A circularity measurement toolkit for manufacturing SMEs

Abstract

The development and adoption of the concept of circular economy in the last two decades have been remarkable. However, despite its widespread adoption, little progress has been made regarding its measurement, especially in manufacturing SMEs. This paper, therefore, proposes a Circularity Measurement Toolkit (CMT) which enables the assessment of the degree of circularity in manufacturing SMEs. A conceptual CMT framework, which provided the basis for the proposed tool and that defined the different types of circular practices and a classification or levels of circularity was developed from an extensive literature reviewed. To ensure the structure's accuracy of the proposed CMT in terms of requirements to be measured, the monitoring process and actions involved, the tool was verified through a Delphi-study. Furthermore, its practicality was validated through a case study approach in a manufacturing SME. This paper contributes by filling a gap in the CE measurement field through the proposal of the CMT. Besides providing an evaluation of the degree of circularity in the practices of manufacturing SMEs, companies can also employ the proposed CMT to identify corrective actions or future efforts for the adoption of CE practices.

Impact of Lean, Agile and Green (LAG) on business competitiveness: An empirical study of fast moving consumer goods businesses

“…The concerns for environmental sustainability are of crucial importance and are becoming an integral part of corporate performance metric (Garza-Reyes et al, 2018; one that stakeholders, outside influencers and even financial markets have started to monitor. As a result, there has been an increase in the influence of regulatory bodies and governments on corporate strategy.…”

A New Mindset for Circular Economy Strategies: Case Studies of Circularity in the Use of Water

“…In the manufacturing area, the strategies most frequently promoted to help companies to start moving in the direction of the CE are designing processes to minimize waste generation, or to reduce process re-consumption [12,13]. In water intensive industries, a practice that is implemented with a growing tendency is the separation of sewage streams with different properties at the source, since it facilitates decentralized treatment and reuse [27].…”

“…There are also several research papers that present taxonomies of circularity measurements [5,20] and even different conceptual frameworks for measuring the circularity of systems at different levels [12]. A water circularity index (WCI) was proposed by Sartal et al, 2020 [24] to evaluate the level of circularity in the use of water, which contemplates the volume of virgin water, the wastewater that consists of polluted and discharged water and total volume of water used for plant operations.…”

“…At the micro and nano level, several authors have compiled a set of practices that any organization can use to embark on its transition path towards a CE model [2,[8][9][10][11][12][13]. These practices are based on the optimization of the use of energy necessary for the manufacture of the product and for its sale, the use of sustainable design or eco-design strategies and the use of new materials that are less contaminating and more sustainable.…”

Analysing the roadblocks of circular economy adoption in the automobile sector: Reducing waste and environmental perspectives

“…The global population is increasing at a very high rate (Govindan & Hasanagic, 2018), with resource consumption also increasing as a result. Advancement in technology and increased production results in depletion of natural resources, causing severe damage to the environment (Garza‐Reyes, Salomé Valls, Peter Nadeem, Anosike, & Kumar, 2019). There is an increase in demand for resources such as minerals, water, land, energy and fuels (Carmeli, Dothan, & Boojihawon, 2020; Zhang et al, 2019).…”