Circular economy model for recycling waste resources under government participation: a case study in industrial waste water circulation in China

Abstract

A circular economy (CE) is proposed to mitigate resource shortage and environmental pollution. Given the inevitable conflict between the new development mode and traditional economic benefits, practical experience shows that CE implementation needs the support of outside forces, such as government policy interventions or environmental organisations' propaganda guidance. On the basis of existing studies, the present work establishes a systematic economic model in accordance with the characteristics, objectives and principles of CE. The equilibrium solution and critical condition of government and non-government participation models are obtained through game analysis. We select the industrial waste water circulation of some provinces in China to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed model. Overall, our results indicate that the gap between the critical price and unit processing cost determines the promotion of CE and government intervention. Moreover, government intervention is critical to building a waste management department in its early stage. First published online 27 November 2019