Cleaner production as an antecedent for circular economy paradigm shift at the micro-level: Evidence from a home appliance manufacturer

By T. T. Sousa-Zomer, Lucas Magalhães, E. Zancul, L. M. Campos, P. Cauchick-Miguel. Journal of Cleaner Production, 2018

144 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The concept of circularity has been widely discussed in the literature, but the implementation of the circular economy at the micro-level remains unexplored. It is still not clear what are the antecedents for circular economy implementation at the industry level, instead of cleaner production principles and practices have been discussed as essential for circular economy adoption from the bottom up, but more empirical studies are still necessary to better understand the adoption and effects of cleaner production in promoting circular economy. Thus, this paper aims to explore the cleaner production principles and practices adopted by a manufacturing company located in an emerging economy in order to understand how these were valuable in foster circular economy implementation. A case-based research approach was adopted in this investigation. The circular economy practices introduced by the company were analyzed by considering their connections with the requirements when transitioning to a circular economy paradigm, within company-related processes in addition to circular economy areas at the micro-level. An inductive approach was adopted for data analysis to develop some propositions regarding circular economy interactions. The main findings revealed that cleaner production practices for product optimization are valuable to circular economy implementation regarding circular product design strategies. The cleaner production principle of input substitution is valuable for reducing input and use of natural resources as well as increasing the share of renewable and recyclable resources. Technological optimization can contribute to reducing emissions levels. In addition, field data showed that cleaner production practices at the production area enable circular economy practices to be implemented at the micro-level, as well as there is a connection with other circular economy areas (i.e. waste management, consumption, and support). Moreover, the findings confirmed that all cleaner production practices and principles implemented by the organization are connected to each other and across the processes. Further studies may focus on testing the propositions developed in this study in other manufacturing contexts, as well as on the investigation of possible cause-effect relationships that may exist between cleaner production and circular economy transition pathways.

Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Marketing, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cd2fd527f0544fc467a1df99aedc257188fe5f6e

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Citations in the corpus

Circular economy engagement: Altruism, status, and cultural orientation as drivers for sustainable consumption (2021, background): “The present work will focus on consumers central role in CE, considering that a transition towards a more sustainable production via CE is a challenge that requires the cooperation and coordination with consumer actions and societal impact (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2013; Merli et al., 2018; Sousa”
Linkages between big data analytics, circular economy, sustainable supply chain flexibility, and sustainable performance in manufacturing firms (2021, methodology): “The measures for CE practices at the organisational level were first developed by Zhu, Geng, and Lai (2010) and used in other studies with modifications (Sousa-Zomer et al. 2018).”