Circular economy barriers in Australia: How to translate theory into practice?

Australia has many unique features that make the approach to a transition to circular economy different to other countries. There is growing recognition that the current linear economy of 'take-make-waste' is unsustainable, and this has driven research and government policy into attempting to develop a circular economy in Australia. This systematic transformation will result in significant impact on government, business, and consumers, and therefore will be highly complex to achieve without understanding and overcoming the current barriers. The aim of this review is to identify the major barriers to circular economy adoption in Australia through a systematic review using literature that has been published in the last six years. This resulted in 74 studies being included for analysis across a variety of waste streams and Australian States. The authors identified that barriers to circular economy could be segregated into 21 different barriers, with the most frequently occurring ones including current standards and regulations, high cost of transport, lack of government incentive, missing or inaccurate data, and businesses not prioritising the changes needed for circular economy. These barriers were then assigned to a step in the lifecycle (or supply chain) of a material up until material exhaustion or disposal, as this aids in identifying research gaps, successful examples and barriers that are easier to overcome. Using these identified barriers to circular economy as a guideline, we have made recommendations for how Australia can progress to a circular economy.