Health, the Circular Economy, and Our Built Environment: Fid-Bau Portal

Health, the Circular Economy, and Our Built Environment

Da Costa Vasconcelos, Tiago

Covid-19 rapidly highlighted the significance of good public health, similarly, showing that our built environment is crucial in responding to global challenges. Through the lens of Building Back Better, and with a continued focus on health, this paper presents a literature and rapid scoping review examining the extent to which the relationship between our Health, the circular economy, and our Built Environment has recently been investigated. Building Back Better is a future risk mitigation strategy focused on establishing resilient communities. Circular economy has been explored as one such vehicle towards developing economic, social, and environmental resiliency. Circular economy is a systems’ solution framework, aimed at breaking the linear ‘extract, use, dispose’ model. Circular economic advantages are largely emphasised from the perspective of effective and sustainable production and consumption: with the ramifications for health receiving comparatively little attention. Despite this, a circular transition may offer potentially considerable health benefits, while simultaneously contributing societal resiliency, and numerous UN Sustainable Development Goals. The study finds that the implications of the circular economy on health are largely under-explored and highlights significant gaps in the literature regarding the health outcomes of a transition to a circular economy in the built environment. It concludes that while the circular economy presents a viable option for building resilience, it also calls for more systematic investigation to fully understand the potential health and social impacts of circular transition in the built environment. The paper also notes that the uptake of the circular economy remains relatively slow and further research is required to understand its social and health impacts.