Implementation of Circular Economy in Organizations: From Materials to Manufacturing to Money to Mindsets

About this Research Topic

Background

Since the first industrial revolution, economies have followed a linear model, where resources are considered to be abundant, available, easy to source, and cheap to disposed of. In 2005, circa 60% of all raw materials processed by the global economy were throughput, and the rest were added to stock, while only about 6.5% of the materials processed were from recycled waste or scrap.

Circular Economy (CE) is one of the most recent ways of addressing environmental sustainability. According to the European Commission (2015) a circular economy “… is an economy where the value of products, materials and resources is maintained in the economy for as long as possible, and the generation of waste minimized”. CE is normally represented by the mean of recovery loops (from the 3Rs to the 9Rs).The benefits of CE contribute to the attainment of environmental goals while considering the economics behind such actions.

CE discourses had indicated that there were three levels: macro (focusing on regions and municipalities); meso (focusing on eco-industrial networks and their material and energy flows); and micro (focusing mainly on organizations, particularly on companies). More recent discourses have proposed that these levels should be instead changed to scope including individual, process, sector, cluster, country/region, assessment, and review.

The successful uptake of CE depends on broad support from all types of organizations in society (civil society, corporate, education, public sector, and hybrid ones. This requires that CE is implemented throughout the organization system elements (i.e. in operations and production, management and strategy, governance, organizational system, assessment and reporting, supply chains, and research and development), as well as change management and collaboration with stakeholders.

Implementing CE can help organizations transition from a linear model of production towards a closed-loop model. The CE efforts on organizations have focused mainly on companies in areas such as: food waste; hazardous waste; plastic waste; recycling of critical raw materials; illegal waste shipments; and recycling of phosphorus.

There have been limited efforts in the implementation of CE in organizations, where CE efforts and policies often use different terminology, implementation practices, and concept interpretation, and there is still a gap between CE theory and practice. As there is no universal approach on how to implement CE within organizations, as much depends, for example, on the products and services they produce and deliver, where it is more common to find CE practices in product-oriented organizations.

The aim of this Research Topic is to advance the discourses in theory and practice on CE in organizations, focusing on material flows, manufacturing, money flows, and mindset changes.

We welcome contributions on CE implementation on civil society, corporate, education, public sector, and hybrid organizations.

This can be done by examining CE through (but not limited to):
 Material and energy flows
 Product-service systems
 Manufacturing for CE
 Eco-efficiency and CE
 Financial flows for CE
 Transition management
 Behavioral change
 Change management
 Methodological innovations (e.g. the used of combined environmental and economic Sankey diagrams)
 Theoretical discussions (e.g. epistemologies and ontologies of CE)

It is expected that submissions to this RT will contribute towards filling research gaps in the implementation of CE in organizations.

Keywords: Sustainable Organizations, Circular Economy, Sustainable Implementation, Sustainable Manufacturing, Innovation, Change Management

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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