Circular economy and environmental protection

Abstract

The circular economy represents a form of corporate production with respect to environmental resources. In the past, these production systems were widespread on the basis of the non-removability of the production factors. The advent of economic growth, in capitalist economies, has led to the deconstruction of production cycles resulting to a food product being produced in one part of the world, whilst the raw materials and processing phases are carried out in several parts of the world, due to the low production costs there. While these economic systems, on the one hand, have led to a growth in the global economic system, on the other hand they have determined the impoverishment of the territory as many companies, at least the uncompetitive ones, have disappeared. In this work, starting from examining the circular economy models, we analyze a development and growth scenario from a circular business perspective. The work highlights that the adoption of circular economy models has higher costs for the companies that implement them and therefore, to become long-term production systems, they need either cooperation among several companies to reduce the average total cost or a potential public contribution in their starting phase. The results of this study highlight that the adoption of circular economy models results in advantages at the microeconomic level. In the event that the cost of the investment cannot determine an advantage at a microeconomic level, one could think of solutions envisaging several companies that adopt a common logic of making the investment in a circular economy. The positive effects occur at the company, family and local levels.