative
outcomes).
Most companies do not present in their
sustainability reports, .performance
indicators (KPIs) associated with their CE
implementation and the information on
this is diffuse in individual approaches
such as recycling and energy efficiency.
Suárez-Eiroa et al. (2019) The CE is a regenerative
production-consumption system that
aims to maintain resource extraction
rates and generation rates of waste and
emissions with adequate values for
planetary limits, through the closure of
the system, reducing its size and
maintaining the value of the resource as
long as possible within the system, mainly
supported by design and education, and
with the capacity to be implemented at
any scale.
The need to establish a new consumer
culture that avoids property accumulation
and requires more sustainable products.
Millar et al. (2019) Although the definition used describes the
circular economy as “an economic
system,”as is the case with other authors,
we use the term “energy and material
flow model.”
The lack of coherence between the
different stakeholders (stakeholders) with
respect to the notion of CE and
sustainable development.
Velenturf and Jopson (2019) The CE provides a framework for
companies to engage with global
sustainability challenges through the
creation of shared value, and this relates
to the process in which micro-level values
for enterprises are combined with the
creation of macro-level values that
address key sustainability issues that
need to be better integrated with
business management.
Financial, such as the lack of business cases
that show potential income and focus on
short-term investment returns.
Markets, like customer demand, are limited
to market niches.
External structural barriers to business, such
as the renegotiation of supply chain
responsibilities, dependencies (increased
dependency makes change difficult),
integration of supply chain partners'
perspectives, and the ability to change
supplier practices.
18 BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA
TABLE C1 (Continued)
Author Concept base Barriers
Structurals within enterprises, how to
balance downward orientation and allow
bottom-up experimentation and integrate
different departments.
Attitude, such as understanding the circular
economy, risk aversion and preference
for incremental change, the lack of
strategic relevance of sustainable
development and the necessary radical
changes in business models, and the
ability to integrate perspectives on
sustainability and business development.
Technological, such as the quality of
recycled materials and the logistics of
product returns.
Skill shortages to manage the radical
innovations needed for the transition to a
circular and sustainable economy, for
which knowledge must often come from
outside the organization.
Collaborative, success stories include actors
from across society and the creation of
appropriate models of collaboration and
exchange.
Schilkowski et al. (2019) In a CE, the value of products and materials
is maintained for as long as possible. The
use of resources and waste is minimized,
and when a product reaches the end of
its useful life, it is used again to create
more value.
There are several challenges for the circular
economy, such as regulatory, financial,
information, and systemic barriers. There
is no sharing of information on entries
and exits from business systems to
standardize.
Walmsley et al. (2019) CE minimizes large-scale consumption of
virgin resources and primary energy by
maximizing the recycling and recovery of
materials and energy. Conceptually, it is
similar to ecology industrial but is
distinguished by its emphasis on the
creation of commercial enterprises to
drive greater circular flows of materials.
The CE points to a lack of agreement on its
definition, suggesting a lack of a firm
scientific basis. The concept of CE has
been difficult to implement in practice
due to the barriers derived from the
effectiveness of the underlying
technological solution.
Source: Own preparation
BETANCOURT MORALES AND ZARTHA SOSSA 19
