The circular economy is a transformative solution for the environmental impact of consumption and production that contributes to tackling global challenges such as climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.
The basis of the circular economy is concerted action at policy, business and individual level to optimise the use of resources and reduce the need to extract further raw materials and so prevent emissions from the value chain of production and consumption. Such actions focus on retaining the value of products and materials, and are often presented as the R strategies. These actions can be seen as an elaboration of the 'Reduce, reuse, recycle’ concept that emerged in the 1970s .
They provide a useful framework for categorising the fundamental actions of the circular economy, from
initial design decisions through usage to end-of-life treatment.

More recently the set of circular actions moves to a framework of 'before use, during use and after use’.

• The before-use actions aim to meet societal needs with fewer natural resources and less impacts on environment and climate change. This can be reached by making the product redundant while providing the function or service by different means, intensifying product use, such as through shared use, or improving processes that lead to a lower use of resources. 
• Once resources have been used to produce infrastructure and products, during-use actions can be applied to increase the lifetime of existing stocks, maintaining the functionality of products as long as possible. 
• Once products reach their end-of-life, the after-use actions prescribe how material resources can be
  saved from loss or destruction and be sent back into the production cycle.

The goal of a circular economy is to use the above actions to reduce the environmental impacts of societal and economic activity.