FORMATION OF THE CONCEPT OF A CIRCULAR ECONOMY1

1 The research is made with the financial support of the Grant of the President of the Russian Federation to support young Russian scientists – candidates of Sciences – in terms of the research MK-587.2019.6 “Development of theoretical and methodical aspects of the circular economy concept as a new trend of sustainable social and economic development”. Mariia A. Gureva internauka.colab@gmail.com Industrial University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia


INTRODUCTION
The research objective, which is based on the comparative studies methodology, is to conduct Acceleration in modern human development process, demonstrating that the world is speeding up and there is much less time needed for new scientific and technical revolution. This phenomenon has dire consequences. Humanity seems not to be able to transform its ideas on the interaction between human society and nature: the change of daily habits and behaviors to confirm the statements above appears in the thought of O. N. Yanitsky, who says "…biological forms (including ecosystems), that have been formed during evolution have incompatible temporalities with socially constructed forms of modern life…" (Shvab, 2017).
In the era of information accessibility, men with incredible opportunities for continued self-improvement, self-education and self-development, have chosen a different way of life, simplifying their worldview and getting lost in the vast field of information, putting incorrect emphasis on his priorities and interests. All these processes can be summarized by a well-known definition "consumer society". The paradox is that not only the wasteful lifestyle of the population in developed countries, but also the increased resource intensity of the production of the developing countries has led the climate changes and ecosystems to decline (Melnik;Hens, 2007).
In reality, a "super-consumer" model has rapidly changed into a "super-contaminator" model and caused a series of environmental disasters and catastrophes. Global environmental problems accumulated over the history of civilization's development have become clear by the beginning of the 21 st century and has demanded urgent solution. Due to the need of constant application of primary resources, which has finally become a waste, the existing model of linear economy in terms of industrialization development and the planet population growth appeared to be ineffective, unable to provide the necessary quality of life. Gradually, sometimes without realizing it, society itself has created a trap in the form of scarcity of various types of resources, and the economies of most countries are highly dependent on their volatility (Mashukova, 2016).
The wrong perception and construction of a consumption model that evolved during the industrial revolution in the 19 th -20 th centuries has become the basis of the linear economic model, based on the principles of the inexhaustibility of natural resources, without concern for waste management. Nowadays resources are considered limited, and most ecosystems, having lost the ability to assimilate, have become unstable (The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, n.d.). Without changes in the developmental trajectory and the review of key approaches to production and consumption; a production crisis and further deterioration in the quality of life are inevitable (Gureva, 2019).
The digital revolution at the beginning of the 21 st century, including a number of attempts to create and develop the robotization process, the Internet of things and artificial intelligence has marked the transition to a new stage in the technological development of industrial production, called "Industry 4.0", whose main driving force is the Internet of things. At the same time, the organization of the production process is characterized by a sharp reduction of energy and material consumption, the design of materials and organisms with predetermined properties. According to Kalabina E.G. (2017), consumer demand serves as the main driver of Industry 4.0, and the general concept is based on the perception of sustainable development as a process for maximizing the consumption of goods and services (Ivanova et al., 2018).
The transition to Industry 4.0 will create a world of virtual and physical unity of production with erased industry boundaries, significantly reducing the technological impact on the environment (Socheeva, 2017).
When considering digitalization as a transformational technology, on the one hand, an increase in public awareness is observed, and on the, the effect of a certain "transparency" of society appears. There is a shift in consumer preferences from the "I want to own" to "I want to use" path; the boundaries of understanding in the field of individual professional and everyday skills, personal concepts of work, leisure and education as a whole, are changing. The new industrial era has a distinctive feature in the perception of labor from the point of social efficiency, when the workplace is considered as a tool for self-realization (the development of E. Toffler's concept of prosumerism) (Nechaeva, 2018).

METHODS
In the middle of 20 th century, the world scientific community, based on the analysis of the downward course of the scientific and technical revolution, made a conclusion in terms of the limits for growth opportunities set by linear (industrial) model exploration at a global scale that led to the concept of circular economy as an alternative solution.
In 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Environment was held in Stockholm (Sweden); the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was established as the main UN body in the field of environment. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UN-CED), also known as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The primary result of the conference was to raise public awareness of the need to integrate environment and development. In June, 2012, the conference "Rio+20" has approved the nonbinding document called "The Future We Want", a 49-page work paper, including Millennium Development Goals. In it, the heads of state of the 192 governments renewed their political commitment to sustainable development and declared their commitment to the promotion of a sustainable future. The document largely reaffirms previous action plans. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets were announced at the UN document entitled "Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" in 2015 (The United Nations Environment Programme, n.d.).
Over the past decade, special attention has been paid to the new concept of an economic model development, called the "circular economy", which is considered to be a new path for the development of society along the path of sustainability ( Figure 1).
A study of the considered areas of the economy of environmentalism showed their interdependence and interdetermination, the similarity of the formation approach, confirming that their final global goals are the same -the stable state of the planet and global survival, with differences only in the ways of achieving the goals and main approaches Circular Economy Australia, 2000;Reike et al., 2018).
The comparative analysis of the economics of the environmentalism concepts based on the main criteria is shown in Table 1.

RESULTS
The key difference between the initially accepted concept of sustainable development and the later concept of the circular economy is the expansion of its sphere of concepts, because in the interconnection of environmental and economic spheres, a greater merger occurs through the necessary interaction ( Figure 2). The concept is aimed to achieve universal social justice and improve the life quality of the world population, reducing the negative anthropogenic impact and improving the environmental conditions. The UNEP document outlines the basic principles of the Green economy.  The transition from industrial to post-industrial society in the 1960s of 20 th century based on the technological and further innovative progress caused the appearance of the concept of circular economy in the scientific literature. The circular economy concept was introduced in 1966 by Kenneth Ewart Boulding (an American economist). The concept was mainly rooted in ecological and environmental issues: "a man should find his own place in circular environmental system". Later the concept has gained more economic character (Homrich et al., 2018).
There are several opinions on the origin of the term "circular economy"; a number of scientists believe that the circular economy is a new stage in the development of the concept of sustainable development and the green economy; on the other hand, much less often, it is considered as an independent direction of the economic theory that appeared in the 1970s of the 20 th century (Gureva, 2013;2019).
The literature search has been performed in Scopus, Elsiver, Elibrary, WOS databases and Google Scholar, using "circular economy" as a keyword in the title, keywords or abstract of the document. The term is widely spread in foreign scientific literature while in Russian academic literature it is much less common. Nevertheless, a number of scientists emphasize that the circular economy is not an analogue of the "green" economy, but acts as an integral part of it, a way to achieve sustainable development (Mashukova, 2016).
The earliest reference to the circular economy belongs to Walter Stahel. In his 1976 research report, he offered the idea of transition from the linear model of resource-dependent economy to an economy in loops (or circular economy) (Gureva, 2019;D'Amato et al., 2017;Reike et al., 2018).
The main definitions of the term "circular economy" given by different studies are represented in Table 2. In general, approaches for "circular economy" definition for the 15-years long period of its development (from 2004 to 2019) may be grouped as follows: a certain model, activity, system, strategy, process, tool, economy, and philosophy. The most commonly used and generally accepted, found in the reviewed papers and the media, is the term proposed by The Ellen MacArthur Foundation in 2012. It is worth noting that at the moment there is no officially approved definition for the term (Figure 3).
There are three stages distinguished in the evolution of the circular economy (Table 3) The Foundation is now a global leader in applying systems theory and complexity theory to tackling the greatest challenges of our time, as it works with business, government and academia to build a framework for an economy that is restorative and regenerative by design. The Fund is an active participant in the world's leading economic forums and attracts an increasing number of founding partners (Sergienko;Rohn, 2004).
Based on the academic papers analysis, the authors made the conclusion that most scientists use the prefix "re" while describing the principles of the circular economy. The prefix "re", occurring originally in loanwords from Latin, used with the meaning "again" or "again and again" to indicate repeti-  Initially, there were three guiding principles of the circular economy -"3R" principles (reduce, reuse, and recycle) that have been transformed into "9R" principles. It should be noted that their further development is still possible (Figure 4).
A detailed characteristic of the 9R principles of circular economy is presented in Figure 5.
The lack of a clear conceptualization of the basic principles, together with an increasing number of additionally emerging areas in the study of R-imperatives, can be explained by the following: • Many research papers by different authors are devoted to the circular economy concept; that is why a clear area of knowledge can be hardly determined; • The circular economy is not a strictly isolated field of study; its origin took place at the intersection of different sciences; "an economic system that is based on business models that replace the 'end-of-life' concept with reducing, alternatively reusing, recycling and recovering materials in production/distribution and consumption processes, thus operating at the micro level (products, companies, consumers), meso level (eco-industrial parks) and macro level (city, region, nation and beyond), with the aim to accomplish sustainable development, which implies creating environmental quality, economic prosperity and social equity, to the benefit of current and future generations"   Volume 15, Number 2, 2020, pp. 156-169 DOI: 10.20985/1980-5160.2020.v15n2.1656 163 Table 3. Stages of the evolution of circular economy

Time period
Title Description 1970 -1990 Reuse activities and waste management In the European countries and the USA, a number of environmental legislative measures have been adopted. The 3R (reduce, reuse and recycle) concept has become more popular at governmental level. State measures were restrictive, taking into account producers' preferences. The Polluter-Pays-Principle was stated. The focus was shifted at the waste management issue, but it was due to the lack of development in environmental culture and concern that the territories of poor countries were used for waste storage and recycling. The rapidly developing television and media were paying attention to the ongoing environmental changes. Therefore, scientific literature on recycling, collection and waste management appeared

-2010
Eco--efficiency strategies The idea of environmental payments (pollution charges) (the Brundtland report, 1987) had a certain influence on the evolution of the circular economy. Environmental problems were perceived by society as a kind of economic opportunity. In the early 2000s, with the development and growth of the Internet and the increased speed of information exchange, a number of environmental problems were announced as global, such as ozone layer depletion, global warming, etc. The academic community is actively developing possible ways of zero-waste production, but only in the industrial sphere. The first references to the circular economy appeared in a number of scientific literature databases, as for example, in Scopus in 2004. The idea of a closed-loop economy is gradually becoming popular 2010 till present Maximum saving at the age of resource depletion Around 2010, the concept of a circular economy, summarizing the most viable ideas of theoretical research, has gained its final form. The central stated problem is the survival of mankind in terms of the reduction and a natural resources crisis, the growth of the world population and the amount of waste. In particular, ideas and investigations devoted to the circular economy created by the team of The Ellen MacArthur Foundation are widespread. It is planned that further economic growth will be independent from natural resources and thus the energy dependence will be overcome. That will allow saving the ecosphere. Experts offer companies to plan the development based on three principles: green innovation, alternative sources, and a shift of the industrial paradigm. Currently, approximately 500 companies in the world are using a circular economy strategy. Remanufacture (rebuilding of a product to specifications of the original manufactured product using a combination of reused, repaired and new parts) Resource restoration Repurpose (to use something for a different purpose to the one for which it was originally intended) Safe disposal Recycle (treat or process (used or waste materials) so as to make suitable for reuse) Recover (conversion of non-recyclable waste materials into usable heat, electricity,) Figure 4. Evolution of the circular economy guiding principles • Globalization processes taking place in the scientific environment allow us to identify and present to the world scientific community previously unknown studies, which affects the dynamic perception of the circular economy; • International organizations use various R-principles in their terminology and official documents; sometimes the principles and terminology of different companies are not mutual responsive (D'Amato et al., 2017;Jiao;Boons, 2014).
According to the studies by The Ellen MacArthur Foundation (the pioneer in promoting the circular economy ideas), its several features are distinguished as follows: • Maintenance of a sustainable balance of natural resources and monitoring their condition and use in order to avoid the natural capital depletion; • Development, distribution and widespread implementation of optimized manufacturing processes achieve the maximum level of its reuse; • Increase of the efficiency of the economic and environmental systems of industrial activity by excluding negative effects (Alexandrova, 2017;Sergienko;Rohn, 2004).

DISCUSSION
The practical application of the circular economy can be observed at all levels of the global economic activity -from an individual action to the planetary level of interaction of countries representatives, which will make possible the transition from the linear model of the economy (Table 5).
There are several challenges faced during the implementation of the circular economy concept: • Cultural (companies' environmental decisions and actions, lack of interest and awareness of consumers, following linear economy principles during operational process, and interest in final value chains); • Legislative (limited closed-loop procurement, lack of international consensus, and prohibition of laws and regulations); • Market barrier (poor quality materials, standardization, high investment value, and limited financing of circular business models); • Technological (the ability to deliver high-quality refurbished products, lack of presentation of project decisions, and lack of environmental impact assessment) (Kirchherr et al., 2017).
A number of authors noted similar prerequisites necessary for an effective transition to a circular economy: • Necessity to establish a strong legal and policy framework for environmental protection; • Government support measures for organizations implementing the principles of circular economy; • Support and stimulation of research activities devoted to the circular economy; • Popularization and promotion of eco-friendly and environmentally conscious business-ideas among companies; • Increased environmental awareness and education (Alexandrova, 2017;Larionov, 2018).

CONCLUSION
The circular economy has great potential for optimizing managerial and technological solutions to overcome environmental and economic problems in the resource sphere. The theoretical base of circular economy was influenced by economic theories of the industrialization development of socio-economic systems.
Summarizing the above, it can be assumed that the circular economy is an economic model based on the principles of closed systems of technological and biological cycles, which can be considered a tool of the green economy aimed to achieve sustainable development and fulfill the key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The concept of circular economy is a universal way of green growth, which allows taking the place of the linear economy model, and thereby minimize the resource dependence of production, overcome the global social and economic inequality, solve environmental problems caused by the global crisis and, finally, overcome the crisis of environmental sustainability and save life on earth.

Legend
Title Description

0R Refuse
Refusal of excessive use of raw materials. Consumers are supposed to buy and consume less. Waste volume reduction (such as packaging paper, disposable tableware, etc.) is emphasized in some literature sources. All stages of the product life cycle are affected, including design, production processes, etc.

1R
Rethink New thinking of product life cycle and raw material usage in order to change and improve it.

2R Reduce
Reduction of raw material usage with further total elimination of waste production, both on individual and industry level

3R Reuse
Practice of using discarded product in good condition again by another customer. Active development of reselling, especially at Amazon and eBay and other top online shopping sites.

4R Repair
Maintenance and repair of defective product so it can be used with its original function. There are several options for implementing this principle: a consumers repair the product themselves or at a special repair company or products manufactures provide repair and maintenance service 5R Refurbish Restores or renovates an old product and brings it up to date without changing most part of it (especially buildings, heavy equipment)

6R
Remanufacturing Uses parts of a discarded product in a new product with the same function to prolong its lifecycle

7R Repurpose
Use of a discarded product for a purpose other than that for which it was originally intended, in other words "second life of thrown products. It is similar 1R, the difference is that it is not used in the manufacturing sphere but in the design sphere

8R Recycle
Processing materials to obtain new products, sorting waste to "capture" and return "clean" resources to the production cycle.

9R
Recover Incineration of material with energy recovery and/or biorefinery  Volume 15, Number 2, 2020, pp. 156-169 DOI: 10.20985/1980-5160.2020.v15n2.1656 166 To achieve ecological balance during sustainable economic and social growth and prosperity by increasing the effectiveness of product, service and resource life cycle

S&G Journal
To maximize profit with lack of attention to the ecological issues. The process is characterized by unbalanced economic growth and prosperity and social stratification.

Production level
Closed cycle manufacturing directed to minimize the amount of products. The manufactured goods in general are of higher quality and reusable Constant growth of the amount of manufactured goods and services (of law quality in general), increasing of production rate at all spheres. The process is characterized by a crisis of overproduction and market saturation.

Consumption level
Development of new goods and services consumption pattern depending on its necessity and importance for consumers Satisfaction of excessive desire for goods, peculiar to behavior of super-consumers Type of natural resource management Creation of resources Consuming of resources

Society-nature interrelation
Integration of ecologization in the system of manufacturing processes. The process is characterized by the reduction of anthropogenic impact on the environment Increasing anthropogenic impact on the environment causes planetwide environmental crisis

Resources used
Interaction of financial, informational, intellectual, labor and other resources in order to produce and use goods made of recyclable materials.
Natural resources extracted without considering environmental damage.

Amount of wastes
Gradual reduction targeted to the total disappearance of wastes by applying new approaches available from the process of technological development. Emergence of new branches Constant industrial and consumer waste growth. Waste accumulation causes global ecological problem.
Types of manufacturing prevailing in industry Development of knowledge-based and innovative industries.
Labor-intensive manufacturing, characterized by law level of innovative activity and involving different types of intangible asset.
Social partnership Active socio-economic position with high level of business responsibility Environmental illiteracy, environmentally unfriendly companies conforming to environmental laws, regulations, standards and other requirements only under pressure