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Circular chemistry to enable a circular economy

Nature Chemistry volume 11, pages 190–195 (2019)Cite this article

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By expanding the scope of sustainability to the entire lifecycle of chemical products, the concept of circular chemistry aims to replace today’s linear ‘take–make–dispose’ approach with circular processes. This will optimize resource efficiency across chemical value chains and enable a closed-loop, waste-free chemical industry.

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Fig. 1: Periodic table representing element scarcity.

© EuChemS, reproduced from https://www.euchems.eu/euchems-periodic-table/ under a Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0

Fig. 2
Fig. 3: A comprehensive illustration of the resource hierarchy.

Maurits Korse, https://blog.mauritskorse.nl/en/2016/01/waste-hierarchy-explained/

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Council for Chemical Sciences of The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO/CW and NWO/TTO) by a VIDI grant (J.C.S.) and a STW Take-off grant (J.C.S.). We gratefully acknowledge the MChem Green Chemistry class of 2016 and 2017 and D. Appel (Index Initiative) and T. Cantat (CEA Saclay) for stimulating discussions.

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  1. Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, Research Priority Area Sustainable Chemistry, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Tom Keijer, Vincent Bakker & J. Chris Slootweg

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  1. Tom Keijer
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  2. Vincent Bakker
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  3. J. Chris Slootweg
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Correspondence to J. Chris Slootweg.

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Keijer, T., Bakker, V. & Slootweg, J.C. Circular chemistry to enable a circular economy. Nature Chem 11, 190–195 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-019-0226-9

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