European Journal of Social Impact and Circular Economy

A Bibliometric Analysis of Circular Economy

Francis Mwaijande — 2024-04-23

This study aims to identify and map out circular economy in scientific literature in the global and Africa context. The circular economy has been adopted mostly in industrial production systems in the developed economies, its application in Africa is limited mostly to environment sector. A paucity of scholarly research and scientific publications on CE instigated the need to map out circular economy for sustainable development Africa. This article provides an overview of scientific publications on circular economy built in Africa through the Scopus database. The study used bibliometric analysis based on data obtained from Scopus database highlighting scientific literature. The analysis obtained 414 publications from 2005 to 2024. It provides descriptive and analytical graphs and bibliographic maps generated in R-Studio software. Findings shows main scientific and scholars are in European and Chinese universities with scanty publications in Africa. These findings signal the inadequacy of scientific research to inform policies on circular economy in Africa. It calls for future demand for more research and scientific publication on circular economy linked to sustainability in Africa.

Examining the dimensionality of Circular Economy metrics using Hierarchical Clustering on Principal Components

Collin Yobe — 2024-04-29

The Circular Economy (CE) indices have become a valuable tool for supporting the development of policies that provide information that reduces environmental pressures and impacts. However, highly dimensional data identifying many CE indicators is impractical in application. This paper aims to create a composite index of the CE indicators using the Hierarchical Clustering on Principal Components (HCPC) to extract the meaning of the CE indicators, as reducing dimensionality can improve understanding of indicators and metrics. The advantage of the HCPC methodology over principal components analysis (PCA) alone involves applying objective clustering techniques to the PCA results, which results in a better cluster solution. This study analysed a dataset of 61 indicators obtained from De Pascale, Arbolino, Szopik-Depczyńska, Limosani, and Ioppolo (2021). The composite indices revealed the dimensions of industrial symbiosis (IS), CE strategies, and spatial applications of the CE and IS concepts. The bottom-up and top-down approaches for CE and IS strategies have been the main implementation approaches in different governments and regions.