Circularity and sustainability: how close are they?

Here I would like to discuss the relationship between circularity and sustainability following my last post where I argued that maybe circularity was a new way of calling sustainability. Although I was exploring that option, after a year and a half of being completely immersed in an academic environment studying both, the conclusion is that this is not correct as circularity is a condition necessary for sustainability but not sufficient.

One of the shortcomings when dealing with sustainability has been the lack of an overarching definition and personally this has been always a big question mark for me: what means to be sustainable and I thought the circular approach was the answer. Fortunately, last year (quite late I might say) I was presented with the principles developed by Holmberg, Robèrt and Eriksson in 1996 called "Socio-ecological principles for a sustainable society" and more recently I was able to actually discuss this with professor Holmberg. 

After reflecting on this proposal and understanding its origins, I can say that in my opinion this framework provides the answer to this question. If a solution complies with these 4 principles, it can be consider sustainable. These principles serve as the ultimate filter to assess a decision after it has proven to be beneficial from more intermediate perspectives. And this is because they comply with key conditions that make them principles: they are simple, they are based, most of them, on natural laws and the ones that are not, are general enough to open room to diversity.

Now, how does circularity relate to these principles? Western pioneers of Circular Economy recognise how the Natural Step principles are at the core of their proposal along with other inputs. Circular solutions clearly comply with at least the three first principles given its own set of goals. So the question here is how can circular solutions efficiently and fairly fulfill fundamental needs of humans. Moreover, how can fairness be embedded in circularity definition?

If you have ideas about how to assess this please share them with us!

Cheers,

Juana