Circular Economy across Australia: Taking Stock of Progress and Lessons

Australia has intensified its circular economy (CE) efforts that demonstrate designing out waste while creating wealth. It has developed eco-industrial parks in metallurgy/metal industries, eco-cities and small-scale waste-to-wealth creation strategies. Mining has taken the lead in CE development with the eco-industrial areas at Kwinana, Western Australia, and Gladstone, Queensland. Easing up the waste burden, eco-efficiency and value addition are the direct benefits of circularizing the economy. Shortsightedness in looking up for opportunities across the supply chain, technological constraints, lack of policy coordination for business innovation, economic recession induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and lack of incentives to change behavior from linear to circular economy are among the barriers pointed out. A systematic review of published literature in Australian context was conducted to assess the state-of-the art circular economy development. We have found that Australia has to look into overcoming the barriers by putting in place policies and guidelines to nurture the current synergies, business relationships and trust among the firms in partnership, and more R & D to meet the demand for complementing technologies and to have cohesion over the current CE strategies, among others.