Circularity and bioeconomy: towards a circular bioeconomy

The objective of this paper is to review the literature on the current economic research on the bioeconomy and circular economy, and to derive lessons learned, gaps and implications for further research in view of the integration of the two concepts into that of circular bioeconomy. The sample of papers reviewed is composed of 83 articles extracted from the Scopus database and characterised by considering the two concepts jointly. The literature shows that the bioeconomy is not implicitly circular and that the circular economy does not substitute the concept of bioeconomy. On the hand, circularity has some commonalities with concepts at the core of the bioeconomy, such as the cascading approach, and is potentially complementary to emerging attributes advocated for the Bioeconomy, such as sustainability and resilience. This brings to the need of a better formalisation of the concept of circular bioeconomy especially in the field of economics. In addition, the results point out that intertwining factors affect the potential development of a circular bioeconomy, such as specific policies, education systems, social acceptance, market structure and resource availability. Lastly, a large part of the literature connected to circular bioeconomy tries to go beyond circularity as a mere technicism and rather highlights the need for a comprehensive societal and business transformation rather than a simple transition in this direction.