A comparaive analysis of the circular economy performance of the European Union and Turkey

The circular economy model is emphasised worldwide to ensure the continuity of human and environmental life, prevent waste generation, evaluate and dispose of existing waste in a reusable and recyclable way, and encourage efficient resource use. The aim of this thesis is to comparatively examine the performances of EU member countries and Turkey in the circular economy process, reveal the current situation, and contribute to sustainability practices by creating future projections. To achieve this, the performances of 29 countries, including Turkey and the UK, in the circular economy between 2014-2018 were compared using eight variables, four input and four output, for the analysis. The input variables for this study include urban waste generation per capita, country population, environmental taxes by economic activity (NACE Rev. 2), and real GDP per capita of countries. The output data are the municipal waste recycling rate, resource efficiency, biological waste recycling, and greenhouse gas emissions per capita. The dataset of the study, in which the quantitative method was used, was obtained from the Eurostat database. Data envelopment techniques were used to analyze the data obtained. According to the results of the analyses, some countries (Austria, Belgium, United Kingdom, Lithuania, Luxembourg, etc.) show consistently high performance in the circular economy, together with some show variability, and some countries (Greece, France, Portugal, Turkey, etc.)low performance.