The Current State and Future Perspectives Regarding the Sustained Activity within a Circular Economic System

A circular approach in the economy means and promotes, in principle, the reusability of products and materials through different processes such as recycling. refurbishment and remanufacturing. The question that has been frequently asked in the past was: 'Is the transition from a linear model necessary?' But, as the time passed and multiple sources of pressure began to appear (even if we speak about the resource finiteness or the actual state of the environment), forcing multiple states to take more and more severe regulatory action by refining exiting laws or introducing new ones, and to release incentives to counterbalance the negative effects generated until then, the need of transition is more urgent than ever. So, in this paper, I review the main characteristics of the circular system, giving arguments for why the transition to it is so important, as well as the benefits of doing so, present the actual state of things, both in Europe and the United States of America, describing the main actions undertaken to facilitate it (the Green Deal initiative in Europe, as well as the EPA initiatives in USA), then analyze how the modern era contributes and will contribute in all the process (by including some important aspects about digitalization and artificial intelligence and how they can help).