Chapter 2: Sustainability and the Circular Economy as Part of a Global Environmental Strategy

A significant amount of recent debate has suggested that circular economy (CE) can be given certainty through a mix of laws, policies, risk reduction (tax levies), and strict governance. As citizens, organisations, and governments across the globe increase their interest in environmentally and socially sustainable means of production and consumption, the idea of CE has been at the forefront of recent discussions held at organisational, national, and global levels (Hazen et al., 2020; Hussain & Malik, 2020). A significant amount of debate has focussed on the need to ensure improved sustainability in supply chain management endeavours with operational excellence in CE (Sehnem et al., 2019). They stress that CE is not only concerned with a reduction in the global environment being used as a receptacle for waste but also with the creation of self-sustaining production systems with reusable materials as the norm. A useful addition to this debate is that several of these articles highlight the need to focus on the long-term requirements of environmental sustainability (Genovese et al., 2017). It is interesting to note that there still tends to be a focus on production rather than consumption (Georgantzis Garcia et al., 2021). We will return to this discourse later in the book. A very positive stream of work concentrates on the need to view CE as a way of reducing pressure on the environment.