Resources, Conservation & Recycling 163 (2020) 105076

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Resources, Conservation & Recycling

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec

Full length article

Spaceship earth's odyssey to a circular economy - a century long perspective T

Willi Haas , Fridolin Krausmann, Dominik Wiedenhofer, Christian Lauk, Andreas Mayer
⁎

Institute for Social Ecology, Department for Economic and Social Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Schottenfeldgasse 29, 1070Vienna,
Austria

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The circular economy is a rapidly emerging concept promoted as transformative approach towards sustainable
Social metabolism resource use within Planetary Boundaries. It is gaining traction with policymakers, industry and academia
Material and energy flow analysis worldwide. It promises to slow, narrow and close socioeconomic material cycles by retaining value as long as
Sustainable resource use possible, thereby minimizing primary resource use, waste and emissions.
Recycling
Herein, we utilize a sociometabolic systems approach to investigate the global economy as embedded into a
Sustainable biomass
materially closed “spaceship earth” and to scrutinize the development of circularity during industrialization. We
quantify primary material and energy inputs into the economy, as well as all outputs to the environment from
1900-2015. The assessment includes two fundamental cycles: a socioeconomic cycle of secondary materials from
end-of-life waste and an ecological cycle in which resulting waste and emissions are assessed against re­
generative capacities of biogeochemical systems. In a first approximation, we consider only the carbon-neutral
fraction of biomass as renewable. We find that from 1900-2015, socioeconomic and ecological input cycling
rates decreased from 43% (41-51%) to 27% (25-30%), while non-circular inputs increased 16-fold and non-
circular outputs 10-fold. The contribution of ecological cycling to circularity declined from 91% to 76%.
We conclude that realizing the transformative potential of the circular economy necessitates addressing four
key challenges by research and policy: tackling the growth of material stocks, defining clear criteria for eco­
logical cycling and eliminating unsustainable biomass production, integrating the decarbonization of the energy
system with the circular economy and prioritizing absolute reductions of non-circular flows over maximizing (re)
cyclingrates.

1. Introduction Boulding's notion of environmental limits and an economy without

In the circular economy (CE) debate, the dominant linear take-
make-dispose mindset is seen as underlying cause of the perpetual
growth of the demand for primary material and energy resources and
the resulting waste and emissions and thus, for the unfolding global
environmental crisis (Blomsma & Brennan, 2017; Geng et al., 2019b;
Schandl et al., 2018; Webster, 2017). Already half a century ago,
Kenneth Boulding (1966) coined the iconic image of “spaceship earth”
as a metaphor for the material constraints humanity faces on earth. His
diagnosis was that industrial society acts like a “cowboy economy”,
where a herd can simply be moved to a new pasture once the grass is
grazed. Instead, he argued, humanity needs to acknowledge that the
earth is “a single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything,
either for extraction or for pollution” (Boulding, 1966, p. 7). In such a
“spaceman economy“, where sources and sinks are two sides of the
same coin, endless growth is not feasible and materials need to circulate
as long as possible within the socioeconomic system.
waste has prepared the ground not only for the circular economy, but
also for prominent concepts in modern sustainability science, such as
the Planetary Boundaries (Steffen et al., 2015a, 2015b; Steffen et al.,
2007, 2007)or a recent reformulation of the Gaia hypothesis (Lenton &
Latour, 2018) and underpins efforts towards a new sustainability eco­
nomics fit for the 21st century (Costanza et al., 2017; Jackson, 2017;
Raworth, 2018). Both the metaphor of the spaceman economy and the
more elaborate formulations of a safe operating space for humanity
within Planetary Boundaries suggest, that the ultimate aim of a sus­
tainable CE has to be absolute reduction of the total scale of both re­
source extraction and outputs of waste and emissions (Aguilar-
Hernandez et al., 2019; Geissdoerfer et al., 2017; Korhonen et al., 2018;
Steffen et al., 2015a; Temesgen et al., 2019).
While the CE is promoted as a promising strategy towards sustain­
able resource use and has gained traction within industry and policy,
assessments of the achievements of CE are often focused on specific
materials, substances or products and usually limited to applying

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: willi.haas@boku.ac.at (W. Haas).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105076
Received 28 February 2020; Received in revised form 27 July 2020; Accepted 28 July 2020
Available online 04 August 2020
0921-3449/ © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
W. Haas, et al.
relative indicators or rates (Elia et al., 2017; Parchomenko et al., 2019;
Pauliuk, 2018; Saidani et al., 2019). Clearly, these assessments provide
important contributions to the design and implementation of a growing
multitude of CE activities, from businesses to local and national gov­
ernments. However, the ultimate aim of the CE as a sustainability
strategy (Cullen, 2017; De Wit et al., 2020; Elia et al., 2017;
Geissdoerfer et al., 2017; Korhonen et al., 2018; Suárez-Eiroa et al.,
2019) might get out of sight: can it actually and decisively mitigate the
scale of environmental pressures and impacts by reducing primary re­
source use and resulting waste and emissions through slowing, nar­
rowing, and closing loops?
Herein, we investigate the circularity rate and scale of the global
biophysical economy over the last 115 years, employing a socio­
metabolic systems approach covering all socioeconomic material and
energy flows, all material stocks of buildings, infrastructure and ma­
chinery and the resulting waste and emissions (Haas et al., 2015;
Mayer et al., 2019). For this purpose, we further develop previous work
on the global socioeconomic metabolism (Krausmann 2018) and a fully
consistent inflow-driven dynamic modelling of socioeconomic material
stocks (Wiedenhofer 2019). We also conduct an uncertainty assessment
for the main indicators. Based on this comprehensive analysis, we
provide a critical assessment of the decreasing circularity of the global
socioeconomic system, discuss structural barriers hindering improved
loop closing and subsequent reductions of the total scale of resource
flows. We conclude with four fundamental and challenging leverage
points for research and policy towards realizing the claimed synergies
between the CE and sustainability within Planetary Boundaries.
2. The strive for a circular economy
The idea of a CE is not a new concept, and traces back into the 18th
century (Schivelbusch, 2015). The modern notion of the CE first ap­
peared in the 1970s and 1980s (Stahel, 2016) and reached new popu­
larity at the turn of the 21st century, when Germany, China, Japan and
later also the European Union began to make it the cornerstones of their
sustainable resource use policy (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017; Geng et al.,
2019a; Moraga et al., 2019). The proponents of a CE argue that closing
loops creates green jobs and stimulates economic growth, while miti­
gating pressures on the environment (Korhonen et al., 2018;
Webster, 2017). Recently, prominent CE scholars called for a global
strategy towards institutional support and better integration of CE
strategies as well as appropriate monitoring, ultimately leading to an
international agreement on sustainable resource management
(Geng et al., 2019a).
The high expectations about the potentials of the CE are also met
with concern, that the CE rather appears as a “perpetual motion ma­
chine” (Cullen, 2017) than a practically achievable reality. Critique,
firstly, relates to thermodynamic limits for loop-closing due to material
losses, dissipation and the potentially escalating energy requirements
for overcoming entropy and reversing the dilution of chemical elements
in products and the environment (Cullen, 2017; Geyer et al., 2016;
Korhonen et al., 2018; Reck & Graedel, 2012).Secondly, as a systematic
review on targets for a circular economy diagnosed, most existing tar­
gets relate to waste recovery and recycling. Thus, they may set mis­
guided incentives and do not necessarily promote a CE since recycling
activities destroy products’ integrity and do not help to retain value of
products at the highest level possible (Morseletto, 2020a). Thirdly, CE
concepts are criticized for their assumptions that all biomass materials
are renewable and that waste and emissions from their production and
use completely re-enter ecological cycles (McDonough &
Braungart, 2010; Morseletto, 2020b; Webster, 2017). Finally, closing
loops via re-use and recycling is often falsely assumed to automatically
reduce primary resource demand, neglecting prevalent downcycling,
co-use of primary and secondary materials and the ‘circular economy
rebound’ (Zink & Geyer, 2017).
To avoid dilution of the transformative vision of a sustainable CE
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling 163 (2020) 105076
within Planetary Boundaries (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017; Kirchherr et al.,
2017), the CE needs to prove its validity (Blomsma & Brennan, 2017;
Geng et al., 2019a). This requires comprehensive assessments at the
macro systems level, which comprehensively situates and quantifies
circularity across material and energy inputs into socioeconomic sys­
tems, as well as all resulting outputs of waste and emissions.
3. Material and methods
3.1. A material stock-flow model of the global economy
Our analysis is grounded in the concept of socioeconomic metabo­
lism, a systems approach to studying the biophysical basis of society
following thermodynamic principles (Haberl et al., 2019; Pauliuk &
Hertwich, 2015). An operationalization at the macro-level is economy-
wide material and energy flow accounting (MEFA), which provides
headline indicators for strictly mass balanced material inputs, con­
sumption and outputs, but treats the economy as a black box
(Krausmann, Schandl, et al., 2017; Schandl et al., 2018).
We use an advanced version of this framework developed for the
assessment of circularity at the national scale (Haas et al., 2015;
Mayer et al., 2019) and adapt it for the purpose of this global long term
study. We build on previous work integrating accounting and modelling
of global resource use, material stocks, waste and emissions
(Krausmann 2018, Wiedenhofer 2019). The conceptual stock-flow
model of the global economy shown in Fig. 1 consistently opens up the
black box and integrates the flow of secondary materials into the MEFA
framework. The framework we refer to does not consider unused ex­
traction. It traces used extracted materials including energy carriers
through the economy by assessing annual flows of primary and sec­
ondary materials through different socioeconomic uses to the output of
waste and emissions. The sum of all primary materials including energy
carriers extracted from the environment and all secondary materials is
defined as processed materials. Trade flows are not relevant at the
global scale. Processed materials split into different use paths. Energy
use of materials comprises technical (combustion) and endosomatic
(food and feed) energy use. Material use splits into dissipative use (e.g.,
fertilizers) and materials used to manufacture material stocks (stock-
building). Material stocks comprise all materials accumulated in
buildings, infrastructure and durable goods (e.g., machinery, electronic
devices, furniture, containers), where they remain in use for one or
several years, sometimes centuries. The outflows of solid and liquid
waste and of emissions and water vapour from material processing, the
different use types and discarded stocks are summarized as interim
outputs. These can either be re- or downcycled into secondary materials
or returned to the environment through different gateways. Landfilled
waste is regarded an output to the environment. Ecological cycling
refers to outputs from the use of renewable biomass which can re-enter
biogeochemical cycles and contribute to new plant growth.
3.2. Socioeconomic cycling
Socioeconomic cycling comprises all types of re- and downcycled
end-of-life waste which is fed back into production as secondary ma­
terial. Recycled waste from material processing and manufacturing
(e.g., recycled steel scrap from autobody manufacturing) is considered
an industry internal flow and not accounted for as secondary material.
In this model of the physical economy secondary materials originate
from discarded material stocks only. The outflows from the dissipative
use of materials and combusted materials (energy use) can, by defini­
tion, not be recycled. This assumption may lead to a minor under­
estimation of downcycled materials, when solid wastes from the com­
bustion of fossil materials are used in construction. Energy recovery
(electricity, district heat) from the incineration of fossil or biomass
waste is not considered as recycling since it does not generate sec­
ondary materials.
W. Haas, et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 163 (2020) 105076

Fig. 1. Comprehensive material flow analysis of the circularity of the global economy. Processed materials comprise extracted primary and recycled secondary
materials which are either used for energy provision or material applications. Energy use comprises technical energy, food and feed. Material use includes expansion
and maintenance of material stocks of manufactured capital, as well as dissipative uses. Interim outputs comprise all waste and emissions including water vapour.
They are either cycled within the socioeconomic system (secondary materials) or disposed to the environment where outputs of renewable biomass re-enter bio­
geochemical cycles and contribute to new plant growth (ecological cycling). Both socioeconomic and ecological cycling are measured at the input and output side.

3.3. Ecological cycling
Ecological cycling is commonly assumed, but hardly operationalized
in CE assessments (McDonough & Braungart, 2010; Morseletto, 2020b;
Webster, 2017). However, using biomass does not automatically imply
safe ecological loop closing, as negative environmental impacts from
land-use indicate (Foley et al., 2011; Tilman, 1999;UNEP, 2014). So far,
neither robust criteria nor comprehensive indicators are available
which enable identifying the fraction of biomass production which
qualifies for sustainable ecological cycling. As a first approximation for
renewable biomass we only consider carbon neutral biomass. We in­
terpret this as a minimum requirement, while more comprehensive
assessments should be developed, as we elaborate in the discussion
section.
To estimate the flow of primary biomass which cannot be regarded
carbon neutral, we deduct the biomass related net-emissions of carbon
from land use and land cover change (LULCC) from socioeconomic
biomass flows, consistently re-estimated as tons of carbon content. For
global net-emissions from LULCC we use time-series data compiled by
Houghton & Nassikas (2017), who estimate that the net-emission of
carbon from LULCC increased from 0.8 GtC/yr in 1900 to a peak of 1.9
GtC/yr in 1997 and then declined to 1.1 GtC/yr in 2015. This estimate
is conservative and the calculated net-emissions are substantially lower
than those reported by another study (Hansis et al., 2015).
To calculate the amount of circular and non-circular biomass, the
flow of primary biomass through the economy is converted into dry
matter using appropriate information on moisture content of different
biomass types and further into C assuming a carbon content of 50% in
dry matter biomass (Krausmann et al., 2008). The share of biomass that
does not qualify for ecological cycling in a specific year is then calcu­
lated as the ratio of net-emissions of C from LULCC to the C content of
primary biomass inputs and to the C content of the output of wastes and
emissions from biomass use, respectively, in that year. These shares are
than applied to split the biomass flow in fresh weight shown in Fig. 2
(see results section) into circular and non-circular biomass on the input
and output side.
3.4. Rate and scale indicators of circularity
Following Mayer and colleagues (2019) we propose a set of rate and
scale indicators to measure the circularity of the global economy at the
input and output side (Fig. 1 and Table 1).
While rates are very illustrative and can provide important or­
ientation, it is ultimately the overall scale of non-circular flows that
matters whether humanity remains within Planetary Boundaries. For
this reason, the scale indicators used measure the absolute mass flow of
non-circular materials.
Rate indicators at the input side measure the share of secondary and
ecologically cycled materials in processed materials (defined as primary
and secondary material inputs) and at the output side the share of so­
cioeconomically and ecologically cycled materials in interim outputs
(defined as all waste and emissions before recovery and recycling or

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W. Haas, et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 163 (2020) 105076

Table 1
Scale and rate indicators to measure the circularity of the global economy.
Type Name Definition

Input side Output side

Scale Non circular flows Non-circular inputs comprise fossil fuels for energy use, non- Non-circular outputs comprise all waste and emissions released
indicators [t/yr] renewable biomass and non-recycled metals, fossil and mineral to the environment (including those landfilled) except those
materials including those materials that remain in the from renewable biomass.
socioeconomic system as stocks.

Rate Socioeconomic Input socioeconomic cycling rate is defined as the share of Output socioeconomic cycling rate is defined as the share of
indicators [%] cycling secondary materials (re-and downcycled) in processed materials secondary materials (re-and downcycled materials) in interim
(input of all primary and secondary materials). output.
Ecological cycling Input ecological cycling rate is defined as the share of renewable Output ecological cycling rate is defined as the share of waste
primary biomass inputs (excluding socioeconomic cycling) in and emissions from renewable biomass outputs (excluding
processed materials. socioeconomic cycling) in interim output.

discharge to the environment) (Table 1).
The rate indicators measure the circularity performance from 0% in
a linear economy with neither socioeconomic nor ecological cycling to
100% in a (thermodynamically unfeasible) perfect circular economy,
where all processed materials are cycled without losses in loops
(Cullen, 2017). We distinguish the socioeconomic and the ecological
cycling rate; both rates are derived from the same underlying system
definition and relate the respective cycled flows to the same reference
flow (e.g. on the input side to processed materials). They are therefore
consistent, additive and applicable across scales. Socioeconomic cycling
refers to the flow of re- and downcycled end-of-life waste (secondary
materials). Solid and liquid waste from the food and feed pathway
which are subject to further use (e.g., composting, manure production,
gasification) are accounted for as ecological cycling (corrected by ap­
plying the minimum criteria of no net-emissions from LULCC). Ecolo­
gical cycling refers to the flow of renewable biomass, in our case carbon
neutral biomass, and the resulting outflows to the environment which
re-enter global biogeochemical cycles.
The circularity indicators we propose can be positioned in what
Moraga et al. (2019) denote as measurement scope one, which looks at
physical properties of technological cycles with a full or partial Life
Cycle Thinking approach. Referring to the systematic suggested in the
review by Moraga et al. (2019), our indicators measure recycling spe­
cifically (strategy 4) and other strategies non-specifically. The latter
concerns strategies that aim at an increase in service lifetimes (strate­
gies 1 to 3: preservation of function, of products and of product com­
ponents) or at the preservation of embodied energy through energy
recovery at incineration facilities (strategy 5). If these strategies are
effective, they reduce material inputs and processed materials and thus
improve circularity rates in our model. However, we are not able to
explicitly delineate the contribution of strategies to circularity.
3.5. Data and sources
As an empirical basis for our assessment presented herein, we ex­
pand upon an existing database of global material and energy flows and
stocks providing yearly data for the period 1900 to 2015 and distin­
guishing around 150 materials/material groups. The database was
compiled by integrating a dynamic, inflow-driven stock-flow model
(Krausmann et al., 2018; Krausmann, et al., 2017; Wiedenhofer et al.,
2019) which calculates stocks, end-of-life waste from discarded stock
and the flow of re-and downcycled secondary materials consistently
with the standardized MEFA framework (Fischer-Kowalski et al., 2011).
The sources and methods used to compile this database and the model
have been described in detail in previous publications
(Krausmann et al., 2018; Wiedenhofer et al., 2019). We use this data to
produce strictly mass balanced accounts for four main material types
(biomass, fossil materials, metals and minerals) and all stocks and flows
required to fill the Sankey diagrams in Fig. 2.Table S1 in the Supporting
Material provides detailed data in yearly resolution and Fig. S1 an
animated graph showing the evolution of the metabolism of the global
economy and its circularity from 1900 to 2015.
To reduce complexity and because the flow of metals is very small
compared to the other material types, we only show the aggregate of
metals and minerals in the Sankey diagrams. In mass balancing inputs
and outputs, we omit so called “balancing items” (Fischer-
Kowalski et al., 2011). These comprise the oxygen taken up during
combustion and respiration and contained e.g., in CO2 emissions and
water consumed by humans and livestock and contained in excrements.
Here we only show that part of waste and emissions that actually ori­
ginates from material inputs e.g., carbon and oxygen emissions con­
tained in the combusted fuels or the water content of excrements that
stems from the respective food and feed inputs (Krausmann et al.,
2018).
3.6. Uncertainties
To assess uncertainties of cyclical flows and the resulting circularity
rates from the underlying datasets, we quantify minimum and max­
imum likely bounds for key headline indicators. For socioeconomic
cycling, we build on uncertainty estimates derived via error propaga­
tion through 103 Monte-Carlo Simulations (Krausmann et al., 2018;
Krausmann, Wiedenhofer, et al., 2017; Wiedenhofer et al., 2019). We
use these estimates as minimum and maximum bounds from 1900 to
2015 (Fig. S1). For ecological cycling, biomass flows are assessed
against the latest estimates of the long term development of global
carbon fluxes from land use and land cover change (Houghton &
Nassikas, 2017). Likely ranges and uncertainties are a debated issue in
the literature and no probabilistic uncertainty estimates can be derived
(Houghton & Nassikas, 2017; Le Quéré et al., 2018). Therefore, we
utilize the results of an intercomparison study of five global carbon flux
estimates covering 1850 to 2000 (Houghton & Nassikas, 2017), to de­
rive respective minimum and maximum bounds for annual carbon
fluxes from land (Fig. S2). We extrapolate the range until 2015 by
keeping the deviation from the estimate that we use in this study
constant from 2000-2015 at 96% and 108%, respectively.
Note that the most recent and used data set for net-emissions of
carbon from LULCC covering the period 1900 to 2015 is especially in
the period 1950 to 1990 the one with the lowest net carbon fluxes
compared to the other four studies. When this data set is used to correct
biomass for its carbon neutral part, it presents for this period the upper
end of uncertain ecological cycling.
To obtain uncertainty ranges for absolute input and output cycling,
the respective minimum and maximum bounds for socioeconomic and
ecological cycling flows were added (Fig. S3). These were then also
used to calculate the minimum and maximum share of cyclical flows in
processed material and interim output to arrive at the lower and upper
bound of input and output cycling rates, respectively (Fig. S4 and S5).

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W. Haas, et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 163 (2020) 105076

Fig. 2. Global socioeconomic flows of fossil materials, biomass, metals and (non-metallic) minerals through the global economy between 1900 and 2015. The years
1945, 1973 and 2002 mark important turning points in the growth of global socioeconomic metabolism as identified in Krausmann et al. (2009, 2018). All flows are
shown true to scale in Gt/yr; stocks shown in the box in the centre as grey bar are in Gt and scale differently than flows. See Supporting Material for an animated
graph.

5
W. Haas, et al.
All data and figures are provided in the Supporting Material Fig S1-S5
and Table S1.
4. Results
The long-term transformation of the biophysical economy
During the last century the global biophysical economy changed
radically (Fig. 2), especially with respect to three key characteristics of
high significance for circularity. Firstly, the scale of all inputs and
outputs of the socioeconomic metabolism grew by one order of mag­
nitude. In 1900 processed materials were only 7.6 Gt/yr; until 2015 this
flow had surged to 95.0 Gt/yr. On the output side, interim outputs rose
from 7.1 to 63.8 Gt/yr. Secondly, the composition of flows changed: In
1900 biomass was the dominant resource, comprising 70% of all pro­
cessed materials. By 2015 its share was down to only 24%. The loss of
significance of biomass was, however, only a relative loss, owed to the
rapidly growing consumption of fossil materials, metals and minerals,
which outpaced the rise in biomass (Fig. 2). In absolute terms, biomass
extraction increased fourfold to 23 Gt/yr in 2015. Finally, the analysis
reveals that the global economy turned from a throughput to a stock-
piling economy: While in 1900 94% of processed materials ended up as
waste and emissions to the environment, in 2015 only 65% of processed
materials were returned to the environment in the same year. This is
due to an increasing amount of materials accumulating in material
stocks of infrastructure, buildings and durable goods. Consequently,
material stocks increased 27-fold to nearly 1000 Gt in 2015.
4.1. Development of the circularity of the global economy
Taken together, the changes in scale and composition of the socio­
economic metabolism have resulted in a decline of circularity of the
global economy (Fig. 3). From 1900 to 2015, input cycling dropped
from 43% (41-51%) to 27% (25-30%) (Fig. 3a), and output cycling from
46% (44-54%) to 40% (37-44%) (Fig. 3b). Based on our uncertainty
assessment (see method section and Fig. S1-S5), we find the overall
declining trends of circularity to be robust.
The input cycling rate is considerably lower than the output cycling
rate because a growing part of the yearly material input accumulated in
stocks (net-additions to stock in Fig. 3). A major factor for the observed
decline was the loss of relative weight of biomass in processed materials
which halved the ecological cycling rate from 40% to only 20% on the
input side (Fig. 3a). Gains in socioeconomic cycling could not com­
pensate for this decline. While the nearly 20-fold increase of secondary
materials from 0.3 Gt/yr in 1900 to 6.1 Gt/yr in 2015 is impressive
(Fig. 3c), the socioeconomic cycling rate remained at a modest level due
to the concurrent growth of the scale of processed materials and interim
outputs. On the input side socioeconomic cycling increased from 4% to
6% (Fig. 3a) and on the output side from 4% to 10% (Fig. 3b), in spite of
relatively high end-of-life recycling rates, for example, of 49% for me­
tals and 34% for minerals. While end-of-life recycling rates measure the
ratio between recycled quantities and end-of-life waste of that specific
material, e.g. recycled metals of 0.4 Gt/yr in relation to end-of-life
metal waste of 0.8 Gt/yr in 2015, the comprehensive socioeconomic
output cycling rate shown in Fig. 3b relates all recycling flows of 6.1
Gt/yr to the overall interim outputs of 63.7 Gt/yr, which also includes
waste and emissions from the energy use of fossil fuels, food and feed
and from dissipative use.
The scale indicators in Fig. 3c/d reveal the full outcome of a
growing socioeconomic metabolism combined with declining cycling
rates: annual inputs of non-circular primary materials increased 16-
fold, from 4.3 Gt/yr in 1900 to 69.6 Gt/yr in 2015. Non-circular outputs
increased 10-fold, from 3.8 Gt/yr to 38.6 Gt/yr. Overall, the results
show how the global economy gradually moves away from the vision of
a “spaceman economy”. Both inputs and outputs grow irrespective of
the limited source and sink capacities of the earth system, contributing
to the transgression of Planetary Boundaries (Akenji et al., 2016;
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling 163 (2020) 105076
Bringezu, 2015; Erb et al., 2016; Kerr, 2014; Steffen et al., 2015a;
Torres et al., 2017; Van Zanten et al., 2018).
4.2. The last century's odyssey of declining circularity
As visible from Fig. 3, the decreasing circularity of the global
economy was not a continuous process. Quite unexpectedly already in
1900, input and output cycling were well below 50%, in spite of con­
siderable efforts to maintain value and utility of products and primary
resources through extensive reuse, repair and recycling during early
industrialization (Reith, 2001). The low overall circularity then was
mainly due to an already substantial share of both non-renewable
biomass and fossil materials in processed materials (Fig. 3a).
Throughout the first half of the 20th century circularity remained re­
latively stable, fluctuating around 43%, while the physical economy
grew at a moderate pace. The end of World War II marks the first
turning point. Within only two decades both input and output cycling
fell by 30% and 14%, respectively, and non-circular flows increased
3.4-fold to 25 Gt/yr on the input and 2.4-fold to 14.4 Gt/yr on the
output side until 1973 (Fig. 3). This period has been described as take-
off of the Great Acceleration (Steffen, Broadgate, et al., 2015) and was
characterized by far reaching sociometabolic changes
(Schaffartzik et al., 2014). It was the combination of a fast rise in the
use of fossil fuels, the accumulation of large amounts of metals and
minerals in rapidly expanding stocks of infrastructures, buildings and
machinery and the relative decline in the significance of renewable
biomass in societies metabolism (Fig. 2) that led to the fast loss of
circularity. In this period of seemingly limitless economic growth and
the emergence of mass production and consumption issues of resource
limits vanished from the public and political agenda and frugality, re-
use, repair and recycling lost significance (McNeill & Engelke, 2014).
Input socioeconomic cycling fell from 3.3% to 1.8%, in spite of a
slightly growing flow of secondary materials (Fig. 3).
The early 1970s mark another turning point in the socio-metabolic
transition (Krausmann et al., 2009; Krausmann, Schandl, et al., 2017):
After the oil price shocks, growth in the scale of material inputs slowed
down markedly, roughly to the pace of population growth
(Krausmann et al., 2018; Wiedenhofer et al., 2013). Growing awareness
of resource limitations and emerging environmental problems in high-
income countries triggered a debate about energy efficiency, waste
reduction and environmental protection to counteract the ‘throwaway
society’ (Young, 1991). Recycling was promoted throughout Europe
and North America (McNeill & Engelke, 2014) and socioeconomic cy­
cling increased both in absolute and relative terms, while ecological
cycling remained roughly stable. Circularity slightly improved until the
mid-1980s when another downswing set in. As a result of a strong
growth in the flow of non-circular biomass related to deforestation in
the tropics, input and output cycling rates declined by 18% and 11%,
respectively, until the end of the 1990s (Fig. 3).
The so far last turning point coincided with the turn of the millen­
nium, when circularity rates stabilized while a new period of rapid
physical growth set in. The acceleration of growth in input and output
flows (Fig. 3c/d) has been attributed to growth in the emerging
economies, above all in China, where material stocks expanded rapidly
and a new middle class emerged, while in the high income countries the
scale of the socioeconomic metabolism stabilized (Dong et al., 2017;
Krausmann, Schandl, et al., 2017; Schaffartzik et al., 2014). From 2002
to 2015, processed materials and interim outputs as well as material
stocks grew substantially by annual growth rates of around 3.5%
(Figs. 2 and 3c/d). In spite of efforts to promote CE, in particular in
China (Geng et al., 2019a), input and output cycling rates did not im­
prove but remained roughly stable at about 27% and 40%, respectively,
while the size of non-circular flows surged: non-circular inputs rose
from 44.6 to 69.6 Gt/yr and non-circular outputs from 26.0 to 38.6 Gt/
yr (Fig. 3c/d).
W. Haas, et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 163 (2020) 105076

Fig. 3. Development of the circularity of the global economy from 1900 to 2015. a) input cycling rates as share of processed materials and the remaining shares of
non-circular inputs, b) output cycling rates as share of interim outputs and the remaining shares of non-circular outputs, c) and d) show absolute flows instead of
rates. We distinguish socioeconomic cycling (solid grey) and ecological cycling (solid green) and for non-circular flows (numbers in grey boxes) combusted fossil
energy carriers which cannot be recycled (orange with white dots), non-renewable biomass (green with white dots), all other not-recycled materials (light grey with
white dots) and at the input side also net-additions to stock (dark grey with white dots). The marked years indicate important turning points in the development of
global material flows (Krausmann et al., 2009, 2018). Uncertainty ranges for cyclical flows and cycling rates are shown in Figure S1-S5 in the Supporting Material.

5. Discussion or indicators for sustainable ecological cycling are available.

5.1. Ecological cycling, the blind spot of the circular economy
In the past 115 years, ecological cycling was key to material loop
closing, contributing between 91% (1900) and 76% (2015) of all cir­
cular flows. In most CE strategies biomass does not receive critical at­
tention, but is assumed to be renewable and therefore per definition
circular. When biomass is mentioned in CE strategies (e.g. EU CE plan
2015), this generally does not go beyond a problem statement.
Ecological cycling implies that outputs of biomass re-enter biogeo­
chemical cycles and contribute to new plant growth. In practice this is,
however, not always the case. The multiplication of global biomass
harvest from 5 to 23 Gt/yr in the last century came at considerable
ecological cost related to agricultural expansion into natural grass- and
woodlands and land-use intensification based on external inputs dis­
rupting biogeochemical cycles and driving biodiversity loss
(Foley et al., 2011; IPBES, 2019; Tilman, 1999). While it is evident that
not all biomass harvest qualifies as renewable, so far, no explicit criteria
Here, as a first approximation, we define as minimum criterion for
ecological cycling that biomass production is carbon neutral, i.e., that
no net-emissions from land use and land cover change (LULCC) occur.
This first step towards a more realistic consideration reduces input
ecological cycling from 70% to 40% in 1900 and from 24% to 20% in
2015. Output ecological cycling is reduced from 74% to 42% in 1900
and from 35% to 30% in 2015.
As next steps, additional barriers for sustainable ecological cycling
should be factored in. An example, for which also good data exists are
anthropogenic disruptions of biogeochemical cycles through the input
of atmospheric nitrogen and lithospheric phosphorous into agricultural
systems and the large losses that occur due to leaching, erosion and
emissions, in spite of improvements in the efficiency of fertilizer ap­
plication (Lassaletta et al., 2014; Reijnders, 2014). The yearly inputs
through industrial fertilizers (IFA, 2019) exceed the Planetary Bound­
aries for phosphorus and nitrogen proposed by Steffen and colleagues
(Steffen et al., 2015) already since the 1970s. Also non-renewable water
inputs and soil degradation should be taken into account in the

7
W. Haas, et al.
correction for non-circular biomass flows (Aeschbach-Hertig &
Gleeson, 2012; UNCCD, 2017) to provide guidance for realizing the
potentials of biomass in a sustainable circular economy making use of
bioeconomy strategies.
5.2. Structural barriers for improving socioeconomic cycling
Despite the observed 20-fold increase in the flow of secondary
materials and serious efforts to further recycling since the 1980s, the
socioeconomic cycling rate remains modest at currently 10% (7-12%)
output and only 6% (5-8%) input cycling. Our findings reveal that this
is only partly due to poor recycling performance, but structural barriers
in the dynamics, scale and composition of socioeconomic metabolism
can be identified that keep rates low.
First of all, closing material loops completely is not compatible with
physical growth, since the additional material demand can't be satisfied
from lower material outputs of previous years, unless this growth is
based on rising inputs of renewable biomass, which is, however, also a
limited resource. As discussed in the previous section, even the current
level of biomass production is not sustainable, so that increasing bio­
mass input while respecting ecological limits is not a viable option in
the near future. In the period from 1900 to 2015 the extraction of
primary minerals, metals and fossil materials has already increased by
factor 30. Until 2050, even when considering continuation of efficiency
gains, global resource use has been projected to double or even triple
(Krausmann 2018; Schandl 2016). When considering current growth
rates, resource use will double within only two decades. Under these
conditions even complete recycling at the output side could not satisfy
the demand for resource inputs and environmental pressures and im­
pacts can be expected to further increase, undermining prospects for
global sustainability.
The high share of fossil materials used for energy provision is an­
other barrier. In 2015 one out of six tons of extracted primary resources
were fossil fuels for energy use. Since these materials are combusted
and not recycled, their use systematically lowers the circularity of the
economy. Carbon capture and utilization is debated, but has high en­
ergy costs (Bringezu, 2014) and its potential to contribute to the large-
scale recycling of carbon from fossil fuel combustion is considered low
(Mac Dowell et al., 2017). Also, the sequestration of carbon from fossil
fuel combustion through e.g., forest re-growth (ecological cycling)
could help to mitigate this effect, but so far LULCC rather contributes
net-emissions of carbon at the global scale. The rising input of fossil
fuels has contributed to declining circularity in the past and prevents
further loop closing.
A key factor behind these metabolic patterns and the low circularity
of the global economy is the continuous expansion of stocks. A large
fraction of the rising input of materials and technical energy is required
to build up stocks; once in place, a persistent input of materials and
energy is needed for their maintenance and operation
(Krausmann, Wiedenhofer et al., 2017). Taken together, 86% of all
processed metals, minerals and fossil materials are currently used to
manufacture or operate stocks. Additionally, stock growth withdraws
materials from potential recycling. Of the 1484 Gt of metals and mi­
nerals which have been extracted between 1900 and 2015, around 942
Gt are still bound in material stocks, another 49 Gt are added each year.
These materials are not available in the near future for socioeconomic
cycling at the output side. The example of metals may illustrate this:
Compared to 1.4 Gt of primary metals which were processed in 2015,
only 0.8 Gt accrued as end-of-life waste, of which 49% were recycled.
These secondary metals contributed no more than 22% to all metal
inputs. Even if a thermodynamically impossible 100% end-of-life re­
cycling rate is assumed, this would only substitute 57% of primary
metal inputs under current rates of stock growth. Overall, growing
stocks, therefore, appear as a fundamental structural barrier for
achieving a CE (Krausmann, Wiedenhofer, et al., 2017; Lanau et al.,
2019).
8
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 163 (2020) 105076
6. Conclusions: Sociometabolic leverage points for a sustainable
CE
When taking the transformative sustainability claims of the CE
seriously, it promises to perpetuate value and to increase service pro­
vision from resource use, while also reducing primary resource ex­
traction as well as waste and emissions as required for humanity to
remain within Planetary Boundaries. Our findings indicate that in order
to realize these promises it is necessary to go beyond advancing proper
reuse and recycling and apply strategies to overcome fundamental
structural barriers for improving the CE. From the sociometabolic
perspective, we have identified four important leverage points:
First, research and policy on the CE need to adopt a system-wide
perspective including the relation of material stocks and flows
(Fellner et al., 2017; OECD, 2015; Pauliuk, 2018; Stahel, 2016): stocks
play a key role in determining size, composition and cycling potential of
past, present and future material flows. Due to their longevity, stocks of
buildings, infrastructure and machinery have a long-lasting impact on
the option spaces for change. To achieve progress towards sustainable
circularity, it is necessary to decisively slow down the growth of global
material stocks. It requires the consistent use of the full range of cir­
cularity strategies while bearing in mind priorities according to their
levels of circularity. Following the assessment of Potting et al., 2017,
smarter product use and manufacture (e.g. refuse, rethink, reduce) and
the extension of the lifespan of products and parts should be given
priority over actual recycling. Finally, it calls for reducing the material
and energy demand for the operation of material stocks by improving
the efficiency with which they transform resource flows into services
(Hertwich et al., 2019).
Second, ecological cycling, which often appears as a corner stone of
the CE and bioeconomy strategies, requires more and critical attention
(D'Amato et al., 2017; Hausknost et al., 2017; Keegan et al., 2013):
biomass and ultimately land is already in high and competing demand,
from providing food and feed for a growing population with changing
diets, for biofuels, as a substitute for non-renewable materials in energy
and material applications (bioeconomy) (Erb et al., 2016; Kalt et al.,
2020) and for biodiversity conservation (Smith et al., 2010). Clearly,
renewable biomass is a limited resource and further unsustainable
disruptions of biogeochemical cycles have to be mitigated, as well as
biodiversity conservation needs to be respected (IPBES, 2019). A sus­
tainable scale of biomass production has to become a precondition in
CE strategies and corresponding targets and monitoring instruments
need to be developed.
Third, the CE needs to contribute to absolute emissions reductions
required to avoid catastrophic climate change, mainly by more sys­
tematically considering energy use (Cullen, 2017; R. B. Jackson et al.,
2018). This starts from a clear focus on reducing fossil fuel consumption
which currently makes up 16% of global extraction of resources to­
wards a far-reaching decarbonisation of the energy system, because
loop closing for fossil fuels is hardly possible apart from unproven large-
scale technologies for negative emission technologies (Anderson &
Peters, 2016; Minx et al., 2017). A systematic energy perspective will
also help to avoid unintended side-effects of CE strategies. This ranges
from critically assessing trade-offs between prolonging lifetimes of
material stocks versus improving their energy efficiency (Allwood et al.,
2012), to only maximizing recovery and recycling potentially resulting
in escalating energy requirements for collection, separation and pro­
cessing or an unsustainable increase in biomass production to substitute
fossil fuels. One example for such counterproductive energy effects of
recycling is cement, where recycled products can require as much en­
ergy as new cement, but are of lower quality (Allwood, 2014). Another
example is the recycling of metals, where, in addition to problems of
contamination such as copper in the case of steel (Cooper et al., 2020),
thermodynamics are a limitation for some metals. Thus, the recovery of
pure nickel and tin for reprocessing, which usually occur as alloys in
end-of-life waste, is either very energy-intensive or essentially
W. Haas, et al.
impossible (Reck & Graedel, 2012).
Finally, we caution that overly focusing on value creation, improved
design, prolonging lifetimes and increasing recovery rates could ob­
scure that the CE ultimately is only a means to an end: the transition
from a linear cowboy towards a sustainable spaceman economy. This
goal requires a substantial reduction of the scale of non-circular flows at
the global level (Akenji et al., 2016; Bringezu, 2015). It must be sup­
ported by clear targets for limiting all non-circular flows of extraction,
emissions and waste and requires integrating and monitoring the CE
across scales from the company to the urban and regional and to the
national level, including global trade with waste and secondary mate­
rials (Bringezu, 2015; Helander et al., 2019; Potting et al., 2017; van
den Bergh, 2020).
We conclude that the CE indeed has large potentials to contribute
towards a more sustainable social metabolism and achieving the Paris
climate accord and many of the sustainable development goals
(Schroeder et al., 2018), but that the odyssey towards a sustainable
economy on spaceship earth has just begun.
Author contributions
W.H. and F.K. designed the research; A.M., D.W., W.H. and F.K.
contributed to the development of the assessment framework and cir­
cularity indicators; C.L., D.W., W.H. and F.K. contributed to data
compilation and analysis; all authors contributed writing the text.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Acknowledgements
We thank Doris Virag for assistance with data organisation and
preparation of the Sankey diagrams and Barbara Plank for literature
research. The research was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF),
Project P27590 (MISO) and by the European Research Council ERC
(MAT_STOCKS, grant 741950).
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105076.
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