Is life cycle assessment enough to address unintended side effects from Circular Economy initiatives?

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,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of industrial ecology 2021-10, Vol.25 (5), p.1111-1120
Main Authors: Niero, Monia, Jensen, Charlotte L., Fratini, Chiara Farné, Dorland, Jens, Jørgensen, Michael S., Georg, Susse
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actor-network theory
Circular Economy
Consumption
Consumption patterns
Decision making
industrial ecology
Life cycle analysis
Life cycle assessment
life cycle assessment (LCA)
Life cycles
Practice Theory
Process engineering
rebound effect
Side effects
Social environment
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1088-1980
1530-9290
DOI:10.1111/jiec.13134