Growth in the Circular Economy: An Institutional History of the EU Plastics Strategy

The notion of a ‘circular economy’ is emerging as the overarching vision guiding European Union (EU) initiatives in the area of the environment, climate change, and industrial policy. Recent years have seen abundant policy activity in this area, starting especially with the European Commission’s December 2015 Circular Economy Package (European Commission, 2015). The flagship initiative of this policy package was A European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy, or the Plastics Strategy (European Commission, 2018a). Plastics are a key enabling material in a wide range of industrial and consumer applications, and thus, the transition of the plastics sector towards a more circular economy can be seen as a litmus test of the feasibility of the circular economy in general. In other words, if plastics cannot be made circular, then the circular economy seems impossible to achieve – conversely, if they can be made circular, then we have taken an important first step in the direction of a general circular economy.