Abstract
Circular economy has always been about maintaining the value of stocks, be it natural, human, cultural, financial or manufactured capital, with a long-term perspective. A circular economy has evolved through three distinct phases, which today co-exist in parallel: a bioeconomy of natural materials ruled by Nature’s circularity, an anthropogenic phase (Anthropocene: to define a new geological epoch, a signal must be found that occurs globally and will be incorporated into deposits in the future geological record. The 35 scientists on the Working Group on the Anthropocene (WGA) decided at the beginning of 2020 that the Anthropocene started with the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The radioactive elements from nuclear bomb tests, which were blown into the stratosphere before settling down to Earth, provided this ‘golden spike’ signal. characterised by synthetic (man-made) materials and objects and a phase of ‘invisible’ resources and immaterial constraints. This chapter will focus on how the anthropogenic phase and the ‘invisible’ resources and immaterial constraints can integrate into a mature circular industrial economy.
