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Environment · Circular Economy & 3R Principles (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle)

UPSC Prelims 2025, Question 9

The concept being tested: Circular Economy - resource efficiency, waste reduction, and greenhouse gas emissions mitigation.

Consider the following statements: Statement I: Circular economy reduces the emissions of greenhouse gases. Statement II: Circular economy reduces the use of raw materials as inputs. Statement III: Circular economy reduces wastage in the production process. Which one of the following is correct in respect of the above statements?

Options

  1. ABoth Statement II and Statement III are correct and both of them explain Statement ICorrect answer
  2. BBoth Statement II and Statement III are correct but only one of them explains Statement I
  3. COnly one of the Statements II and III is correct and that explains Statement I
  4. DNeither Statement II nor Statement III is correct

The answer: Both Statement II and Statement III are correct and both of them explain Statement I

Circular economy replaces the linear take-make-dispose model with loops of reduce, reuse, recycle and remanufacture, the logic behind India's National Resource Efficiency Policy. This cuts greenhouse gas emissions through two independent routes. Reducing raw material use means less virgin extraction takes place, and mining, quarrying, smelting and refining are all energy and emission intensive, so lower demand for fresh inputs directly lowers embedded emissions. Reducing wastage in the production process means less material ends up in landfills or incinerators, and landfilled waste is itself a major methane source, so less wastage also lowers emissions. Because both lower raw material use and lower production wastage independently drive down emissions, both statements are factually correct, and both genuinely explain the emissions cut described in the first statement, not merely one of them.

What UPSC was testing

UPSC has increasingly used this does-X-explain-Y format since 2023 precisely because it defeats simple statement elimination. An aspirant must independently verify the truth of each explanatory statement and then separately judge whether it logically accounts for the outcome statement, and here both conditions hold for both Statement II and Statement III.

How often this comes up

This concept has appeared 8 times in UPSC Prelims General Studies Paper I between 2015 and 2025 — in 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025.

The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.