The current growing interest in the circular economy (CE) offers extensive opportunities to promote the adoption of more sustainable consumption and production practices across industries, which is a top priority in achieving the United Nations\u2019 Sustainable Development Goals. The construction sector\u2019s shift towards circular models is key to reducing carbon emissions and resource depletion but brings along considerable complexities and challenges, given the industry`s fragmented and conservative nature. Research on CE in construction has been growing exponentially over the past few years, producing a substantial amount of new knowledge in a short time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This study conducted a systematic review to map and synthesise the reported knowledge gaps in the literature. The analysis included forty-one (41) articles published between 2017 and 2022. One hundred fifty-five (155) knowledge gaps were identified and categorised according to seven (7) CE research dimensions\u2014economic, environmental, governmental, methodological, societal, sectoral, and technological\u2014and twenty-six (26) thematic sub-clusters. Findings critically analyse knowledge gaps\u2019 frequency of occurrence over time and across dimensions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A new framework for CE implementation is proposed to support critical discussion and identification of future research trajectories towards a systemic transition to a circular economy in the construction sector. The framework identifies three innovation domains: circular product, circular process, and circular platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the past decade, the circular economy (CE) has been promoted across sectors to accelerate the shift towards more sustainable practices worldwide and tackle pressing problems such as climate change, resource depletion, waste and pollution. The CE paradigm proposes to shift from the current \u201ctake-make-waste\u201d production and consumption linear patterns to circular ones, where materials and energy are kept in use to minimise waste and create new business value, decoupling economic growth from resource consumption (Perey et al., 2018<\/a>). This concept has its roots in theories dating back to the 1970 s (Shooshtarian et al., 2021<\/a>), but only more recently has gained wider attention via the Ellen MacArthur Foundation which describes CE as \u201can industrial economy that is restorative or regenerative by design\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As largely documented in the literature, the construction industry is responsible for more than one-third of global energy consumption, carbon emissions, resource use, and solid waste production (Shooshtarian et al., 2021<\/a>; United Nations Environment Programme, 2022<\/a>, Environment, 2014). Given the industry\u2019s significant ecological footprint and environmental impacts, the transition to more sustainable practices becomes a top priority in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Predominantly CE may support SDG 12\u2014sustainable production and consumption, but also SDG 6, SDG 7, SDG 8, SDG 11, and SDG 13, on clean water, affordable and clean energy, economic growth, sustainable cities and climate change respectively (Schroeder et al., 2019<\/a>; Sch\u00f6ggl et al., 2020<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n This has resonated well with the scientific community, leading to the exponential growth of research in CE for the construction sector. A substantial amount of new knowledge has been produced in a relatively short time, which has sometimes resulted in ambiguity, different interpretations or narratives, divergent perspectives, and a lack of common understanding or shared research pathways (Homrich et al., 2018<\/a>; Merli et al., 2018<\/a>; Sch\u00f6ggl et al., 2020<\/a>). Over the past few years, many literature review articles were published in an attempt to consolidate and systematise knowledge, but a substantial need for more definite and shared conceptualisation remains (Reike et al., 2018<\/a>). Most reviews had focussed on specific sub-fields or narrow research questions. For example, a literature review might examine the barriers to circular business models in a particular industry or investigate the environmental impacts of a specific circular practice. These reviews provide valuable insights within their specific domains, but they often overlook the broader landscape of knowledge gaps in the field. To date, there are no studies that attempts at holistically mapping knowledge gaps in circular economy in construction by systematically examining broadly the existing literature from diverse sub-disciplines and identifying areas where research is limited or lacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Drawing upon these premises, this study conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify and synthesise the reported knowledge gaps from previous studies, gain a more comprehensive and organise perspective on collective knowledge, discuss future research trajectories and propose a framework for implementation to accelerate the adoption of CE practices in construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You may read the full article under https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fbuil.2023.1239757<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The current growing interest in the circular economy (CE) offers extensive opportunities to promote the adoption of more sustainable consumption and production practices across industries, which is a top priority in achieving the United Nations\u2019 Sustainable Development Goals. The construction sector\u2019s shift towards circular models is key to reducing carbon emissions and resource depletion but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"A new framework for CE implementation is proposed to support critical discussion and identification of future research trajectories towards a systemic transition to a circular economy in the construction sector","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[12447,10416,13087,11749],"supplier":[19476,3703],"class_list":["post-130333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-buildingmaterials","tag-circulareconomy","tag-climate","tag-construction","supplier-united-nations-un","supplier-university-of-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130333"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=130333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}