Despite the spread of policy and business initiatives aiming at transitioning to a Circular Economy (CE), the concept is criticized in the scientific literature for its lack of emphasis on social contexts. Implementing CE initiatives to production systems can indeed lead to “unintended side effects,” that is, both rebound effects and other indirect shifts in consumption patterns. In this forum article we address the question: “How to make the unintended side effects of implementing CE initiatives knowable and actionable?” We argue that the ability of life cycle assessment (LCA) to address unintended side effects from CE initiatives is limited, as LCA can model how different product systems interact with each other, but does not attend to the socio-technical dynamics taking place within and across different life cycle phases. To extend the potential of LCA in supporting decision-making, our suggestion is to complement LCA with other types of analytical approaches, such as Practice Theory (PT) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which can improve our understanding of the unintended side effects of CE initiatives. These theories consider societal dynamics as socio-technical and focus on the processes and practices through which production and consumption dynamics change. Thus, they can provide analyses of whether and how CE initiatives are capable of realizing novel relations within/among socio-technical systems. Ultimately, they can provide explanations on why things end up the way they do, thus supporting LCA in the investigation of more "real" rather than ideal scenarios.

中文翻译：

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生命周期评估是否足以解决循环经济计划的意外副作用？

尽管旨在向循环经济 (CE) 过渡的政策和商业举措得到广泛传播，但该概念因其缺乏对社会背景的重视而在科学文献中受到批评。对生产系统实施 CE 计划确实会导致“意想不到的副作用”，即消费模式的反弹效应和其他间接转变。在这篇论坛文章中，我们解决了一个问题：“如何使实施 CE 计划的意外副作用变得可知和可操作？” 我们认为，生命周期评估 (LCA) 解决 CE 计划意外副作用的能力是有限的，因为 LCA 可以模拟不同产品系统如何相互交互，但不考虑内部发生的社会技术动态。并跨越不同的生命周期阶段。为了扩展 LCA 在支持决策方面的潜力，我们的建议是用其他类型的分析方法补充 LCA，例如实践理论 (PT) 和行动者网络理论 (ANT)，这可以提高我们对非预期方面的理解CE 举措的影响。这些理论将社会动态视为社会技术，并关注生产和消费动态变化的过程和实践。因此，他们可以分析 CE 计划是否以及如何能够在社会技术系统内部/之间实现新的关系。最终，他们可以解释为什么事情会以他们的方式结束，从而支持 LCA 调查更“真实”而不是理想的场景。