Tyteca, DanielLejeune, ChristopheDeplasse, PaulinePaulineDeplasse2025-05-142025-05-142025-05-142016https://hdl.handle.net/2078.2/15166Many years ago, human beings were integrated in the biosphere as hunters-gatherers. As years have passed, men have conquered the world and its resources, up to the point where we now talk of the existence of an anthroposphere created by human activity. Unlike natural ecosystems, our industrial system extracts intensively from the land, transforms commodities multiple times in various parts of the world, consumes heavily and generates great amounts of waste. In the global economy of the past decades, waste creation is the result of economic growth. But companies, governments and societies are now facing raw materials scarcity, which leads to an increase in their prices. The carbon-intensive activities have led to a global climate change and the consequences thereof. Water and food risk sourcing disruption. The consequences of our economic system start to appear and it is necessary to think in the long term to overcome these. A circular economy, in opposition to the linear take-make-waste economy characteristic of the post-industrial revolution context, is restorative by design. Based on the cyclical functioning of natural ecosystems; by minimizing the inputs of a process and maximizing the number of uses of the materials as well as their lifespan, circularity allows for capturing the maximal value of components along the entire industrial chain. Waste should not be considered an additional cost to dispose of, but rather a resource that can be traded. Refuse from today becomes the mines of tomorrow. In order to achieve a circular economy, products and components should be re-designed with circular thinking. A special emphasis is put on innovative business models where you service instead of selling goods, maintaining a high product quality at all times. This ecosystemic thinking respects the principles of a sustainable development, encompassing the three following pillars: economy, society and the environment. On this same planet, emerging markets, with strong growth rates per capita, are constantly increasing their prosperity and living standards. With immense populations and great developments taking place, these economies account for a significant share in the global gross domestic product (GDP). Consumption in these countries is skyrocketing, leading to intensive use of resources. Amongst the emerging countries, five of them seem to be leading the way: Brazil, Russia, India, China and, as a later addition to the group, South Africa. These countries would have the ability to change our resource consumption patterns because of the importance they have on an international level. South Africa, like the other emerging nations, has many internal challenges to tackle. The experience I have had during my 7-month internship in the country has made me aware of the huge social and economic disparities of the rainbow nation. Since the end of apartheid, many gaps still need to be closed. With, on the one hand, the ongoing existence of linear processes and, on the other hand, these emerging economies that would have the ability to trigger huge changes in terms of resource productivity, the challenge is to avoid reproducing the same linear patterns that have led to disastrous environmental changes at the same time, as they fail to capture the inherent value of waste. This is the context in which my research question takes root. My proposition is that the circular economy will help to close the gaps, allowing for a more sustainable development although there must be some barriers. The questions investigated are thus the opportunities and obstacles. If South Africa wants to take the path of a sustainable development, what would be the impacts of a circular economy on the country? What are the challenges that can be overcome by circularity? But also, what are the obstruction mechanisms to its implementation? What factors inherent to the situation of the country hinder the transition? In order to answer these questions, this Master’s thesis is organized in the following way. First of all, a theoretical part depicts a literature review on the subject. The second part presents the study in itself. The research question is clearly formulated before moving to the methodology chosen to tackle this question. The qualitative method of semi-structured interviews has been chosen due to its exploratory quality. A descriptive analysis of the results, both opportunities and obstacles, is followed by their interpretation in the discussion.Circular economySouth AfricaResource-efficiencyEmerging marketsIndustrial EcologyFunctional economytext::thesis::master thesisthesis:7943