The characterization of the Romanian circular economy's potential, at county level

The complexity of the challenges faced by the world economy over the past decades is a clear indication that the linear economic model that starts with the exploitation of resources and ends with the disposal of waste is almost reaching its limits. These limitations are obvious in the following areas: resource exploitation, environment, economic added value of a unit of consumed resource, and also on the labour market. Under these circumstances, the circular economy model, which provides feasible solutions for all of these areas where the linear economic model shows its limitations, becomes an alternative to be taken into account. Although these challenges are global in nature, it is obvious that a functional global circular economy can be built incrementally starting from the interconnection of national circular economies that rely on interconnected regional circular economies. Using this hypothesis, in this paper we propose an indicator that can be used for a multi-criteria evaluation of the potential for developing a circular economy at national level, for the case of Romania. Our proposed approach allows the assessment of the county's potential based on a six-dimensional indicator and on 16 individual variables, built on a methodology similar to the one used for the indicator measuring the potential of an economy to attract foreign direct investment proposed by UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) in WIR2012 (World Investment Report 2012). Thus, using the 16 variables collected for the period 2008-2014, the circular economy potential indicator was calculated based on the NIS and NTRO databases. Among the most important empirical results are the identification of the concentration poles, which, in 2014, are represented by the city of Bucharest and by the counties: Braila, Constanta, Mures, Alba, Sibiu and Maramures and the identification of areas with low potential, which are Oltenia, Muntenia and the central and north-eastern area of Moldova.