Sustainability addresses environmental and social issues affecting this and future generations. When family businesses perceive that the community is disrupted, recognize an environmental problem and respond by implementing new environmental policies or regulations, the family business's socio-emotional values press to transition to a more sustainable production system, such as the 'Circular Economy.' Drawing on the Dubin (1978) methodology-a paradigm for building models through deduction-we design a sustainable model, which shows family businesses' responses to changes in the environment. It explains the reasons why family firms transition to the Circular Economy, based on the theory of Socio-Emotional Wealth (SEW). We check the model through the case study of the food retail leader in the Spanish market-Mercadona-which applies policies about energy, resources and waste to become a Circular Economy business model. Because of the strong family character of Mercadona, this case can be useful for the decision-making of other family businesses.
The construction industry is among the sectors that need closer attention due to their environmental impact. The Circular Economy (CE) model promotes the transition to more sustainable production models, which are based on careful management of resources and the reduction of negative externalities generated by such businesses. Its application in this industry can foster significant improvements in sustainability. However, the measurement of the degree of implementation of CE is difficult, owing to an absence of psychometrically sound measures. In this paper, the development of the CE scale for the building industry was described, treated as an instrument that allows for a direct measurement of the importance of CE for companies. The processes used to generate items by applying the e-Delphi research technique were explained in the article, and the developed scale was tested and validated through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The final construction is composed of seven different weighted dimensions: four related to Resource Management: 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle), Efficient Management of Energy, Water, and Materials; two dimensions regarding environmental impact: Emissions and Wastes generated; and, one providing indicators of transition to the CE.
Nowadays, an omnipresent problem of resource scarcity and a need for reduction of waste generation make a discussion about eco-friendly production models more serious than ever before. Actions leading to a long-term sustainability of the Earth should not be treated as fashion but as normal practice no matter what branch they concern. A building sector is one of the world's largest waste generators. Fortunately, the Circular economy (CE) can help to diminish an environmental impact of the construction industry. Remembering the business principle what gets measured gets done, there is a need to create new measures of CE thinking in construction companies. These can be helpful in the assessment of the degree to which CE is implemented in the entities. However, so far there have been no scales of such measurement.The article presents two approaches; deterministic and probabilistic. First approach is responsible for the calculation of total performance of the company in terms of CE on the basis of inputs given by experts. Second method allows calculating the probability of the construction enterprise maturity in terms of CE and thus reliability of the deterministic estimation of this indicator thanks to the Monte Carlo simulations. The scale is based on an analysis of five phases of construction projects: design, production of building materials, construction processes, maintenance and end-of-life. Then, three levels of consideration are proposed in the model: organization, process, and workgroup. Results show that the scale can be useful for measuring the circularity thinking in the construction sector.
The impact of public lighting on consumed energy, financial cost, use of raw materials, and the environment is a major concern nowadays. The high amounts of energy needed to satisfy the increasing demands of cities around the world has led researchers to look for alternatives to classical fossil sources, with low implementation in public lighting up to date. In this context, circular economy (CE) proposes a new perspective of engineering based on smart design for the future life of products where even wastes have an added value as technological nutrients for other applications. A convergent consideration of CE and the urgent necessity of more sustainable public lighting leads to this proposal. The ad hoc use of a local biomass plant for powering the public lighting of one small city is considered, and important conclusions reinforcing the link between lighting and CE are presented.
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