The core aim of Industrial Ecology is to overcome the linear production system by reorganizing the ways and means in which resources are transformed into products and services in order to reduce the environmental impact of human activities while improving living standards in the long term. To achieve this core aim, the field of Industrial Ecology addresses the challenges of economic agents as well as of entire societies at different scales and geographic boundaries, ranging from individual companies to global material flows. Although the focus is on material flows and their environmental impacts, economic and social science is gaining relevance in order to capture the embeddedness of modern economies in socio-economic developments. Although closing the loop is at the center of Industrial Ecology, the Circular Economy is a comparable concept that has gained prominence, leading to an intensive discussion of what type of relations both concepts have and how these could lead to improved answers to the challenges faced by modern societies.