Waste management and circular economy in Saudi Arabia: Policy frameworks, sectoral pathways, and strategic transition toward Vision 2030 goals

Saudi Arabia is rapidly implementing a circular economy to align with Vision 2030, with waste management serving as the principal operational entry point. Yet evidence on national CE progress remains fragmented across sectoral studies and dispersed policy and industry sources, limiting integrated assessment of transition dynamics. This review synthesizes 148 academic and grey literature sources through a systematic review and combined deductive–inductive qualitative content analysis to map the policy architecture, sectoral waste pathways, and cross-cutting enablers and barriers shaping circular implementation. Despite expanding regulations and increasing public and private investment, implementation remains predominantly top-down and end-of-pipe. High waste generation and continued landfilling persist, reflecting fragmented institutional mandates, limited data integration, underdeveloped secondary-material markets, and weak incentives for source separation, reuse, and high-value recovery. Across priority waste streams—food and organic waste, plastics and packaging, construction and demolition waste, e-waste, and wastewater—technical valorization options are available but unevenly scaled, constrained more by market and governance failures than by technological deficits. A central tension is the relative maturity of carbon- and energy-focused Circular Carbon Economy (CCE) instruments compared to material-circularity measures, risking misalignment between decarbonization and broader resource-circularity objectives. Advancing circularity requires shifting from waste diversion toward an integrated policy mix that aligns regulatory enforcement, upstream prevention and eco-design, market-formation instruments, digitalized data governance, and sustained public engagement. The article proposes a multi-tier CE roadmap to support coordinated implementation and performance evaluation, offering a system-level reference for researchers, policymakers, and industry practitioners.