Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Resources, Conservation & Recycling journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec Assessment of circular economy for global sustainability using an integrated model Neeraj C. Hanumante a,b,c , Yogendra Shastri b, ⁎ , Andrew Hoadley c a IITB-Monash Research Academy, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India b Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Mumbai, India c Monash University, Melbourne, Australia ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Circular economy Integrated model Unsustainable resource consumption Agriculture Policy ABSTRACT The circular economy is increasingly gaining importance as one of the ways of transitioning towards a sus- tainable future. Assessment of the systemic effects of the circular economy on a global scale from a holistic perspective is the need of the hour. This work addresses this challenge and models the circular economy in a planetary model with integrated human, ecological and industrial components. The circular economy is modelled as an industry which processes the used industrial goods. These are used along with the goods produced using virgin raw materials. Different time delays and circulation rates para- meterize 90 different routes of implementation of the circular economy. These are implemented for nine levels of resource consumption increase by humans complemented by population growth. System collapse due to the scarcity of ecosystem-based resources occurs sooner as the consumption level increases. Model simulation results indicate substantial benefits of adopting the circular economy. Incorporation of circular economy delays the system collapse by at least a few decades and aggressive implementation of the circular economy, in several cases, avoided this collapse entirely. Based on these results, the time horizon of the next 70–90 years is identified as critical, before which a large scale implementation of the circular economy is essential. However, very aggressive implementation of circular economy leads to system collapse because of the depletion of common access ecosystem services caused by continued high consumption. Thus, this work es- tablishes benefits of the circular economy and recommends a balanced approach for the adoption of the circular economy. 1. Introduction A critical global challenge is to achieve both global prosperity and sustainable development. Current development patterns have resulted in unsustainable consumption of resources causing environmental and social problems. Examples include fossil fuel use leading to climate change, intensive agriculture causing soil erosion (Pimentel, 2006), and over-fishing leading to collapse of the world marine fish stock (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2016). Moderating anthropocentric re- source consumption is addressed by Agenda 2030 United Nations (United Nations General Assembly, 2015) and states “Ensure sustain- able consumption and production patterns” as one of the sustainable development goals (SDG). Among various targets specified, SDG 12.5 brings forward the importance of also reducing waste generation. This may be achieved through the prevention of production, reduction of raw materials used for production, and reuse and recycling of produced and used goods. These routes of reduction of waste generation are a part of the circular economy. The circular economy has been im- plemented in industries such as steel (Ma et al., 2014), paper (Ma et al., 2015), polymers (Hong and Chen, 2017) and products such as mobile phones (Reuter et al., 2018). In these implementations, the circular economy has been observed to have a positive impact on the economic aspects of that particular industry. Detailed studies have been con- ducted, and specific policy guidelines toolkits have been created as described in works of Ellen MacArther Foundation (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015a,b,c). Recently, the circular economy has become a centrepiece of policymaking for China (Wu et al., 2014) and the Eur- opean Union (Europeon Union Commission, 2014; Gregson et al., 2015). There have been some efforts to consolidate the research on the circular economy (Kalmykova et al., 2017; Prieto-Sandoval et al., 2018; Merli et al., 2017; Fellner et al., 2017; Murray et al., 2017) and create a common ground for researchers to work on. Still circular economy https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2019.104460 Received 16 November 2018; Received in revised form 3 August 2019; Accepted 22 August 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: yshastri@iitb.ac.in (Y. Shastri). Resources, Conservation & Recycling 151 (2019) 104460 Available online 11 September 2019 0921-3449/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T