Circular Economy Research in the COVID-19 Era: a Review and the Road Ahead

Abstract

The onset of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in a major crisis that has severely impacted numerous economic, environmental, and social aspects of human life. During the pandemic, the potential of the circular economy (CE) has gained increasing attention as a prospective remedy for numerous sustainability problems. This systematic literature review charts CE research in the COVID-19 era. To this end, 160 journal articles were selected from the Scopus database. The performance indicators of the literature were determined and described through a bibliometric analysis. Moreover, the conceptual structure of CE research was identified via a keyword co-occurrence network. Based on bibliographic coupling, the focus of CE research in the COVID-19 era revolves mainly around five thematic areas, including: (1) waste management; (2) digitalization and sustainable supply chain management; (3) the impact of COVID-19 on food systems; (4) sustainable development goals, smart cities, and bioeconomy; and (5) closed-loop supply chains. Overall, this review contributes to enriching the literature by determining the main thematic areas and future research directions that can help to advance the transition to the CE and reduce the impact of COVID-19 and similar disasters in the future.

Keywords: COVID-19; Circular Economy; Digitalization; Industry 4.0; Sustainable supply chain management.

Fig. 1

The research protocol of the SLR.

Fig. 2

Annual evolution of circular economy research in the COVID-19 era

Fig. 3

Top 20 most frequent keywords in literature

Fig. 4

Keyword co-occurrence network

Fig. 5

Bibliographic coupling network

Fig. 6

Framework for the CE in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic