Open Access

Circular economy (CE) has become important in reducing the environmental impact of the construction sector. For the transformation from linear to CE, decision support tools and methods are needed to assess and promote CE for constructions. With regard to sustainable financial decisions, life cycle costing (LCC) is the preferred method. However, the LCC approaches and their application in CE research differ. Based on a systematic literature review, the relevance of refurbishment in operation, reuse, recycling and disposal at end-of-life (EoL) in LCC is assessed. As a result, LCC has gained relevance in the construction sector, but CE plays a subordinate role in LCC applications. Costs or benefits of CE are often neglected. However, some research have shown that refurbishment as well as reuse and recycling can outweigh higher initial cost over lifetime. The internalisation of environmental and social impacts or even benefits are also rare. In particular, there is a lack of research on how to internalise the environmental benefits of refurbishment, reuse and recycling or how to effectively incentivise higher CE efforts in LCC in order to encourage decision-making in construction towards CE.