“Circular economy policy mixes: A call to combine lifecycle and multisectoral perspectives”

Circular economy (CE) transitions require increasingly complex policy mixes that support systemic change. Lifecycle perspectives have become dominant in CE policy mix research because they help ensure that policy interventions address the full lifecycle of products and materials. However, lifecycle approaches do not adequately capture how products and materials move between product lifecycles and across applications and sectors, where they encounter different governance domains. Based on a review of European Union CE policy mix research, this article distinguishes between product-oriented and material-oriented lifecycle perspectives and examines their respective strengths and limitations. It argues that combining these lifecycle perspectives with a multisectoral perspective broadens the analytical boundaries of CE policy mix analysis by capturing the movement of products and materials within and between product lifecycles, across applications and sectors, while recognising that these movements occur across different sectoral governance domains. In doing so, it enables the analysis of cross-sectoral mobility, competing uses for secondary materials and interdependencies between sectors. The article articulates a conceptual lens for analysing CE policy mixes and calls for further theoretical and methodological development in this area.