Steenmans, Katrien;
Steenmans, Ine;
Taylor, Phil;
(2025)
Blockchain's Transformative Potential for Circular Economy Laws and Policies.
In: Cao, Shaofeng and Foth, Marcus, (eds.)
Blockchain for Good: The Transformative Impacts on Industry, Community and the Planet.
(pp. 189-205).
CRC Press (Taylor & Francis): Abingdon, UK.
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Text (Chapter 11)
Steenmans et al 2025_Blockchain Circular Economy.pdf - Submitted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 14 November 2026. Download (280kB) |
Abstract
In this chapter we explore the uses of blockchain technology to resolve the resource and waste crises facing our planet. We focus on blockchain’s role in enabling implementation of laws and policies targeting circular economy transitions. These transitions pursue a fundamental restructuring of global production and consumption economies from linear take-make-dispose systems into systems that minimise resource use and waste generation. Though extant circular economy laws and policies make little explicit reference to blockchain, its potential to undergird future circular economy transitions is heralded in multiple academic and industry reports. In practice too, blockchain-based experiments are increasingly demonstrating viability towards supporting such policy action. The gap we perceive is that better insight into not only what uses of blockchain could be made, but also how those uses might fundamentally and causally enable circular transition pathways is needed. Without surfacing such assumed causal how narratives of change, our assessment of future risks and benefits of blockchain uses remains partial at best. This chapter presents four significant, nonexclusive circular economy pathways of change engaging blockchain’s transformative potential: (1) facilitating equitable participation, (2) reframing rights, (3) distributing responsibility, and (4) transgressing boundaries of public and private law spheres.
| Type: | Book chapter |
|---|---|
| Title: | Blockchain's Transformative Potential for Circular Economy Laws and Policies |
| ISBN-13: | 978-1-032-59806-2 |
| DOI: | 10.1201/9781003456346-11 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003456346-11 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > STEaPP |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205910 |
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