Circular economy strategies for mitigating critical material supply issues
By G. Gaustad, Mark Krystofik, M. Bustamante, K. Badami. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 2017
312 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract Raw materials deemed critical are defined as having potential issues in their supply, limited substitutes, and applications of importance, namely in clean energy, defense, healthcare, and electronics. Disruptions in supply of critical materials can have serious negative repercussions for firms, consumers, and economies. One potential set of mitigation strategies for firms dealing with criticality issues is the implementation of circular economy principles in their supply chain, operations, and end-of-life management. This work conducts a literature review combined with case study analysis to examine how certain firms assess and monitor their vulnerability to critical material supply chain issues and provides specific business examples for integrating circularity strategies. Results indicate the potential for risk reduction that could be gained from implementation of these strategies; specifically recycling, for example, can provide an in-house source (for prompt or fabrication scrap) or at least domestic source (for post-consumer scrap) for critical materials; up to 24% for the case of indium usage in China. Just in time manufacturing techniques have the potential to both exacerbate supply issues (by encouraging low inventory or needed resources for manufacturing) and improve supply issues by introducing resiliency in the supply chain indicating that approach of firms in undertaking these strategies is important. Many cases reviewed show other quantifiable secondary benefits beyond risk reduction, such as economic savings, reduction in energy consumption, and improved corporate social responsibility via enhanced supply chain oversight.
Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Strategy and Management
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/07d904277b4941880ada710977058f331455768e
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
In Strategy and Management
Citations in the corpus
- Investigation of circular economy practices in the context of emerging economies: a CoCoSo approach (2021, background): “Gaustad et al. (2018) recommended circularity strategies at the firm level by examining the critical material supply chain.”
- Evaluating Circular Economy under a Multi-Parametric Approach: A Technological Review (2019, background): “Circularity can also be perceived in various ways in lesser-utilized remanufacturing [13].”