Sustainable Products in the Circular Economy

Impact on Business and Society

Magdalena Wojnarowska, Marek Ćwiklicki, Carlo Ingrao, Magdalena Wojnarowska, Marek Ćwiklicki, Carlo Ingrao

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000570489
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Économie
• Subtopic: Développement durable

This book explores how the circular economy influences product design in today's business and society. Drawing on contributions from a wide range of expert thinkers, this volume assesses the existing approaches, strategies and tools which facilitate socially and environmentally responsible production and consumption systems. It then goes on to highlight the ways in which the circular economy conceptual framework could be implemented effectively at both micro (product policy) and macro (sustainable consumption) levels in order to alter the industrial landscape and increase its interconnectedness with materials and scarce resources. Highlighting the pros and cons of transitioning to this new model, the book also cautions that it will only be made possible via significant behavior change at both industry and consumer levels. Sustainable Products in the Circular Economy will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable manufacturing, sustainable consumption, corporate social responsibility and business ethics. It will also be relevant to industry professionals whose work dovetails with these areas.

1 Characteristics of sustainable products

Magdalena Wojnarowska, Mariusz Sołtysik, and Carlo Ingrao

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179788-1

Introduction

The economy of the last 150 years has been based upon a one-way track model (take, make, use, and dispose) that was characterised by the extraction of resources for production and consumption and by no plans for reutilising waste or actively regenerating the economy (Venkata Mohan, Modestra, Amulya, Butti, & Velvizhi, 2016). Over time, that linear model of the economy has been shown to be responsible for a number of problems, mainly related to the fact that:

• Virgin materials are extracted faster than the capacity for their replenishment;
• Post-use products are often land filled or are treated in incineration plants, with the consequence that valuable and scarce natural resources are extracted anew – and so the original resources are lost for the manufacturing of new products;
• The unsafe way in which waste is managed, which is often characteristic of the linear economy, leads to hazardous substances that leach into soil, water, and air and thus generates alarming conditions of environmental pollution;
• The manufacturing and the transportation of products are responsible for extensive energy usage and environmental pollution.

Hence, linear economies can be considered to be totally unsustainable from each of the environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability (Ingrao, Arcidiacono, Siracusa, Niero, & Traverso, 2018; Korhonen, Nuur, Feldmann, & Birkie, 2018).

In this context, the Circular Economy (CE) may represent a valid alternative, as it would help to maintain products, components, and materials at their highest level of utility and value (Ingrao, Arcidiacono, Siracusa, Niero, & Traverso, 2021; Webster, 2020).

A sustainable CE involves the design and promotion of products that last and that can be reused, repaired, and remanufactured before being recycled. This aspect is a priority when implementing CE models, as it best retains the functional value of products, rather than just recovering the material or energy content and continuously making products anew. The CE, in fact, outlines how to reuse, repair, and recycle items, thereby reducing waste and, overall, increasing sustainable manufacturing and consumption. In addition to this, the approach contributes to saving energy and helping to avoid irreversible environmental damage due to the extraction and usage of resources at a rate that exceeds the aforementioned capacity of the earth to renew them (EU, 2019).

The CE is, in fact, different from the linear economy, because it is essentially based upon slowing and closing resource loops: two features that can be considered to be complementary rather than alternatives to each other. In particular, slowing happens when long-life goods and product-life extension solutions are designed. Therefore, the utilisation time of products is extended and/or intensified, thereby contributing to the slowing down of resource flows. Whereas closing occurs when the loop between end-of-life and production is closed, with the consequence that post-use products are recirculated within the life cycle as zero-burden resources to produce secondary raw materials (Moraga et al., 2019).

In an eco-design-based CE, consumable products such as food, drinks, cosmetics, and detergents should be produced with the minimum impact on resources and should be consumed generating as little waste as possible. While meeting these requirements, actions should be taken to minimise the emissions into the environment and impacts on the climate across the whole life cycle (EU, 2019). According to the EU (EU, 2019), this would result in less usage of resources, less waste, more jobs in repair and recycling sectors, and monetary savings, while maintaining the services provided by products.

Products that are obtained from such CE-based production systems can be considered to be more sustainable than the conventional ones (EU, 2019). So, in the light of the aforementioned points, there is evidence of the potential of CE to contribute to enhancing the sustainability of products and services from a life-cycle perspective. This can be considered as one main reason why CE has been receiving a lot of attention from researchers, decision- and policy-makers, and managers (Hysa, Kruja, Rehman, & Laurenti, 2020). As a matter of fact, Geissdoerfer, Savaget, Bocken, and Hultink (2017) highlighted that the CE is a condition for sustainability, as it acts like a regenerative system that minimises material and energy inputs as well as emissions and wastes. It is, however, desirable that CE-oriented measures are tested using tools like Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) already in the design phase, so that the CE can be truly effective in making material and energy commodities holistically sustainable from a life-cycle perspective (Ingrao et al., 2021).

So, it is in the light of this understanding that CE and sustainability are intricately connected and feed off each other. It is this interaction leading to the manufacturing of sustainable products that this chapter wants to explore with a focus on the Italian and Polish strategies in this area, in line with the overall objective of the book project that this chapter is a part of.

After an in-depth analysis of the state of the art in the CE, the chapter includes a section dedicated to exploring the ways the application of CE measures can enable products to be made sustainably.

At the end, in the second part of this chapter, CE strategies for sustainable product manufacturing are explored at the European level with a focus on those implemented by Poland and Italy.

Circular Economy: analysis of the state of the arts

The interest towards CE has led to a divergence in views on the methods of assessment and measurement of implementation of the CE and an overwhelming number of different definitions that currently dominate the specialised literature on the subject. This results in a lack of conceptual clarity and of any accepted definition of the CE, as has also been documented by several studies in the literature.

All of these definitions relevantly address the different facets of the CE, with the consequence of generating discrepancies.

However, what those definitions seem to have in common is the vision of the CE as a sustainable economic model where economic growth is decoupled from material consumption through the reduction and recirculation of natural resources (Corona et al., 2019; Ingrao et al., 2021). In the CE, goods at the end of their life cycle as well as the waste generated during the manufacturing and use/maintenance of those goods are in fact reutilised as zero-burden resources. The latter are utilised as material inputs in recycling processes for the production of secondary raw materials that, then, are manufactured into value-added commodities (Ingrao et al., 2018, 2021).

Recent reviews of the literature seeking to identify the key conceptual elements of the CE and their relationships to other concepts, like Sustainable Development, point to the CE as an alternative model of production and consumption and even a growth strategy that allows resource use to be decoupled from economic growth, thus contributing to Sustainable Development (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017). Therefore, both Sustainable Development (SD) and the CE have now become key concepts for creating a sustainable, low-carbon, resource-efficient, and competitive economy. The relationship between SD and the CE is confirmed by a research done by González-Ruiz, Botero-Botero, and Duque-Grisales (2018), who indicated eco-innovation, eco-design, and waste management as the main trends in CE research, as well as the relations of the CE to Sustainable Development. Cecchin, Salomone, Deutz, Raggi, and Cutaia (2021) and others add that the concept of the CE proposes a rebuilding of the production and consumption system into a regenerative system by closing the entry and exit cycles of the economy, which could help in the transition to a sustainable future. Thus, the concept of the CE follows an evolutionary path similar to that of SD, but at a much faster pace (Cecchin et al., 2021). It should be emphasised that integrating Sustainable Development and the CE with industrial activities should include changes in production processes with a view to minimising their impact on the environment. This involves the development of new ecological products and even the redesign of the business model, which has several environmental and socioeconomic benefits (Kallis, 2011). Despite numerous studies on the relationship between the CE and SD, as noted by Millar, McLaughlin, and Börger (2019), it is still unclear how the CE promotes economic growth while protecting the environment and ensuring intra- and intergenerational social equality (Millar et al., 2019). Due to numerous doubts raised by authors in the literature on the subject, one can also find more critical voices regarding the CE, which questioned the potential attributed to the CE (Hobson, 2013; Lazarevic & Valve, 2017). The 2011 UNEP Report “Decoupling natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth” also reveals that related Sustainable Development concepts and approaches, such as industrial ecology (IE), eco-efficiency, and cleaner production (CP), have contributed to achieving relative but not absolute decoupling from production (UNEP, 2011). Also, according to Kiser (2016), economic growth clearly contradicts the concept of resource efficiency in the supply chain, because the goal of selling more materials and using fewer resources is an environmental paradox (Kiser, 2016). In addition to this, other authors have also questioned the thermodynamic parameters of the CE and emphasise the need to consider environmental impacts and resource consumption when implementing a CE strategy to avoid overestimating their benefits, which is not often done in practice (Bianchini, Rossi, & Pellegrini, 2019; Korhonen, Honkasalo, & Seppälä, 2018). Research by Zink and Geyer (2017) shows how separation can be weakened by the rebound effect (Zink & Geyer, 2017). The social consequences of implementing the CE, an often overlooked aspect in research to date, also need to be addressed (Murray, Skene, & Haynes, 2017; Sauvé, Bernard, & Sloan, 2016; Schulz, Hjaltadóttir, & Hild, 2019).

Sustainable products

Increasing pressure to adopt a more sustainable approach to both product design and manufacturing is one of the key challenges facing industries in the twenty-first century. This situation is moreover influenced by the growing total number of products, the increasing diversity of products and their functions, new types of products being created as a result of innovation, global product turnover, and increasing product complexity (Thorpe, 2015). According to Garg (2015), the manufacturing sector accounts for almost half of the world’s total energy consumption, which has doubled over the past 60 years. These are reasons why manufacturers are not only under enormous pressure to be competitive on the one hand through increased productivity, but, on the other hand, under enormous pressure to deliver more sustainable products (due to an increased awareness of environmental responsibility) as well.

Previous research combining the concept of Sustainable Development with products, however, focussed mainly on an ecological product, that is one that is beneficial for the environment (Bhardwaj, Garg, Ram, Gajpal, & Zheng, 2020; Biswas & Roy, 2015; Nuryakin & Maryati, 202...