The concept of the 'circular-economy' goes back to the work of Boulding (1966) who employed space travel as a metaphor to represent the finite resource limitations facing the Earth's population. Boulding (1966) postulated that for the crew (i.e. world's population) to attempt a long journey through space, required a fundamental understanding of the 'first law of thermodynamics' to conceptualise a model of 'everything as an input into everything else' and a formal recognition of the assimilative capacity of the Earth's ecosystem. With the spectre of both climate change and resource depletion looming, the circular-economy once again finds itself challenging the existing dogma of a 'linear' (i.e. take-make-dispose) approach to economic prosperity and growth. As a production system oriented toward the conversion of biologically renewable resources and biological waste streams (hitherto known as 'biomass') into value added produce such as food, feed, bio-based industrial and energy applications, the compatibility of bio-based activity to the circular-economy paradigm is clear. As a result, this shift in attitudes has re-kindled rapidly growing interest in the concept of a bio-based economy (or bioeconomy), both in European Union (EU) policy-circles under the auspices of the so-called bioeconomy strategy (EC, 2012; EC, 2014) and within the academic arena (e.g., McCormick and Kautto, 2013; M'barek et al., 2014, Fritsche and Iriarte, 2014). It has been noted, however, that whilst the bioeconomy strategy (EC, 2012) represents an important first step toward developing a sustainable model of growth, it faces significant challenges. From a conceptual perspective, Ramcilovic-Suominen and Pülzl (2017) suggest that it panders overtly to economic criteria (i.e. bio-technological efficiency, competitiveness), without paying sufficient heed to the broader aspects of sustainability indelibly linked to environmental- (e.g., biodiversity, air, water, soil quality) and social- (e.g., equity, justice, human rights etc.) considerations. Furthermore, McCormick and Kautto (2013) allude to the practical challenges of adopting said strategy in terms of the necessary (bio-) technological progress and institutional reform, whilst De Besi and McCormick (2011) highlight the need for a fundamental shift in the mind-sets of society, industry and government, through increased dialogue and awareness campaigns.
