Use of life cycle assessment in the context of circular economy: a literature review

Abstract

Circular Economy (CE) is currently a popular concept promoted by companies, countries and the European Union, and represents a rationality of greater resource efficiency, as opposed to the linear rationality of extract-produce-consume-discard. The literature reports several initiatives related to CE and the need to quantify the real benefit of these initiatives. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that allows quantifying the environmental impact of products and services and can contribute to proving the benefits of CE. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the use of LCA in the context of CE. For this, a literature review was performed in the SCOPUS and Web of Science databases, using the terms “life cycle” AND “circular economy”. All articles published up to 2017 were considered. There was a prevalence of studies carried out on the European continent, especially in Spain, and studies related to waste management. The exploratory research highlighted the importance of LCA for the promotion of CE, since it allows quantifying the environmental benefits of its strategies – in the scope of supply and production, sustainable consumption and waste management –, strengthening the propositions of CE. In addition, the CE used was observed as a basis for the definition of alternative scenarios that were analyzed with the LCA.