Circular Economy, Resource Efficiency, Life Cycle Innovation: Same objectives, same impacts?

As part of our objective to broaden the understanding and application of life cycle thinking, the Forum for Sustainability through Life Cycle Innovation e.V. is pleased to invite you to our first industry-focussed workshop on the relationship of Circular Economy and Life Cycle Innovation.Life Cycle Innovation is understood as a key requirement on the journey towards a sustainable, resource-efficient and resilient society. It aims at enhancing the environmental sustainability performance of goods and services over their entire life cycle, while meeting socio-economic needs, using life cycle approaches in line with established key principles.Workshop Objective:The workshop is specifically meant to discuss, which opportunities and challenges derive from a Resource Efficiency and Life Cycle Innovation perspective out of the Circular Economy policies currently promoted in Europe and beyond. It also also meant to determine how those polices might need to be amended to overcome implementation barriers for life cycle innovation and allow for an enhanced overall resource efficiency and sustainability performance.Why?Given the globally rising attention towards climate change mitigation and adaption as well as other sustainability challenges, a number of decision makers in the public and private sector have promoted Resource Efficiency as the key concept to address these challenges over the past few years. UNEP defines resource efficiency from a life cycle and value chain perspective. This means reducing the total environmental impact of the production and consumption of goods and services, from raw material extraction to final use and disposal.However, more recently the Circular Economy concept has gained wide traction among those decision-makers as well as the general public. Driven mainly by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and supported by various governments, the Circular Economy concept is built around the core idea to close all materials loops.While closing loops might be desirable in many contexts, unlike life cycle based Resource Efficiency policies, the Circular Economy concept mostly disregards questions around resource efficiency and effectiveness, and thus overall sustainability performance.The workshop will help company stakeholders better understand and engage on the common but also different scopes, objectives and impacts of these concepts and related policies. It will focus on actual implications of applying one versus the other at company level and provide a platform to discuss a way to overcome implementation barriers for life cycle innovation. This discussion may include the articulation of a view on the Circular Economy concept from a life cycle perspective to allow for an enhanced overall resource efficiency and sustainability performance.Who?The workshop is tailored towards companies and organisations, who are interested in the Circular Economy and are actively promoting Resource Efficiency and using and Life Cycle Innovation and related approaches in their business.(*  Speaker to be confirmed)