Insights into circular economy indicators: Emphasizing dimensions of sustainability

Economic circularity involves different dimensions and may be assessed through several indicators. These indicators are, however, scarcer when the intention is to analyse the interrelationships between the circular economy and sustainability. This framework shows that there is potential here to be explored in the indicators of the circular economy, namely to highlight their interlinkages with dimensions of sustainability. From this perspective, the main objectives of this study are to bring about new insights into the contexts of economic circularity indicators and how they are associated with sustainable development. To achieve these objectives, a systematic review of the literature based on meta-data assessment and bibliometric analysis was considered, for the topics addressed here. For the bibliometric analysis, bibliographic and text data from the Web of Science and Scopus were taken into account. In the bibliometric analysis, network metrics were explored, specifically those related to centrality approaches. The results obtained reveal, for example, that it is important to find more and newer sustainability indicators concerning the circular economy, because those which have already been identified and highlighted by scientific literature fail to address any relevant dimensions. In fact, the main limitations come from the difficulties in considering all the dimensions which may affect the main focus of the analysis. In turn, the literature survey highlights that there are not so many studies which carry out systematic reviews and bibliometric analysis covering the topics related to indicators in the circular economy. These findings show the novelty of this research and that there are fields here which should be addressed by the scientific research.