Resource efficiency in transition to circular economy and the case of EU

The circular economy aims to create an economic structure that will not harm the environment and the planet by consuming less, using and extracting fewer resources, extending the life of products and/or materials by keeping them in use more in the production process, and by reusing and recycling applications. For this purpose, resource efficiency is the basis of the circular economy model. To achieve the resource efficiency goal, in this model, products and/or materials are redesigned to avoid waste, and the trash that may occur is reused and included in production. At this point, it is necessary to determine the social and economic variables influential on resource efficiency, which is vital for the functioning of the circular economy and to reveal them with statistical analysis. In this context, in the empirical phase of the study, resource efficiency as the dependent variable, GDP per capita used to represent economic growth as independent variables, the share of environmental taxes in GDP, the share of R&D expenditures in GDP, the recycling rate of municipal waste, energy efficiency variables 26 European Union (EU) countries taken into account in terms of country group. The data set has been observed annually and covers the period 2001-2019, depending on the availability of the data. In the study, panel data analysis, which is frequently used in modeling related to countries, was used as a method. According to the results obtained in the study, it is seen that the coefficients of environmental taxes, R&D expenditures, recycling of municipal waste and energy efficiency variables are significant and these variables have positive effects on resource efficiency. GDP variable has negatif effects on resource efficiency.