Circular Economy: A Perspective of Builders, Architects, and Consumers in the Panama Construction Sector

Humanity and planet Earth have no long-term future unless there is a commitment to respect and to live within its ecological boundaries, which demands a transition from the prevailing economic system, the linear economic system, to another that is circular. The construction sector is one that requires high resources in terms of energy, water, and raw materials, generating waste and harmful atmospheric emissions. This chapter aims to analyse consumers, architects, and construction companies' awareness, challenges, and enablers in the implementation of circular economy (CE). Secondary data as well as primary data in the form of interviews and questionnaires were applied in a building construction sector in Panama. Six hundred and fifty valid questionnaires were collected. The results show that respondents are aware of the circular economy concept, but not of all circular economy principles. Few would be willing to pay for its implementation. Several challenges were also highlighted, bringing to light the importance of policymakers' roles for CE implementation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Circular Economy and Sustainability: Concepts, Perspectives, and (Dis)Agreements

In the last decades, the concern over natural resources, sustainability, and the current linear economic model based on continuous growth is one of the great challenges of our time. The assumption that there is an unlimited supply of natural resources and that the environment has an unlimited capacity to absorb waste and pollution is no longer a current trend, and growing attention has been paid to it worldwide. This chapter represents a contribution to the continuous conceptual development of circular economy and sustainability, and it also reviews how these two concepts have evolved over the past decades. An extensive literature review was conducted, employing bibliometric analysis to scrutinise the state of the art, the perspectives, the agreements and disagreements among these concepts and their correlation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio