Reevaluating waste as a resource under a circular economy approach from a system perspective: Findings from a case study

Abstract

The circular economy (CE), definable as a system focused on the reorganization of material, information, and energy flows to achieve greater resource efficiency through the reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling of materials, is a concept widely discussed by practitioners and scientists of many disciplines. Waste recycling is integral to the CE, but there are still few articles focused on waste, and only few studies shed light on CE implementation at the company level. This paper focuses on a particular type of waste, that is, absorbent hygiene products (AHPs), which represents a nonnegligible fraction of municipal solid waste, considered an increasingly serious global challenge. We conducted our analysis on FaterSMART, an Italian firm that developed a unique worldwide technology able to totally convert AHP raw material wastes into recyclable materials, under a CE approach. The case study findings are based upon semi‐structured interviews, direct observations, and analysis of FaterSMART's archival documents and are analyzed according to a framework developed for the research and focused on the place of waste from a linear economy, in which waste is considered a burden to CE, in which waste is considered a resource. The latter case is what we found that happens at FaterSMART. FaterSMART's findings could contribute to open up new management scenarios and stimulate further research into how this and similar types of technology will help societies to change from the “use‐it‐once‐and‐throw‐it away” mentality of linear business models to the sustainable CE model that fully conceptualize waste as a resource for the system.

Impacts of sustainable consumption and production initiatives in energy and waste management sectors: examples from India

“…Researchers have assessed how institutions and capacity-building, governance, and stakeholder coordination and networking influence the transition towards resource efficient waste and energy systems (Abreu & Ceglia, 2018;Kurian, 2017). Due to the effectiveness of interviews in capturing ground-level realities of policy, governance, and institutional issues on resource efficiency (Puntillo et al, 2021;Rincón-Moreno et al, 2021), the present study adopts interviews as a tool for conducting exploratory research on energy and waste sector in an emerging economy.…”

Circular Economy Business Models: a Repertoire of Theoretical Relationships and a Research Agenda

“…For their potential to create multiple forms of value, CBMs have also become the subject of business innovation and academic research [ 33 , 34 ]. Scholarly literature has explored categorisation tools [ 35 , 36 ], practical implementation [ 37 – 39 ], benefits, drivers and barriers to implementation [ 40 – 42 ] and conceptualisations [ 43 ]. However, with few exceptions [e.g.…”

Application of organic wastes to soils and legislative intricacies in a circular economy context

“…Under different approaches and scales, this gap was filled very recently. Puntillo et al (2021) outlined the possibility of recycling absorbent hygiene products at the very local level. Pličanič et al (2020) addressed the particular case of mining wastes in North Macedonia.…”