Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability (Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management) 3030902161, 9783030902162

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Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management Series Editors: Christoph Herrmann, Sami Kara

Pezhman Ghadimi Michael D. Gilchrist Ming Xu   Editors

Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability

Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management Series Editors Christoph Herrmann, Braunschweig, Germany Sami Kara, Sydney, Australia

SPLCEM publishes authored conference proceedings, contributed volumes and authored monographs that present cutting-edge research information as well as new perspectives on classical fields, while maintaining Springer’s high standards of excellence, the content is peer reviewed. This series focuses on the issues and latest developments towards sustainability in production based on life cycle thinking. Modern production enables a high standard of living worldwide through products and services. Global responsibility requires a comprehensive integration of sustainable development fostered by new paradigms, innovative technologies, methods and tools as well as business models. Minimizing material and energy usage, adapting material and energy flows to better fit natural process capacities, and changing consumption behaviour are important aspects of future production. A life cycle perspective and an integrated economic, ecological and social evaluation are essential requirements in management and engineering. **Indexed in Scopus** To submit a proposal or request further information, please use the PDF Proposal Form or contact directly: Petra Jantzen, Applied Sciences Editorial, email:[email protected]

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/10615

Pezhman Ghadimi · Michael D. Gilchrist · Ming Xu Editors

Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability

Editors Pezhman Ghadimi Laboratory for Advanced Manufacturing Simulation and Robotics School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering University College Dublin Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

Michael D. Gilchrist School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering University College Dublin Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

Ming Xu School for Environment and Sustainability University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI, USA

ISSN 2194-0541 ISSN 2194-055X (electronic) Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management ISBN 978-3-030-90216-2 ISBN 978-3-030-90217-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90217-9 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

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Role of Circular Resources and the Importance of Developing Circular Models in Product Design, Manufacturing and Supply Chains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pezhman Ghadimi, Michael D. Gilchrist, and Ming Xu Circular Data Framework Throughout the Whole Value Chain from Mining to Manufacturing, from Refurbishing to Recycling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . T. Shevchenko and Y. Danko Website Communication Capabilities and Content Related to Environmental Management—An Empirical Study of European Production Companies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . H. H. Thimm and K. B. Rasmussen Proposal for Integration of Circular Economy Within Product Portfolio Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daniel Jugend, Paula de Camargo Fiorini, Débora Amarante Teles, Fabiano Armellini, and Marco Antonio Paula Pinheiro Barriers to Closed-Loop Supply Chains Implementation in Irish Medical Device Manufacturers: Bayesian Best–Worst Method Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Kelly, Pezhman Ghadimi, and Chao Wang

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The Emergence of Circular Economy SMEs in Hong Kong: What is Needed to Invigorate the Dynamic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Steuer

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A Quantitative Approach for Product Disassemblability Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ammar Ali, Christian Enyoghasi, and Fazleena Badurdeen

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A Review on the Life Cycle Assessment Phases of Cement and Concrete Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nitin Ankur and Navdeep Singh Use of Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement and Recycled Waste Glass as Partial Aggregate Replacements in Concrete Pavements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nisha Patel, Shohel Amin, and Rahat Iqbal

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10 Recycling of Chrome-Copper-Arsenic Timber Through Cement Particleboard Manufacture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 J. L. Liow, A. Khennane, M. Muley, H. Sorial, and E. Katoozi 11 Circular Economy in the Textile Industry: Evidence from the Prato District . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Gianmarco Bressanelli, Caterina Nesi, Nicola Saccani, and Filippo Visintin 12 Environmentally Friendly Disposal of End-Of-Life Plastics for Asphalt Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Valentina Beghetto, Noemi Bardella, Vanessa Gatto, Silvia Conca, Roberto Sole, Nicola Ongaro, and Giacomo Molin 13 LCA of Reusing Carbon Fibers Recycled Through Solvolysis Process of Thermoset Composites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 A. D. La Rosa, V. Leistad, and Z. Gavric 14 The Governance of Circular Plastics Supply Chain Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Felix Carl Schultz and Sebastian Everding

Chapter 1

Role of Circular Resources and the Importance of Developing Circular Models in Product Design, Manufacturing and Supply Chains Pezhman Ghadimi , Michael D. Gilchrist , and Ming Xu Abstract The most recent research findings that were presented at the 2021 International Conference on Resource Sustainability (icRS 2021), held virtually at University College Dublin, Ireland, are introduced briefly in this preface. The wide range of topics were thematically focussed on four distinctly different areas, all of which are of critical importance in addressing the demands posed by the societal need for sustainability of increasingly scarce resources, i.e. (1) the role of circular economy in manufacturing, supply chain, and waste management (2) environmental and sustainability assessment frameworks and tools, (3) innovative case studies and (4) legislation and policy. Furthermore, the role of circular resources and the importance of developing circular models in product design, manufacturing and supply chain are discussed. Finally, related future research gaps and opportunities are presented. It is hoped that this collection of articles will reflect the scientific state-of-the-art and be a useful point of reference for researchers, policymakers and funding agencies alike. Keywords Circular economy · Waste management · Life cycle analysis · Resource sustainability · Circular life cycle

1.1 Introduction New business models, opportunities, and markets have been created as a result of considering a circular approach in treating resources (European Commission 2019a). P. Ghadimi (B) Laboratory for Advanced Manufacturing Simulation and Robotics, School of Mechanical & Materials Engineering, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] M. D. Gilchrist School of Mechanical & Materials Engineering, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland M. Xu School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Ghadimi et al. (eds.), Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability, Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90217-9_1

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Plastic-, and steel-based products are where some of the most important opportunities exist. In the case of plastic-based products, in 2017, it was estimated that over e350 billion worth of jobs exists per year in the plastics industry in the European economic system. Increased consumption of virgin materials and the low recycling rate of various products are two of the most important hurdles in moving toward a circular economy (European Commission 2017). In 2016 alone, only 31.1% of the collected 27.1 million tonnes of plastic waste in Europe were recycled, i.e. 8.4 million tonnes (Plastics Europe 2018). The rest was either incinerated or sent to landfill due to their poor safety requirements, lack of heterogeneity, and difficulty for disassembly and recycling. Surprisingly, only 63% of the 8.4 million tonnes of plastic wastes were recycled inside the EU which adds more uncertainty in the supply of highquality recycled plastics to the EU market (European Commission 2019b). A very low proportion (9%) of the world economy can be attributed to full circularity which signifies many rooms for improvement in designing circular products and services (European Commission 2019a). Considering only plastics alone, the EU Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy recognises important arrangements allowing multi-stakeholder engagement and partnership along the value chain. Voluntary industry pledges can be considered as an example of such engagement to increase the acceptance of recycled plastics-based products. However, upon further evaluating those pledges, reaching the objective of 10 million tonnes of recycled plastics-based products by 2025 still requires more effort. It is estimated that there would be 6.2 million tonnes of these recycled plastics which is still less than the 10 million tonnes of estimated supply (European Commission 2019b). This supply–demand gap calls for more research and development into plastic-based product re-design, remanufacturing, recyclability, and waste management supply networks. Similar discussion can be made for steel as a widely metallic material, that in its various forms and applications can be recycled and reused (Lin et al. 2021). For instance, in 2018 on average, 900 kg of used materials in the 95.6 million produced motor vehicles was steel (World Steel Association 2018). By designing steel products for easier remanufacturing, dismantling and recycling, even more resources can be conserved. Steel’s durability ensures that many products can be partially or fully reused at the end of their life. This can, of course, extend the life cycle of the steel product significantly (World Steel Association 2015). After reviewing the aforementioned literature, it can be perceived that initial design based on life cycle thinking is critical if reuse and recyclability is to succeed (World Steel Association 2015). Product design and manufacturing engineering should anticipate end-of-life strategies. Redesign, remanufacturing, recycling technologies, and life-cycle analysis approaches should recover, re-use, and upgrade functions and materials from various products even low-value and low-criticality products. For instance, in Europe, since 2006, an end-of-life policy for vehicles was set such that a minimum of 85% of the vehicle’s material would need to be reusable and recyclable by 2015 (Sabaghi et al. 2016). As a result of shortened product life cycles and increasing awareness about the environment, legislators have established progressively stricter regulations for product manufacturers.

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1.2 The Need for Circular Resources in Industries Recycling consists of recovery by disassembling a product to its component, and material levels and reprocessing them into a useful form. Such recovery requires the suitability of a product for ease of disassembly, given its constituent materials. For instance, recyclable medical plastics have a 20–25% share of medical waste in the medical device industry (Kane et al. 2018), with growing global market size of up to £29.4 billion by 2025 (BCC Publishing 2020). Plastics play a vital role in the automotive industry due to their safety, versatility, durability, lightweight, and flexibility. In Europe alone, five million tonnes of plastics are annually used in this sector with 1.2 million tonnes of plastics getting to their end-of-life (EoL). In other markets, such as Asia–Pacific, automotive plastics are estimated to grow to £29.2 billion by 2024 which is even more than what has been estimated for the European market by 2024 (BCC Publishing 2019). Even with incorporating the circularity in product design and re-design, the EoL of products is still challenging for waste management systems, depending on the type of waste and industry (Plastic Recyclers Europe 2019). To increase tackle the demand– supply gap of the quality recycled materials to the EU market, all stakeholders in the value chain require an adequate feedstock. Hence, an ample amount of waste needs to be managed for recycling. This requires more waste, e.g. plastics, to be collected and sorted with better quality (European Commission 2019b). In other words, crucial for the market is to secure a persistent flow of recyclable materials to ensure that recycled materials can be part of the value chain and become available for use by various manufacturers. The discrete collection and sorting of resources from different sectors must be improved rapidly (Plastic Recyclers Europe 2019). This will require innovative and integrated waste treatment methods and circular supply chain designs to turn waste into an opportunity for creating a resource and value. Overall, progressive approaches are essential for an effective evolution from a linear to a circular model in product design, manufacturing and supply chain. This requires collaboration among various stakeholders from the entire value chain. Approaches to improve the visibility of life cycles and EoL stages of various products are needed to improve the quality of recycled materials.

1.3 The 2021 International Conference on Resource Sustainability in Dublin Sustainable development depends on significant improvements in the efficient use of resources. It requires a holistic global life cycle perspective from producers to end consumers, especially in a closed loop fashion. Consequently, communities, governmental and business organisations have sought methods for the reuse, recycling, remanufacturing and recovery of products and materials, thereby extending their useful life and reducing quantities of waste. The United Nations’ Sustainable

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Development Goals (SDGs) target “doing more and better with less”, which means decreasing resource utilization, degradation, and pollution along the entire life cycle, together with an increase in lifestyle quality, can improve the social benefits of economic activities. The resulting paradigm shift has been popularly and broadly termed as the circular economy (CE) (Singh et al. 2019). The series of International Conferences on Resource Sustainability (icRS) allows researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas on latest developments in resource sustainability. icRS 2021 aimed to provide rich opportunities for collaboration between researchers and industrial practitioners in order to advance the critical role of CE in resources sustainability as it pertains to underdeveloped, developing and developed economies. The conference had five keynote addresses. Cllr Lettie McCarthy, An Cathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Ireland, gave a talk based around three of the Council’s Core Values. These values are Climate First—adopting a climate first approach to decision making, Collaborative—working in partnership to build consensus and achieving better outcomes through strong engagement with internal and external stakeholders, and Courageous—acting bravely to embrace change. In his keynote address, Prof. Arpad Horvath, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, highlighted the need to manage the life cycles of infrastructure components with resource depletion, rising economic costs, changing societal expectations, climate change, and an everchanging global society in view. He highlighted that using average data and assuming that all infrastructure components are the same throughout their life cycle around the world is unhelpful for robust decision making. A paradigm shift is required of all stakeholders. Prof. Fu Guo, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China, discussed the current status of development of waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs) recycling in China, including both policy and technology aspects. Finally, the role of resources in a circular economy towards a carbon neutral and net zero future was presented by Prof. Lenny Koh, Professor in Operations Management at the University of Sheffield’s Management School. Her talk discussed the fundamental role of resources in a circular economy, and debated the challenges and opportunities for paradigm shifts that would transition away from a linear economy to a resource-efficient circular economy. More than 220 participants from all around the world presented their recent research findings regarding various aspects of resources and materials sustainability. These presentations were broadly related to the following topics: (i) Efficiency and environmental impacts of resource utilization, (ii) Waste reduction, reuse, recycling and recovery, (iii) Sustainable consumption and production, (iv) Cleaner production and supply chains, (v) Resource and waste management, (vi) Environmental and sustainability assessment, (vii) Food-energy-water nexus, (viii) Circular economy, (ix) Education for Sustainable Development, and (x) Governance, legislation, and policy for sustainability.

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1.4 Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability Thirteen articles were selected from the contributed conference papers to icRS 2021: it is these that formed the basis of the chapters that are published in this book. The authors of these articles have disseminated the outputs from either early or advanced stages of their research. These thirteen articles are categorised in four thematic sections, i.e. (1) the role of circular economy in manufacturing, supply chain, and waste management (2) environmental and sustainability assessment frameworks and tools, (3) innovative case studies and (4) legislation and policy. The target audiences of this book are researchers in the field of circular economy and resources as well as industrial practitioners and policy makers.

References BCC Publishing (2019) Automotive plastics: Asia-Pacific markets. https://www.bccresearch.com/ market-research/plastics/automotive-plastics-market-report.html. Accessed 10 Sept 2021 BCC Publishing (2020) Medical plastics: global markets. https://www.bccresearch.com/market-res earch/plastics/medical-plastics-global-markets.html. Accessed 10 Sept 2021 European Commission (2017) Reinventing plastics closing the circle programme. In: Stakeholder conference, Brussels. https://ec.europa.eu/info/plastics-conference_en European Commission (2019a) Report from the commission to the European parliament, the council, the European economic and social committee and the committee of the regions on the implementation of the Circular Economy Action Plan. COM/2019/190 final. https://eur-lex. europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52019DC0190 European Commission (2019b) Assessment report of the voluntary pledges under Annex III of the European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy. SWD(2019) EN 91 final. (https://data.con silium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-7121-2019-ADD-1/en/pdf). Kane GM, Bakker CA, Balkenende AR (2018) Towards design strategies for circular medical products. Resour Conserv Recycl 135:38–47 Lin Z, Song K, Yu X (2021) A review on wire and arc additive manufacturing of titanium alloy. J Manuf Process 70:24–45 Plastics Europe (2018) Plastics—the facts 2017. An analysis of European plastics production, demand and waste data. https://www.plasticseurope.org/application/files/5715/1717/4180/Pla stics_the_facts_2017_FINAL_for_website_one_page.pdf. Accessed 2 Sept 2021 Plastic Recyclers Europe (2019) The way ahead for automotive and electrical & electronic plastics waste. https://743c8380-22c6-4457-9895-11872f2a708a.filesusr.com/ugd/dda42a_7c4 b2fd509f443baa24b761b4bb35881.pdf. Accessed 2 Sept Sabaghi M, Mascle C, Baptiste P (2016) Evaluation of products at design phase for an efficient disassembly at end-of-life. J Clean Prod 116:177–186 Singh SP, Singh RK, Gunasekaran A, Ghadimi P (2019) Supply chain management, industry 4.0, and the circular economy. Resour Conserv Recycl 142:281–282 World Steel Association (2015) Steel in the circular economy: a life cycle perspective. Rue Colonel Bourg, 120 World Steel Association (2018) Steel in automotive. https://www.worldsteel.org/steel-by-topic/ steel-markets/automotive.html. Accessed 4 Aug 2021

Chapter 2

Circular Data Framework Throughout the Whole Value Chain from Mining to Manufacturing, from Refurbishing to Recycling T. Shevchenko and Y. Danko Abstract The paper attempts to develop a framework for circular data throughout the whole value chain from raw material mining to finished product manufacturing, from end-of-life products collection via refurbishing to recycled product manufacturing. In order to cover by metrics all enterprises belonging to different economy sectors, we propose to use the specific approach to measure circularity based on the segmentation of the whole resource cycle as a set of transformations of a substance or group of substances at all stages of its use by human. The findings contribute to development an industry standard for circular data by enterprises belonging to different economy sectors. Keywords Circular economy · Circular data · Circularity · Indicators · Metrics

2.1 Introduction The concept of a circular economy has become a significant school of thought in sustainable economics over the last years (Ranjbari et al. 2021). It is being widely explored by researchers and institutions as a possible path to increase the sustainability of economic system (Skene 2017; Elia et al. 2016). Recent momentum of a circular economy paradigm has been catalyzed by Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s ‘butterfly figure’ (Bocken et al. 2017) to illustrate the hierarchy of circular strategies with priority ‘reuse–repair–refurbishment–remanufacturing–repurpose–recycling’. To day the academic papers actualize the issue of circularity metrics to monitor the progress towards circular economy performance (Linder et al. 2017; Blomsma and Brennan 2017). In order to assess the progress and the effectiveness of actions at EU and national levels, it is important to have a set of reliable indicators (COM 2015; European Academies’ 2016). Despite numerous studies in the field of circularity measurement, some scientists point out that metrics focused on circularity are at T. Shevchenko (B) · Y. Danko Sumy National Agrarian University, Sumy, Ukraine e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Ghadimi et al. (eds.), Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability, Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90217-9_2

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the early stage of development (Giurco et al. 2014; Cayzer et al. 2017). Conceptual frameworks for measuring circularity are being developed (Elia et al. 2016; Iacovidou et al. 2017). This paper finds that while the circularity metrics place emphasis on the various indicators in terms of level, focus, units, which may contribute to more delicate assessment, it also encapsulates limitations are a lack of a single circular data frame to cover a wide range of pro-circular activities in terms of the 6R circular strategies. It is about the framework for circular data throughout the whole value chain from raw material mining to finished product manufacturing, from end-of-life (EoL) products collection via refurbishing to recycled product manufacturing. This circular data framework may contribute to the development of industry standard for circular dataset. As a final result, the matrix for circular data framework as a simplified version, which covers all sectors of economy, has been proposed and discussed. This matrix is developed based on the segmentation of the whole resource cycle as a specific tool to measure circularity. In addition, the paper attempts to categorize circular products to measure material and product circularity in conjunction.

2.2 Materials and Methods The beginning point for any metrics is a unit used to measure circularity. To quantify the circularity of material and product, existing metrics are based on different types of units such as mass (Foundations and Granta 2015; Haas et al. 2015; Park and Chertow 2014), frequency (number of turns) (Figge et al. 2018), time (the duration of specific turns) (Franklin-Johnson et al. 2016), and the number of processes (Bailey et al. 2008). In the case of mass unit, measurement can be carried out by using natural parameters (Haas et al. 2015) or cost parameters (Linder et al. 2017). From the perspective of contribution to circularity or linearity, the indicators can measure positive or negative outputs in the system. Any circularity assessment methodology can be based either on a single synthetic indicator or a set of multiple indicators usually divided into several categories (Elia et al. 2016). Material and product circularity can be assessed at all levels (European Academies’ 2016; Ghisellini et al. 2016), including the micro- or individual firm level (company), the meso- or inter-firm level (city, industrial park, industrial sector), and the macro-level (national, regional). It worth be noted state-of-the-art recent studies such as a taxonomy of circular economy indicators (Saidani et al. 2019) and a multiple correspondence analysis of 63 metrics (Parchomenko et al. 2019). Elia and colleagues (2016) proposed a four-element framework for a measurement of the circular economy that consists of the processes to be monitored, the actions involved, the requirements to be measured, and the implementation levels. The scientists outline five main phases that represent the processes to be monitored: material input, design, production, consumption, and end-of-life resource management (Elia et al. 2016). A number of similar methodologies are used to measure the circularity with such wide range of targets (Iacovidou et al. 2017) probably due to the fact that

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some scientists consider the circular economy model as a tool for operationalization of the sustainable development concept (Skene 2017; Murray et al. 2015). Considering the closing and slowing the loop strategies to be the focal points in a circular economy (Stahel 2010), the objects of its implementation are the value of a material and the value of a product. Hence, the circularity phenomenon that relates exclusively to a specific material and product should be assessed. In support of this thesis, Linder and colleagues (2017) argued that robust product-level circularity metric should focus exclusively on measurements of circularity without a consideration of any aspects of product quality, such as environmental performance. L‘ebre and colleagues (2017) provided a framework for circularity evaluation at a mine level highlighting that an economic system is continuously depended on primary extraction. We consider a framework for circular data as a means of capturing data about progress towards a circular economy. However, preliminary step in a CE operationalization is translating concepts into constructors, in our case, to translate 6R concepts (reuse, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing, repurpose and recycling) into constructors (a system of indicators). Hence, core issue is to identify pro-circular activities of all stakeholders with subsequent translating their relevant 6R activities into constructors. To cover all economy sectors by metrics, one more issue in terms of scope is to extend metric from mining of raw material to manufacturing of final product, from collection of end-of-life product via restoration to manufacturing of recycled product.

2.3 Results Given the scope for circular data, the concept of resource cycle (Komar 1975) could be useful tool to cover all possible activities. According to Komar (1975), a resource cycle is a set of transformations and spatial movements of a substance or group of substances occurring at all stages of its use by human. We propose to divide a resource cycle into two segments, in particular ‘transforming mineral into material’ (mining— processing—enrichment) and ‘transforming material into product’ (production— using—production’) (Fig. 2.1). The circularity of material and product occurs within the resource cycle second segment, in fact, the second segment is a cycle of multiple material turnover in a circular economy (Shevchenko and Danko 2021). Any process within the resource cycle (see Fig. 2.1), including reproductive processes such as recycling, remanufacturing, and refurbishing, has its own outputs: desirable and undesirable. According to the logic of circularity, corresponding reproductive process must be found for any undesirable output. The level of undesirable outputs coverage by available technologies could be the one-size-fits-all, to some extent, for measuring circularity of enterprises belonging to this segment. Let’s structure all enterprises forming resource cycle by closing and slowing the loop. The following four sectors of enterprises could be outlined: • For the first segment ‘transforming mineral into material’

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Repair Refurbishment Remanufacturing

Mining Processing

Enrichment

Production of 1st product

ith turn of specific material

The segment of material circularity

Fig. 2.1 Resource cycle segmentation as a tool to cover the whole spectrum of pro-circular activities

• Sector A—raw materials mining, processing and enrichment enterprises, • For the second segment ‘multiple transforming material into products’ • Sector B—manufacturing, remanufacturing, refurbishing of product/module/unit enterprises, • Sector C—secondary raw materials recycling enterprises, • Sector D—services sector enterprises for collection, dismantling, sorting of end-of-life products, repair. To quantify the circularity, existing metrics are based on different types of units and indicators (Foundations and Granta 2015; Park and Chertow 2014; FranklinJohnson et al. 2016; Bailey et al. 2008) which, to one degree or another, can serve as the basis for interpenetration the circular data frame covering the entire spectrum of pro-circular activities. However, the issue of a set of more relevant indicators selection for a particular enterprise belonging to a particular sector requires additional investigation. Within this short paper we propose to use the level of undesirable outputs coverage by available technologies as a main indicator of circular data for A sector enterprises, and as additional one for B, C, D sectors. Besides, the circular product is the focal point in the issue of circularity measurement for B sector enterprises. When we assign a ‘circular’ characteristic to a product, this means that it makes a contribution to one or another circular strategy implementation. Moreover, a product can contribute to several strategies simultaneously. In any case, when justifying the specific product contribution to a circular economy, it is advisable to talk about the timeline (temporary affiliation) namely this is the

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Closing the loop

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Recycled product

Past waste prevention

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Recyclable product

Future waste prevention

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Refurbished product Remanufactured product Up-cycled product Shared product Used before product

Reusable product

Slowing the loop

Fig. 2.2 Circular products allocation by the categorical features ‘waste prevention time’ and ‘type of contribution’

contribution to closing and/or slowing the loop in the future or past or even both (Fig. 2.2). In our opinion, for a more objective measurement of the enterprise’s contribution, it is essential to take into account a temporary affiliation the product’s contribution towards circularity. Hence we acknowledge necessity to use different categories of circular product for circular data because of the difference in contribution for closing or slowing the loop as well as in time of waste prevention past or future. Based on the product characteristics’ combinations namely past and future slowing and closing the loop respectively (see Fig. 2.2), the following fifteen categories of circular products were identified: (1) future closing the loop based product, (2) future slowing the loop based product, (3) future closing and slowing the loop based product, (4) past closing the loop based product, (5) past slowing the loop based product, (6) past closing and slowing the loop based product, (7) future and past closing the loop based product, (8) future and past slowing the loop based product, (9) future slowing and past closing the loop based product, (10) future slowing and past closing and slowing the loop based product, (11) future closing and past slowing the loop based product, (12) future closing and past closing and slowing the loop based product, (13) future closing and slowing and past slowing the loop based product, (14) future closing and slowing and past closing the loop based product, (15) future and past closing and slowing the loop based product. As a result of systematization of above mentioned arguments, the simplified version of circular data matrix by four economy sectors is presented in the Table 1.1. The matrix has been structured based on the list of possible circular data

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throughout the whole value chain from raw material mining to finished product manufacturing, from end-of-life products collection via refurbishing to recycled product manufacturing. Due to article length limit, bellow we elucidate how to apply the proposed circular data matrix in the part of B sector enterprises as a key sector where the material and product’s circularity manly takes place. A few brief examples to specific products are considered to clarify some cases the circular data dealing with product’s production reflects various contribution. Particularly noteworthy are examples of certain types of products produced from biodegradable materials. Namely, the spectacle frame produced from coffee waste belongs intrinsically to the category ‘future and past closing the loop based product’ because of it has the potential for closing the loop in the future with contribution to waste prevention in the past. This product has a great contribution to a circular economy given the temporary affiliation to the future and past simultaneously. Similar characteristics have biodegradable bags which belong to the category ‘future closing the loop based product’ as having the potential for closing the loop in the future without contribution in waste prevention in the past. Furthermore, examples of certain categories of electrical and electronic equipment are remarkable too. For instance, a fair phone has potential for closing and slowing the loop in the future with some contribution in waste prevention in the past. This product fall under the category ‘future closing and slowing and past closing the loop based product’. The fair phone has a great contribution to the circular economy considering the combination of circular strategies, from one side, and the temporary affiliation of value maintenance to the future and past, from the other. One more example is small electronics with characteristics such as reusable, repairable, dismountable etc. refer to the category ‘future slowing loop based product’ as having the potential for slowing the loop in the future and without contribution in waste prevention in the past. The data dealing with various circular products produced by enterprises should be displayed in the appropriate places in the circular data matrix (see Table 2.1) thereby providing objective information about specific enterprise’s contribution to a circular economy. It will allow comparing the contribution of enterprises belonging to the same product industry in the future.

2.4 Conclusion The circular economy represents the most recent attempt to conceptualize the integration of economic activity and environmental wellbeing in a sustainable way (Murray et al. 2015; Petrushenko and Shevchenko 2013). Although a debate the full conceptualization of the circular economy model is still ongoing in the scientific community, the issue of its operationalization requires to be investigated. The main aspect of the operationalization consists in translating 6R concepts into constructors as a system of indicators, finding means for fixing characteristics of objects (indicators), substantiating these characteristics, and, ultimately, direct fixing of characteristics that are

2 Circular Data Framework Throughout the Whole Value Chain from Mining …

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Table 2.1 The matrix of circular data framework covering all economy sectors (simplified version) Sector

Enterprises

Type of main activity

Type of pro-circular activity

Relevant constructor (circular data)

Circular data

A

a1, a2, …, an (by the type of raw material)

Mining, processing, enrichment

Utilization of undesirable outputs for a specific process

1 Coverage of undesirable outputs by available technologies (in percentage)

Data

B

b1, b2, …, bn (by the type of product/part)

Manufacturing, remanufacturing, refurbishing, up-cycling of product/unit

Production of pro-circular products

1 The volume/percentage of produced pro-circular products, including by the categories:

Data

1.1 Future closing Data the loop based product (Recyclable product)

Utilization of undesirable outputs for a process

1.2 Future slowing the loop based product (Reusable product)

Data

1.3 Future closing and slowing the loop based product (Recyclable and reusable product)

Data

1.4 Past closing the loop based product (Recycled product)

Data

…

…

2 Replacement percentage of the primary resources by the secondary ones

Data

3 Percentage of replacement of the new parts by the used before ones

Data

…

…

Coverage of undesirable output by available technologies (in percentage)

Data

(continued)

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T. Shevchenko and Y. Danko

Table 2.1 (continued) Sector

Enterprises

Type of main activity

Type of pro-circular activity

Relevant constructor (circular data)

Circular data

C

c1, c2, …, cn (by the type of secondary raw material)

Recycling of secondary raw materials

Recycling of secondary raw material

Percentage of secondary material

Data

Utilization of undesirable outputs for a specific process

Coverage of undesirable outputs by available technologies (in percentage)

Data

d1, d2, …, dn (by the type of services)

Collection of end-of-life products2.1

Collection of EoL products

The volume of Data collected EoL products by the type of product

Dismantling, identification and sorting of EoL products2.1

Dismantling, identification and sorting of EoL products

1 Percentage/mass of dismantled EoL products

Data

2 Percentage/mass of parts/modules identified as functional to be reused

Data

3 Percentage/mass of old products identified for refurbishing and remanufacturing

Data

D

4 Percentage/mass Data of parts identified as secondary raw materials Utilization of undesirable outputs for a specific process

Coverage of undesirable outputs by available technologies (in percentage)

Data

Repair and maintenance2.1

Repairing and maintenance

Number of product’s units repaired

Data

Sharing of products2.1

Sharing of products

Number of product’s units shared

Data

(continued)

2 Circular Data Framework Throughout the Whole Value Chain from Mining …

15

Table 2.1 (continued) Sector

Enterprises

Type of main activity

Type of pro-circular activity

Relevant constructor (circular data)

Circular data

Other services2

Utilization of undesirable outputs for a specific process

Coverage of undesirable outputs by available technologies (in percentage)

Data

2.1 Services 2 Services

with main activities that relevant to pro-circular activities with main activities that not relevant to pro-circular activities

available for observation and measurement. This paper attempts to develop a circular data framework by enterprises belonging to different economy sectors to cover the entire spectrum of pro-circular activities by relevant metrics. We propose to use the specific approach to measure circularity based on the segmentation of the whole resource cycle. The circular economy metrics should cover all stages of transformation substance rather than the phases of product life cycle only. The assessment of the segment ‘transformation a substance into material’ is not less significant than the segment ‘transformation material into a product’ especially in resource-producing countries. As a final result, the matrix for circular data framework, as a simplified version, covering all economy sectors, has been proposed. In addition, the paper attempts to categorize circular products to measure material and product circularity in conjunction. The findings contribute to development an industry standard for circular data by enterprises belonging to different economy sectors. Acknowledgements This work was supported by the European Union within the project “Towards circular economy thinking & ideation in Ukraine according to the EU action plan” [grant number 620966-EPP-1-2020].

References Bailey R, Bras B, Allen J (2008) Measuring material cycling in industrial systems. Resour Conserv Recycl 52:643–652 Blomsma F, Brennan G (2017) The emergence of circular economy a new framing around prolonging resource productivity J Ind Ecol Spec Issue: Expl Circ Econ 21(3):603–614. https://doi.org/10. 1111/jiec.12603 Bocken N, Olivetti E, Cullen J, Potting J, Lifset R (2017) Taking the circularity to the next level. J Ind Ecol Spec Issue: Explor Circ Econ 21(3):476–482 https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12606 Cayzer S, Griffiths P, Beghetto V (2017) Design of indicators for measuring product performance in the circular economy. Inter J Sustain Eng European Commission (2015) Closing the loop—an EU action plan for the circular economy. Communication from the commission to the European parliament, the council, the European economic and social committee and the committee of the regions. Brussels, 2.12.2015, COM (2015) 614 final

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Elia V, Gnoni M, Tornese F (2016) Measuring circular economy strategies through index methods: a critical analysis. J Clean Prod 142(4):2741–2751. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.10.196 European Academies’ Science Advisory Council policy report 30, 2016 Indicators for a circular economy, p 35 Ellen MacArthur Foundations and Granta (2015) Circularity indicators. An approach to measuring circularity. Methodology, 98 pp. Figge F, Thorpe A, Givry P, Canning L, Franklin-Johnson E (2018) Longevity and circularity as indicators of eco-efficient resource use in the circular economy. Ecol Econ 150:297–306 Franklin-Johnson E, Figge F, Canning L (2016) Resource duration as a managerial indicator for Circular Economy performance. J Clean Prod 133:589–598 Ghisellini P, Cialani C, Ulgiati S (2016) A review on circular economy: the expected transition to a balanced interplay of environmental and economic systems. J Clean Prod 114:11–32 Giurco D, Littleboy A, Boyle T, Fyfe J, White S (2014) Circular Economy: questions for responsible minerals. Add Manuf Recycl Metals Resour 3(2):432–453 Haas W, Krausmann F, Wiedenhofer D, Heinz M (2015) How circular is the global economy? an assessment of material flows, waste production, and recycling in the European union and the world in 2005. J Ind Ecol 19(5):765–777 Iacovidou E, Millward-Hopkins J, Busch B, Purnell P, Velis C, Hahladakis J, Zwirner O, Brown A (2017) A pathway to circular economy: developing a conceptual framework for complex value assessment of resources recovered from waste. J Clean Prod 168:279–1288 Komar I (1975) Rational use of natural resources and resource cycles. Moscow, Publishing ‘Nauka’, p 211 Le‘bre E, Corder G, Golev A (2017) The role of the mining industry in a circular economy. A framework for resource management at the mine site level. J Ind Ecol Spec Issue: Explor Circ Econ 21(3) 662–672 Linder M, Sarasini S, van Loon P (2017) A metric for quantifying product-level circularity. J Ind Ecol Spec Issue: Explor Circ Econ 21(3) 545–558 Murray A, Skene K, Haynes K (2015) The circular economy: an interdisciplinary exploration of the concept and application in a global context. J Bus Ethics 140(3):369–380 Parchomenko A, Nelen D, Gillabel J, Rechberger H (2019) Measuring the circular economy—a multiple correspondence analysis of 63 metrics. J Clean Prod 210:200–216. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.jclepro.2018.10.357 Park J, Chertow M (2014) Establishing and testing the ‘reuse potential’ indicator for managing wastes as resources. J Environ Manag 137:45–53 Petrushenko M, Shevchenko H (2013) Management of ecological-economical conflicts within the framework of the theory of optimal mechanisms for resource distribution Actual Probl. Econ 141(3):186–192 Ranjbari M, Saidani M, Esfandabadi Z, Peng W, Lam S, Aghbashlo M, Quatraro F, Tabatabaei M (2021) Two decades of research on waste management in the circular economy: insights from bibliometric, text mining, and content analyses. J Clean Prod 314. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcl epro.2021.128009 Saidani M, Yannou B, Leroy Y, Cluzel F, Kendall A (2019) A taxonomy of circular economy indicators. J Clean Prod 207:542–559. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.10.014 Shevchenko T, Yu, Danko (2021) Progress towards a circular economy: new metric for circularity measurement based on segmentation of resource cycle. Inter J Environ Waste Manag 28(2):240– 262 Skene K (2017) Circles, spirals, pyramids and cubes: why the circular economy cannot work. Sustain Sci published online 5 June Stahel W (2010) The performance economy, 2nd edn. Palgrave-MacMillan, London, p 350

Chapter 3

Website Communication Capabilities and Content Related to Environmental Management—An Empirical Study of European Production Companies H. H. Thimm and K. B. Rasmussen Abstract Environmental management concerns are being made available at corporate websites. The websites disclose the organization’s communication capabilities and content related to environmental management. The increasing momentum of the climate change debate, the rising interest of stakeholders in environmental issues, growing openness of corporations, the innovations in information and communication technology, and web presence being increasingly important are all factors likely to advance the environmental properties of company websites. This work contributes to the exposure of the current state of environmental disclosure through an empirical study of 154 websites of companies within the European production sector. The sample of companies include a group of very large companies with more than 10,000 employees and a group of medium-sized companies with 126 to 250 employees. The study revealed a surprisingly low general level of website display of communication capabilities and content related to environmental issues. Many companies are not yet taking part in environmental disclosure and openness. Furthermore, data confirmed that medium-sized companies are lagging behind large companies. Surprisingly, environmental certificates were observed at the websites of medium-sized companies almost to the same degree as at websites of large companies.

3.1 Introduction Companies must fulfill mandatory environmental reporting regulations set by authorities. Furthermore, the market conditions and consumer power of the last decade also demand companies to present information about their environmental management activities. Corporate websites have become the premier media for this voluntary H. H. Thimm (B) School of Engineering, Pforzheim University, Tiefenbronner Str. 65, 75175 Pforzheim, Germany e-mail: [email protected] K. B. Rasmussen Department of Marketing & Management, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense M, Denmark © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Ghadimi et al. (eds.), Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability, Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90217-9_3

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H. H. Thimm and K. B. Rasmussen

environmental self-publishing during the last decade. The company website delivers an effective and inexpensive platform to provide environmental information to the general public. Furthermore, it is possible for the company to interact with stakeholders concerning environmental management matters by use of corresponding website functionality. The term ‘disclosure’ is frequently used in research studies on corporate selfpublishing. Often these studies look for topics on which one can assume that companies intrinsically do not want to openly inform the stakeholders. Using the term ‘disclosure’ is then more oriented towards the action of revealing particular information that has so far been intentionally held back or even covered up. However, the term ‘disclosure’ is also used in a more general sense with the less offensive meaning of information presentation and the term ‘disclosure’ is used with this broader connotation in this article. Self-publishing of environmental information can promote the perception that the company cares about the environment and make it appear as a ‘green and clean’ company. Different extremes of self-publishing have been observed. Some companies publish a surprisingly large range of environmental information that includes information that may even harm the company reputation and/or brand image (Thimm and Rasmussen 2019). For example, information about breaches of environmental regulations or laws. Such breaches may arise from accidents in factories, production incidents, technical defects, and material deterioration. The other extreme of environmental openness is ‘Greenwashing’ performed at websites (Laufer 2003). The term refers to companies that engage in many environmental management actions in order to cover-up corporate areas of environmental breaches. The present study forms the beginning of a research program concerning environmental website disclosure. This study is an explorative cross-sectional study of a sample of 154 production companies (74 medium and 80 very large) from European countries. The website observation data was obtained in the year 2019. We focus on the following four particular website properties in this article: I. II.

III.

IV.

Environmental menu items appearing in main navigational menus Common environmental artifacts, in particular downloadable annual environmental/sustainability reports, environmental news sections, environmental certificates and environmental awards Selected environmental disclosure themes, in particular the topics Environmental Compliance Management, use of ICT Technology, and negative corporate environmental information Dialogic communication capabilities, in particular contact information, contact functions and notification functions

The above properties are of interest to specific stakeholders like financial investors, governmental agencies, individuals of communities that are located in the vicinity of the company’s facilities, consulting companies, ICT providers, researchers and research organizations and environmental activity groups. The relevant research literature is briefly reviewed in Sect. 3.2. Section 3.3 gives an overview of our research design. The website observation results are described

3 Website Communication Capabilities and Content Related …

19

in Sect. 3.4, Sect. 3.5 looks into the future concerning both research, managerial implications, and best practices for companies, and Sect. 3.6 concludes the article.

3.2 Related Work Environmental disclosure at corporate websites has been investigated through empirical studies by a number of research groups. Cho and Roberts (2010) investigated the environmental disclosure of US firms through a disclosure scoring metric of environmental disclosure. The researchers found that ‘worse environmental performing firms’ provide more extensive disclosure. The categorization of companies is formed by official pollution data from the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory where companies with the top-100 highest toxic score were considered as worse performing. Jose and Lee (2007) performed a global cross-industry study which focused on the disclosure policies and practices of the 200 largest multinational companies’ websites. The article reports that 29% of the study sample disclosed details of their Environmental Management System (EMS) and that approximately one-third of the companies addressed office and site practices. The researchers found that when companies disclose, 31% report compliance information regarding legal standards. The general determining factors and also some specific issues of environmental website disclosure have been addressed in studies around the world (Cho and Roberts 2010; Suttipun 2012; Berthelot et al. 2013). These research works contribute to a good basic understanding of environmental website disclosure. Berthelot et al. (2013) looked at various determining factors. The investigation of the largest Canadian oil firms suggests that the larger the firm and the greater its media exposure, the more likely the firm is to include environmental management disclosures on its website. Suttipun and Stanton (2012) found a relationship between the amount of disclosures and type of industry, ownership status, and audit firm in their study of Thai companies. However, this stream of research needs to be permanently continued and to be developed into a broad and long-term program of panel studies as argued in Sect. 3.5 of future development. Other studies including (Bhasin 2012; Andrew 2003) have investigated website disclosure. Our observational approach for environmental features of websites draws from all these research studies. In particular, we also included website features for obtaining contact data of environmental personnel and the possibility of downloading environmental reports.

3.3 Research Design The target population of the website observation study is implied by our research focus on European production companies of distinct different size:

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H. H. Thimm and K. B. Rasmussen

• European company: Defined as the company having its registered base in a country among the 28 countries of the European Union (i.e. including the UK). • Production company: Defined as a company having among its primary Nace codes the particular codes 13 to 16 and 22 to 31 (EUROSTAT). • Company size: For comparison two groups of companies were selected: – Large: Very large companies with more than 10,000 employees. – Medium: Medium-sized companies with 126 to 249 employees. The selection of the population was performed in the Global Company Database ORBIS (Dijk 2019). The population consists of 12,829 companies of which 216 were large companies. Among the large companies 80 companies were randomly selected. As a result, the sample companies cover the following 13 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom. The selection of medium-sized companies was limited to companies from the same 13 countries where 80 companies with between 126 to 249 employees were randomly selected. The sample thus consisted of 160 companies. Of these 6 mediumsized companies were unobtainable. The tabulation (Table 3.1) shows the distribution among countries and the size of the company. The data collection was performed through a data collection sheet with instructions about what item of which part of the website had to be inspected. The observation and data collection tasks were performed in 2019 between March 15th to April 30th by a set of 164 well-trained student research assistants. They inspected each of the Table 3.1 The distribution of the study sample companies among countries and size

Country

Size

All

Large

Medium

Austria

1

6

7

Belgium

1

2

3

Denmark

1

1

2

Finland

2

4

6

France

18

4

22

Germany

22

30

52

Ireland

7

Italy

2

Luxembourg

1

Netherlands Spain

7 9

11

7

3

10

4

2

6

1

Sweden

8

3

11

United Kingdom

6

10

16

All

80

74

154

3 Website Communication Capabilities and Content Related …

21

154 company websites for more than 250 particular items covering the above website properties (I-IV). Figure 3.1 illustrates the three observation steps performed for each website. • Step 1. The first step inspects the start page for focused environmental features and disclosure subjects. • Step 2. In the second step the website was searched for the focused environmental features and disclosure subjects through a restricted top down traversal of ‘environmental links’ with departure from the start page. The ‘environmental links’ can be available through menu items or by hypertext links in the content area of the start page. A link established a new traversal starting point for a further potential traversal path. As opposed to ‘ordinary links’ the ‘environmental links’ are defined as links where relevant content is implied by the link name or the context. Consequently, the traversal was terminated when reaching a page without any further ‘environmental links’. • Step 3. In the third step the observers performed a set of full text searches for 29 particular terms. The terms are described in the next section. The task was performed with Google Advanced search. The observation data was organized in a consistent data collection spanning 256 variables. Table 3.2 contains the variables that were used to code the results of the first two observational steps.

Fig. 3.1 The three-step website observation approach

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H. H. Thimm and K. B. Rasmussen

Table 3.2 Variables used for the study focus described in this article No

Variable

Observation item

Variables for start page features observed in step 1 1

F1_left_menu

environmental item contained in left menu

2

F2_top_menu

environmental item contained in top menu

3

F3_right_menu

environmental item contained in right menu

4

F4_bottom_menu

environmental item contained in bottom menu

5

F5_news

section for environmental news

6

F6_notification

function to notify about environmental issues

7

F7_linked notification

link to environmental notification page

8

F10_reports

number of downloadable environmental report/s

9

F13_persons

name/s of environmental personnel

10

F13c_contact

contact info of environmental personnel

Variables for disclosure subjects of start page observed in step 1 11

S1_certificates

environmental certificates held by company

12

S2_awards

environmental awards held by company

12

S5_env_comp_mgmt

phrase ‘environmental compliance management’

14

S7_negative_info

negative environmental information

15

S8_ict

use of ICT technology for environmental mgmt

Variables for website features observed in step 2 16

P1_news

section/s for environmental news

17

P2_notification

function to notify about environmental issues

18

P3_reports

downloadable environmental report/s

19

P5_persons

name/s of environmental personnel

20

P6_contact

contact info of environmental personnel

Variables for disclosure subjects of website observed in step 2 21

L1_certificates

environmental certificates held by company

22

L2_awards

environmental awards held by company

23

L5_env_comp_mgmt

phrase ‘environmental compliance management’

24

L7_negative_info

negative environmental information

25

L8_ict

use of ICT technology for environmental mgmt

3.4 Website Investigation: Observed Website Properties and Obtained Descriptive Results 3.4.1 Environmental Menu Items The start page is the most important of the website. Regardless of the incidence of environmental information at the website, the augmentation of the main menus on the

3 Website Communication Capabilities and Content Related …

23

Table 3.3 Total number of environmental menu items and position of menu items by company size (multiple items are possible, N = 154) Company size Large Menu right

Medium

Number of menu items 0 Number of menu items 1 2

2

3

0

1

2

3

0

1

2

3

3

1

3

Menu top

42

1

1

2

1

1

1

Menu bottom

14

23

1

29

17

1

13

6

25

1

10

19

1

4

6

No menu

66

3

1

start page with environmental items promotes a positive first impression of care for the environment. Therefore, it was expected that many companies wanted to support this impression and display their environmental disclosure at this earliest possible occasion. Table 3.3 contains the statistics of environmental menu items and their occurrence in the four potential menu placements for both large and medium-sized companies. Note that the same company may have more than one menu and thus also more than one environmental item in the menus. Surprisingly many companies missed the opportunity and did not have this feature. While the majority of the large companies (i.e. 80–17 = 63) offers the feature, this only applies to one third of the medium-sized companies (i.e. 74–49 = 25). Companies with more than one environmental menu item were found: 20 large companies and 6 medium-sized companies (all 6 used top and bottom menu). Only one large company had environmental menu items in three menus.

3.4.2 Common Environmental Artifacts Particular environmental information artifacts can be considered as conventions that companies follow in their website publishing practice (Cho and Roberts 2010; Suttipun 2012). Promoting a ‘green and clean’ image of the company or brand through environmental certificates and awards as well as offering downloadable annual environmental/sustainability reports are all considered to be supportive for a ‘green and clean’ company image in addition to the promotion of an image of a transparent company (Morsing and Schultz 2006). Similar to having an environmental item contained in the main navigational menus the presence of a section on the start page dedicated to environmental news promotes a visitor’s first impression that the company cares about the environment. Hence, it is assumed that these artifacts are frequently found on the start page. Table 3.4 shows a general low level of disclosure of these environmental artifacts at both the start page and linked pages. Downloadable reports were the most

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H. H. Thimm and K. B. Rasmussen

Table 3.4 Frequencies of environmental artifacts on start page and linked pages by company size (N = 154) Artifact

Start page Medium

Linked pages Large

All

Medium

Large

All

News

4

15

19

4

24

28

Certificates

11

8

19

25

46

71

Awards

1

5

6

6

33

39

Downloadable reports

2

12

14

16

72

88

frequently observed artifacts at the linked pages (88) followed by certificates (71) and awards (39). News entries are found among environmental artifacts on both start page and linked pages, but only in limited numbers (28). The start page does not obtain as high numbers as the linked pages. Differences between medium-sized companies and large companies in web presentation are expected due to their structural and financial differences. However, the relatively high number of occurrences of certificates found at medium-sized company websites can be an illustration of the fact that often medium-sized companies are prompted to obtain environmental certificates by their upstream supply chain partners. The same pressure can arise from market conditions of new opportunities.

3.4.3 Particular Environmental Disclosure Themes The study explores the current publishing practice concerning three disclosure themes: (1) Environmental Compliance Management, (2) use of ICT Technology, and (3) negative corporate environmental information. The start page and the linked pages of each website were inspected in the first two observation steps (i.e. inspected by the observers) with a focus on the search terms below. Text search on the full website was performed mechanically using specific search terms for each of the disclosure themes as follows. ‘Environmental Compliance Management’ is covered by 12 search terms: environmental compliance (T1), environmental law enforcement (T2), environmental regulation enforcement (T3), environmental enforcement (T4), environmental law assurance (T5), environmental permission management (T6), environmental risk management (T7), environmental measure (T8), environmental control measure (T9), environmental audit (T10), pollution tracking (T12), discharge management (T13). ‘ICT Technology’ consists of 9 search terms: environmental information system (T21), sustainability information system (T22), EHS (T23), HSE (T24), regulation registry (T25), regulation database (T26), environmental database (T27), environmental data (T28), environmental information (T29). ‘Negative Information’ consists of 7 search terms: environmental complaint (T14), environmental accusation (T15), environmental charge (T16), environmental incident (T17), leakage (T18), breach (T19), spill (T20).

3 Website Communication Capabilities and Content Related …

25

The terms are related to the three disclosure themes through: (a) terms that are semantically related to the disclosure themes, (b) terms that are frequently used to explain the disclosure themes, and (c) terms that are commonly subsumed under the given broader disclosure theme. The three disclosure themes are operationalized in the third step through additive formative indices intended to represent coverage of the theme at the entire website. The number of websites at which information about the disclosure themes was found at the start page (i.e. step 1), at linked pages (i.e. step 2), and as results of the full text search (i.e. step 3) are contained in Table 3.5. The figures in the column ‘positives for terms specified for theme (step 3)’ are the number of companies where one or more of the respective search terms were found on the website. The column labeled ‘hits for terms specified for theme (step 3)’ contains the sum of the hits obtained for all search terms of the disclosure theme. The number of hits largely exceed the number of positives because the searches can produce a great number of hits on the same website. Naturally, the high number of hits are typically obtained at large websites belonging to large companies. One may assign different weights reasons to the numbers of occurrences and hits in the columns of Table 3.5. For example, top priority may be given to the information on the start page because that is usually the page with the highest numbers of visitors, and also the page with a very high impact on company and brand image. Information on linked pages may be given a lower priority because visitors are required to perform traversal efforts through clicks and to spend time waiting. Information found through full text search may be given an even lower priority because a traversal path to this information may not exist at the website and is consequently difficult to find. Table 3.5 indicates that the company websites only to a very small extent make use of the terms for the focused disclosure themes on the start page and on linked pages. Furthermore, Table 3.5 shows that the information is more often available at linked pages than at the start page and more often available at unlinked pages. Table 3.5 Positives and number of hits for company websites of disclosure themes and search terms (N = 154) Disclosure theme and set of search terms

Positives at start Positives at page (step 1) linked pages (step 2)

Positives for terms specified for theme (step 3)

Hits for terms specified for theme (step 3)

M

L

M

L

M

L

M

L

Environmental compliance management

0

0

1

9

13

48

124

18.653

ICT technology

0

1

1

12

12

65

102

19.615

Negative corporate environmental information

1

2

1

4

27

62

888

35.267

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3.4.4 Dialogic Communication Capabilities Stakeholders may have a need to get into contact with corporate environmental management departments and managers for many different reasons. Some contact needs might be urgent. For example, when community members that live in the vicinity of production facilities recognize uncommon odor, they may want to alert the environmental management department. For that reason, corporate websites are expected to provide corresponding capabilities that can be subsumed under the more general notion of ‘dialogic communication capabilities’ (Atli 2019). Examples of these capabilities are information about environmental managers (name, picture, short vitae), contact information, a contact function or a dedicated notification function that may include choice of predefined topics. One may regard dialogic communication capabilities of websites as an indication for demonstrated willingness and preparedness to promote and support communication with environmental actors outside the company. The investigation of these options may provide interesting insights into the ‘green and clean’ attitude of companies. Table 3.6 contains the observation results for the described communication capabilities in terms of their occurrences at the start page and at linked pages. Very few occurrences were observed for all the three capabilities. Furthermore, medium-sized companies address the three capabilities to a much smaller extent than large companies. With regard to person information this is most likely a result of the fact that environmental managers at large companies often do environmental management as a full-time job while environmental management is often done by a person who is assigned other major responsibilities at medium-sized companies. The same applies for contact information where medium-sized companies will typically use their main phone number. Apart from the very low numbers for the start page, one should also notice that large companies have much larger figures than medium-sized companies for the linked pages. Again, large companies have more hierarchy and structure and the much larger websites will tend to place contact information at deeper locations of the website. Table 3.6 Frequencies of investigated environmental communication capabilities (N = 154) Capability

Start page

Linked pages

Medium

Large

All

Medium

Large

All

Notification function

2

8

10

3

21

24

Person information

0

3

3

2

23

25

Contact information

3

4

7

1

18

19

3 Website Communication Capabilities and Content Related …

27

3.5 Future Research, Managerial Implications, and Best Practices The research of issues of environmental website disclosure and their determining factors is in its early stages and needs to be continued and to be developed into a broad and long-term program. We propose panel studies in order to follow companies and record consequences of higher levels of website disclosure and the presented study is a first data collection in such a research plan. We argue for this development research for two main reasons. Firstly, economies, societies, business conventions, and legal systems undergo massive changes. Obviously, these changes will also influence the environmental disclosure of companies on websites and it might be possible to derive useful indicators for these changes through studies of website disclosure. The recent movement of the general climate change debate and also specific issues like the rising public awareness of endangered water supply might serve as good examples. Changes of systems and public awareness are expected to impact corporate decisions about environmental website disclosure. Secondly, the Internet evolution is continuing at a high pace. Technology improvements and also completely new technologies are constantly becoming available. These improvements and advancements of the Internet enable novel approaches such as growing digitization of companies and supply chains. Obviously, technology advancements are also affecting website design conventions and web publishing workflows that are major determinants of corporate website publishing policies. Because of the present immatureness and a still low number of data collections for research of environmental website disclosure the present results have not proved to have any direct influence on company decisions. However, the more comprehensive study program aims to accompany the changes in corporate website disclosure with a focus on the general changes as well as technology improvements in order to benefit politicians, management, and other stakeholders through accurate and up to date information as well as trends and foresights about corporate environmental website disclosure. Best practices for website communication capabilities and content related to environmental management have a close relation to the required practices for environmental disclosure. We don’t expect website disclosure to be specifically required by authorities. However, the environmental footprint of the company is part of its Corporate Social Responsibility and some ten years ago CSR was still underway to becoming established in larger companies. Research on CSR disclosure has established the importance of corporate websites as a public relations tool for communication (Capriotti and Moreno 2007). Presently, many articles mostly contain assumptions, advice, and guidelines concerning environmental website disclosure without supporting empirical evidence from genuine evaluations. This critique also applies to recommendations found in environmental reporting standards such as the GRI standard (Reporting and Initiative 2019). Environmental reporting standards are also not a good source for website disclosure best practices as they usually do not

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address websites functionalities. However, the recommendations found in the literature have been used for the specification of the website observation criteria of our study. The fulfillment of these criteria can be considered as an essential obligation of any company that wants to address environmental information and environmental management aspects in its corporate website design. In other words, the criteria described in Sect. 3.3 can in a broader sense be regarded as a corresponding ‘Pseudo Best Practice for Environmental Disclosure’. The findings of our study suggest that website display of communication capabilities and content related to environmental issues so far are addressed to only a low general level in the current website practice of European production companies. First of all, environmental menu items at the start page are not frequent when considering that corporate websites and in particular the start page are perceived to be most important for reputation and brand management. Secondly, among the investigated information artefacts—news, certificates, awards, and downloadable reports—many companies still lack the most widespread artefact of downloadable environmental reports. A third finding is that only little information is found on company websites concerning three particular disclosure themes: environmental compliance management, ICT, and negative corporate environmental information. Fourth, dialogic communication capabilities are also only offered by a small number of companies and mostly by large companies. As described above many companies are lagging behind the ‘Pseudo Best Practice for Environmental Website Disclosure’ or simply speaking they are not yet taking part in environmental disclosure and openness. Many of these companies that address environmental website disclosure with no or only very little efforts are small companies. One may argue that this reluctance of small companies calls for supportive actions from environmental authorities and governmental institutions such as standardization initiatives, guidelines, and best practice studies. Obviously, today’s climate change debate and environmental movements are pushing companies to address their often still limited environmental website disclosure. Companies are encouraged to initiate respective website redesign projects or to revise existing projects accordingly. Success in these projects through a full adoption of best-practice criteria will require contributions from many different company areas. Environmental Managers are given a key role in these initiatives. They have to continuously contribute up-to-date environmental information to the team of website designers, administrators, and editors of the corporate website. What and to which extent environmental information can be disclosed needs to be evaluated in particular from a Reputation Management point of view. Corporate steps towards a participation in environmental website disclosure and openness are likely to require revisions of corporate policies and business process for website publishing such as information reporting processes and web content approval processes. Success may also require establishment or improvement of processes dealing with requests from external stakeholders. Improved communication capabilities and contact options often require functional upgrades of the website.

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29

3.6 Conclusions As argued in the introduction and the previous section of this article, one can expect that in the forthcoming years corporate environmental website disclosure will rise. Today’s low level of environmental disclosure practice is likely to increase to higher levels. This trend will be accelerated by the increasing public attention to the climate change debate. Similarly, the ongoing technology evolution and adoption such as the use of machine learning for smart environmental data management will make the best practices more common. These tendencies should be accompanied by corresponding research studies, and this has been one of the key motivations for this study that is part of our larger research program on environmental website disclosure.

References Thimm H, Rasmussen KB (2019) Investigating website disclosure of corporate environmental compliance management. In: 33rd EnviroInfo conference, environmental informatics—computational sustainability: ICT methods to achieve the UN sustainable development goals, Kassel, pp 274–288 Laufer WS (2003) Social accountability and corporate greenwashing. J Bus Ethics 43(3): 253–261. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022962719299 Cho CH, Roberts RW (2010) Environmental reporting on the internet by America’s Toxic 100: legitimacy and self-presentation. Int J Account Inf Syst 11(1):1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acc inf.2009.12.003 Jose A, Lee SM (2007) Environmental reporting of global corporations: a content analysis based on website disclosures. J Bus Ethics 72(4):307–321. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9172-8 Suttipun M, Stanton P (2012) A study of environmental disclosures by Thai listed companies on websites. Proc Econ Fin 2:9–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2212-5671(12)00059-7 Berthelot S, Coulmont M, Thibault K (2013) Sustainability content on oil and gas company websites. BMR 2(1):94–103. https://doi.org/10.5430/bmr.v2n1p94 Bhasin ML (2012) Corporate environmental reporting on the internet: an exploratory study. IJMFA 4(1):78. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJMFA.2012.044838 Andrew J (2003) Corporate governance, the environment, and the internet. Electron Green J 1:19. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5ft9g7h2 EUROSTAT, NACE rev. 2, Luxembourg van Dijk B (2019) Untangling the world of private company information (White Paper). https:// www.bvdinfo.com/en-gb/knowledge-base/white-papers/. Accessed 20 May 2019 Morsing M, Schultz M (2006) Corporate social responsibility communication: stakeholder information, response and involvement strategies. Bus Ethics 15(4):323–338. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1467-8608.2006.00460.x D Atli (2019) An investigation of the dialogical communication capacities of Turkish GSM companies websites. Int J Sust Entrepr Corporate Soc Respons 4(2):51–59. https://doi.org/10.4018/IJS ECSR.2019070104 Capriotti P, Moreno Á (2007) Corporate citizenship and public relations: the importance and interactivity of social responsibility issues on corporate websites. Public Relat Rev 33(1):84–91. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2006.11.012 Global Reporting Initiative (2019) Guidelines part 1 reporting principles and standard disclosures. https://www.globalreporting.org/Pages/resource-library.aspx

Chapter 4

Proposal for Integration of Circular Economy Within Product Portfolio Management Daniel Jugend, Paula de Camargo Fiorini, Débora Amarante Teles, Fabiano Armellini, and Marco Antonio Paula Pinheiro Abstract Although current studies are pointing to the circular economy (CE) as one of the main trends for sustainable production and consumption systems, little is known about its applicability within new product development (NPD). In particular, there is a lack of studies connecting CE to product portfolio decision in early stages of the NPD process. Through a systematic literature review, this study aims to propose a framework that integrates CE practices and methods into product portfolio management (PPM). In combination with the well-known and traditional methods of PPM literature, the framework presented introduces the use of CE-based practices and methods to analyse the potential of product design concerning aspects such as durability, reuse, upgrading, remanufacturing, recyclability, recovery, and product service system. The proposed framework presents theoretical and managerial implications by sharing management methods and practices towards a product portfolio aligned with the principles of circularity. Keywords Circular economy · New product development · Sustainable design · Circular product design · Product portfolio management

D. Jugend (B) · D. A. Teles · M. A. P. Pinheiro Production Engineering Department, São Paulo State University (UNESP), Bauru, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] P. de C. Fiorini Department of Administration, Federal University of Sao Carlos (UFSCar), Sorocaba, Brazil F. Armellini Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal, Montreal, Canada © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Ghadimi et al. (eds.), Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability, Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90217-9_4

31

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4.1 Introduction In recent years the linear economic model of production-consumption-disposal has shown weaknesses in the face of societal challenges, especially regarding environmental sustainability. Governments and consumers have been sensitive to the environmental issues such as global warming, pollution, depletion of natural resources and loss of biodiversity. One of the prominent and contemporary suggestions for mitigating the effects of linear economics is the search for circular models (Ghisellini et al. 2016), which mainly aim to reduce conflicts between a company’s competitive and environmental priorities (Govindan and Hasanagic 2018) and, at the same time, contribute to environmental sustainability. Several studies have highlighted the circular economy (CE) as one of the main approaches for boosting environmental sustainability (Korhonen et al. 2018; PrietoSandoval et al. 2018; Sihvonen and Partanen 2017), and as a notable trend (Hollander et al. 2017; Haines-Gadd et al. 2018; Singh and Ordonez 2016). They also have pointed out that the transition to CE fundamentally requires product and service designs that are aligned with closed-loop principles (Baldassarre et al. 2019; PrietoSandoval et al. 2018; Sinclair et al. 2018). However, the processes and practices related to circular product development are recognizably different from traditional new product development (NPD) projects (Subramanian et al. 2018). Under the CE approach, developed products should not only have lower environmental impacts throughout their life cycle but also implement the extension, reuse and shared use practices (Sihvonen and Partanen 2017; Subramanian et al. 2018) to decrease resource extraction from nature and environmental impacts arising from the production, transport, use and disposal of products. Those practices have interfaces with digitalization and industry 4.0 technologies (Jabbour et al. 2018; Pinheiro et al. 2019). The product portfolio management (PPM) has been pointed out for decades as a process of crucial importance for the performance of NPD (Cooper et al. 1999; Tiedemann et al. 2019) and innovation processes (Roeth et al. 2019), since it coordinates product project decisions that will be developed, revised, updated, and discontinued, as well as the prioritization and allocation of resources between the product projects (Cooper et al. 1999). For better PPM, the literature has proposed the adoption of formal and systematic mechanisms such as financial methods, checklist, scoring and ranking, strategic buckets, optimization and modeling, maps and matrices (Cooper et al. 1999; Luiz et al. 2019). Additionally, organizational recommendations as the use of cross-functional teams (Jugend and Silva 2014; Kester et al. 2011) and increased customer participation in portfolio decisions have also been suggested for PPM (Roeth et al. 2019). Studies have also signaled that PPM practices influence firms’ environmental performance (Boks 2006; Kouhizadeh et al. 2019; Pinheiro et al. 2018). In this sense, PPM may represent a potential opportunity for the adoption of CE principles (Kouhizadeh et al. 2019; Pinheiro et al. 2018; Selvefors et al. 2019). At the planning new products phase, the greatest possibilities of project decisions arise, which include

4 Proposal for Integration of Circular Economy …

33

circular characteristics such as product sharing among users, projects that favor waste and recyclability and the use of biodegradable materials, among others. For example, the integration of environmental issues during the product project phase can contribute to recyclability, remanufacturing, and reuse, favoring longer product durability (Sousa-Zomer et al. 2018). Kouhizadeh et al. (2019) pointed out that discontinuing a product from the portfolio may have implications for the CE since its components may serve as inputs for other products. Although PPM is well established in the literature (Cooper et al. 1999; Kester et al. 2011; Luiz et al. 2019) and it has been recognized the importance of considering the principles of environmental sustainability from the early stages of NPD to improve its performance (Eppinger 2011; Jabbour et al. 2015), there is a clear need to expand the studies related to environmental management in the project selection phases (Pinheiro et al. 2018; Sihvonen and Partanen 2016). To the best of our knowledge, few works have tackled the issues related to the introduction of CE within the PPM, and no integration proposal is found in the literature so far. In addition, it is known that the use of CE practices is not yet widespread in the industry, and there are challenges for their effective adoption (Linder and Williander 2017). These challenges are associated with product portfolio options, such as customer restrictions on products developed under CE principles, technological knowledge of products and processes, fads, absence of legal framework, among others (Jesus and Mendonça 2018; Linder and Williander 2017). This study aims to contribute to this gap by proposing a framework that integrates CE practices and methods into PPM. For that, the remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 4.2 focuses on the research method; Sect. 4.3 presents the results and Sect. 4.4 discusses the findings. Finally, conclusions and practical and theoretical implications are presented in Sect. 4.5.

4.2 Method To identify the fit between CE practices and PPM, it was adopted a systematic literature review approach. The articles were identified through searches performed in the Scopus database using the field “article title, abstract, keywords”, during the months of September and October 2019, and we updated this search in March 2021. Due to its purpose, this research focused only on studies that connected CE with NPD or PPM. For that, we used the following combination of keywords as search terms: (i) “circular product design”; (ii) “circular economy” and “new product development”; (iii) “circular economy” and “NPD”; (iv) “circular economy” and “product portfolio”; and (v) “circular economy” and “project portfolio”. These combined searches resulted in 32 articles. We discarded duplicate items (two documents) and selected only papers published in peer-reviewed journals. Thus, we excluded congress studies and book chapters (three documents). We also eliminated works that did not address the topic from a managerial perspective, such as those in the chemical and electrical fields (four documents). At last, a total of 17

34

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articles remained (Table 4.1), which were read and analyzed. These papers were examined to identify CE practices and methods that could be applied in product portfolio selection.

4.3 Results Table 4.1 presents CE practices and methods that can be applied in PPM according to the studies analyzed. It shows that there is a remarkable interest in design practices aimed at the extended and durability of products (physical and emotional), as well as concern from product design to reuse, recovery and disassembly. The adoption and use of the product-service systems (PSS) model were also highlighted among the identified practices.

4.4 Discussion Methods for PPM have been studied for over two decades (Cooper et al. 1999; Jugend and Silva 2014; Roeth et al. 2019) and are well established in the literature on NPD and innovation management. Although it is known that the adoption of the CE depends on product designs that integrate its principles, there are still few studies that investigate the PPM in the light of the CE. It is necessary to expand the research that investigates these two themes in an integrated way (Carvalho and Rabechini 2017; Pinheiro et al. 2018). Figure 4.1 presents the framework developed based on the raised circular product project practices. In this framework, the traditional methods for PPM are combined with environmental analysis from the literature on CE (Table 4.1). Therefore, it presents a pathway to perform the circular product portfolio. The ideas and first evaluations of promising product projects are raised in the fuzzy front end phase in the pre-development activities of the NPD process. Throughout the fuzzy front end of NPD, the literature on PPM (Cooper et al. 1999; Jugend and Silva 2014; Kester et al. 2011) has recommended the systematic application of a set of methods (checklists, maps, diagrams, financial, and others) to evaluate which product project should be selected, prioritized, discontinued; as well as the allocation of resources to carry out these projects. Additionally, aiming to integrate related analyzes of the circular product portfolio still in the early phase of the NPD process, it is proposed the framework that synchronically matches the traditional PPM methods. Thus, the team involved with portfolio decisions preliminarily can verifies whether product project ideas are in line with CE principles. For that, it is recommended to analyze the potential of product projects to the possibilities of durability, reuse, upgrading, remanufacturing, recyclability, recovery, or application of PSS and other methods presented in Fig. 4.1. The detailed specifications of the products to be developed should take place at later

Singh and Ordoñez (2016)

Design for remanufacture

Design for refurbishment

✗

✗

✗

✗

✗

Design for reuse

✗

Design for recycling ✗

✗

✗

✗

den Hollander et al. (2017)

Design for recovery

Design for recontextualizing

Design for post-use

Design for pre-use

Design for multiple use-cycles

Design for maintenance

Design for extended ✗ use

Design for exchange

Design for durability (physical and emotional)

Design for disassembly

References/Design strategies

Table 4.1 CE-PPM practices found in the literature

✗

✗

✗

✗

✗

Bovea and Pérez-Beliz (2018)

Ackermann (2018)

✗

✗

Haines-Gadd et al. (2018)

✗

Sinclair et al. (2018)

✗

Sousa-Zomer et al. (2018)

✗ ✗

✗

(continued)

Stewart and Subramanian Niero et al. (2018) (2018)

4 Proposal for Integration of Circular Economy … 35

Design for multiple use-cycles

✗

✗

Design for maintenance

✗

Design for extended use

✗

✗

✗

Sousa-Zomer et al. (2018)

✗

Leppänen et al. (2020)

Sinclair et al. (2018)

Boorsma et al. (2020)

Haines-Gadd et al. (2018)

Selvefors et al. (2019)

Bovea and Pérez-Beliz (2018)

Pinheiro et al. (2019)

Ackermann (2018)

Design for exchange

Kouhizadeh et al. (2019)

✗

den Hollander et al. (2017)

✗

Franco (2019)

✗

Singh and Ordoñez (2016)

Design for durability (physical and emotional)

Design for disassembly

References/Design strategies

Product-service systems (PSS)

Selection of biodegradable materials

Product deletion

Design to reduce

Design for upgrading

References/Design strategies

Table 4.1 (continued)

✗

Shahbazi and Jönbrink (2020)

✗

✗

(continued)

van Dam et al. (2021)

✗

Stewart and Subramanian Niero et al. (2018) (2018)

36 D. Jugend et al.

Selvefors et al. (2019)

Product-service systems (PSS)

Selection of biodegradable materials

Product deletion

Design to reduce

Design for upgrading

Design for remanufacture

Design for refurbishment

Design for reuse

✗

✗

✗

✗

✗

✗

Shahbazi and Jönbrink (2020)

✗

Leppänen et al. (2020)

✗

✗

Boorsma et al. (2020)

Design for recycling ✗

Design for recovery

Design for recontextualizing

✗

Pinheiro et al. (2019)

Design for post-use

Kouhizadeh et al. (2019) ✗

Franco (2019)

Design for pre-use

References/Design strategies

Table 4.1 (continued)

✗

van Dam et al. (2021)

4 Proposal for Integration of Circular Economy … 37

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Fig. 4.1 Framework for integration of circular economy into product portfolio management

stages of the NPD process, after portfolio evaluations and with approved product projects, for example, in the conceptual or detailed project product design. The integration of CE principles into PPM could guide managers interested in improving not only environmental sustainability but also the NPD process. According to Subramanian et al. (2018), CE adoption into NPD improves time to market and business profitability. When considering CE integration within NPD, Pinheiro et al. (2019) suggested that besides ecodesign, the design for X strategies could be considered as a means to achieve the principles of regenerate, exchange, optimize and share present in the ReSOLVE model (EMF 2015), since the design for X gathers many sustainable design practices, as presented in Fig. 4.1. In addition, Sousa-Zomer et al. (2018) and Pinheiro et al. (2019) pointed out that PSS business models can boost virtualizing and exchanging principles by reducing the consumption of raw materials, and hence contributing to CE.

4.5 Conclusion By proposing a framework that incorporates CE practices from the literature for product portfolio decision-making, the results of this article can contribute to the areas

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of environmental management, innovation, and project management. It is observed that publications focused on the integration of CE and NPD are still recent and scarce. This is evident in Table 4.1, which shows that the first work identified was Singh and Ordonez (2016) and the concentration of publications occurs from 2018. This framework is therefore a first attempt to integrate CE approaches and best practices into existing PPM, aiming at filling the gap identified in the literature. For managerial practice, it is observed that CE is an approach that is still in its infancy and that many companies have difficulty in applying its principles. Consequently, the framework proposed in this article can contribute by indicating guidelines that can be used, even in the form of checklists, for managers interested in applying management methods towards a product portfolio aligned with the principles of circularity. Finally, the results of this article should be analyzed given its limitations. The selection of keywords employed to search CE practices applied in the PPM is certainly a limitation of the work, since we are convinced that other articles that do not use the word “circular” but tackles sustainability issues within the NPD could provide insightful information to our proposition. Furthermore, the proposed framework was not evaluated in companies. Our directions for future studies are aligned with the limitations that we have identified. Firstly, we recommend an expansion of the exploratory literature review performed here. Moreover, we suggest testing and evaluating the framework in companies through qualitative research to verify whether it fits with business practices and, also to identify opportunities for improvement.

References Ackermann L (2018) Design for product care: enhancing consumers’ repair and maintenance activities. Des J 21(4):543–551 Baldassarre B, Calabretta G, Bocken N, Diehl JC, Kskin D (2019) The evolution of strategic role of designers for sustainable development. In: Academy for design innovation management conference, London, United Kingdom Boks C (2006) The soft side of ecodesign. J Clean Prod 14(15):1346–1356 Boorsma N, Balkenende R, Bakker C, Tsui T, Peck D (2020) Incorporating design for remanufacturing in the early design stage: a design management perspective. J Remanufact 1–24 Bovea MD, Pérez-Belis V (2018) Identifying design guidelines to meet the circular economy principles: a case study on electric and electronic equipment. J Environ Manage 228:483–494 Carvalho MM, Rabechini R (2017) Can project sustainability management impact project success? An empirical study applying a contingent approach. Int J Project Manage 35(6):1120–1132 Cooper RG, Edgett SJ, Kleinschmidt EJ (1999) New product portfolio management: practices and performance. J Prod Innov Manag 16(4):331–351 den Hollander MC, Bakker CA, Hultink EJ (2017) Product design in a circular economy: development of a typology of key concepts and terms. J Ind Ecol 21(3):517–525 EMF (2015) Circular economy system diagram. Ellen-Macarthur Foundation, Isle of Wight. www. ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/. Accessed 9 Oct 2019 Eppinger S (2011) The fundamental challenge of product design. J Prod Innov Manag 28(3):399–400 Franco MA (2019) A system dynamics approach to product design and business model strategies for the circular economy. J Clean Prod 241:118327 (2019)

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Ghisellini P, Cialani C, Ulgiati S (2016) A review on circular economy: the expected transition to a balanced interplay of environmental and economic systems. J Clean Prod 114:11–32 Govindan K, Hasanagic M (2018) A systematic review on drivers, barriers, and practices towards circular economy: a supply chain perspective. Int J Prod Res 56(1–2):278–311 Haines-Gadd M, Chapman J, Lloyd P, Mason J, Aliakseyeu D (2018) Emotional durability design nine—a tool for product longevity. Sustainability 10(6):1948 Jabbour ABLS, Jabbour CJC, Godinho Filho M, Roubaud D (2018) Industry 4.0 and the circular economy: a proposed research agenda and original roadmap for sustainable operations. Ann Oper Res 270(1–2):273–286 Jabbour CJC, Jugend D, Jabbour ABLS, Gunasekaran A, Latan H (2015) Green product development and performance of Brazilian firms: measuring the role of human and technical aspects. J Clean Prod 87:442–451 Jesus A, Mendonça S (2018) Lost in transition? Drivers and barriers in the eco-innovation road to the circular economy. Ecol Econ 145:75–89 Jugend D, Silva SL (2014) Product-portfolio management: a framework based on Methods, Organization, and Strategy. Concurr Eng 22(1):17–28 Kester L, Griffin A, Hultink EJ, Lauche K (2011) Exploring portfolio decision-making process. J Prod Innov Manag 28(5):641–661 Korhonen J, Nuur C, Feldmann A, Birkie SE (2018) Circular economy as an essentially contested concept. J Clean Prod 175:544–552 Kouhizadeh M, Sarkis J, Zhu Q (2019) At the Nexus of blockchain technology, the circular economy, and product deletion. Appl Sci 9(8):1712 Leppänen T, Mustonen E, Saarela H, Kuokkanen M, Tervonen P (2020) Productization of industrial side streams into by-products—case: fiber sludge from pulp and paper industry. J Open Innov Technol Market, Complex 6(4):185 Linder M, Williander M (2017) Circular business model innovation: inherent uncertainties. Bus Strat Environ 26(2):182–196 Luiz OR, Souza FB, Luiz JVR, Jugend D, Salgado MH, Silva SL (2019) Impact of critical chain project management and product portfolio management on new product development performance. J Bus Indus Market (in press) Pinheiro MAP, Jugend D, Demattê Filho LC, Armellini F (2018) Framework proposal for ecodesign integration on product portfolio management. J Clean Prod 185:176–186 Pinheiro MAP, Seles BMRP, De Camargo Fiorini P, Jugend D, Jabbour ABLS, Silva HMR, Latan H (2019) The role of new product development in underpinning the circular economy: a systematic review and integrative framework. Manage Decis 57(4):840–862 Prieto-Sandoval V, Jaca C, Ormazabal M (2018) Towards a consensus on the circular economy. J Clean Prod 179:605–615 Roeth T, Spieth P, Lange D (2019) Managerial political behavior in innovation portfolio management: a sensegiving and sensebreaking Process. J Prod Innov Manage (in press) Selvefors A, Rexfelt O, Renström S, Strömberg H (2019) Use to use–a user perspective on product circularity. J Clean Prod 223:1014–1028 Shahbazi S, Jönbrink AK (2020) Design guidelines to develop circular products: action research on nordic industry. Sustainability 12(9):3679 Sihvonen S, Partanen J (2017) Eco-design practices with a focus on quantitative environmental targets: an exploratory content analysis within ICT sector. J Clean Prod 143:769–783 Sihvonen S, Partanen J (2016) Implementing environmental considerations within product development practices: a survey on employees’ perspectives. J Clean Prod 125:189–203 Sinclair M, Sheldrick L, Moreno M, Dewberry E (2018) Consumer intervention mapping—a tool for designing future product strategies within circular product service systems. Sustainability 10(6):2088 Singh J, Ordonez I (2016) Resource recovery from post-consumer waste: important lessons for the upcoming circular economy. J Clean Prod 134:342–353

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Sousa-Zomer TT, Magalhães L, Zancul E, Campos LM, Cauchick-Miguel PA (2018) Cleaner production as an antecedent for circular economy paradigm shift at the micro-level: evidence from a home appliance manufacturer. J Clean Prod 185:740–748 Stewart R, Niero M (2018) Circular economy in corporate sustainability strategies: a review of corporate sustainability reports in the fast-moving consumer goods sector. Bus Strat Environ 27(7):1005–1022 Subramanian N, Gunasekaran A, Wu L, Shen T (2018) Role of traditional Chinese philosophies and new product development under circular economy in private manufacturing enterprise performance. Int J Prod Res 1–16 Tiedemann F, Johansson E, Gosling J (2019) Structuring a new product development process portfolio using decoupling thinking. Prod Plan Control 1–22 van Dam S, Sleeswijk Visser F, Bakker C (2021) The impact of co-creation on the design of circular product-service systems: learnings from a case study with washing machines. Des J 24(1):25–45

Chapter 5

Barriers to Closed-Loop Supply Chains Implementation in Irish Medical Device Manufacturers: Bayesian Best–Worst Method Analysis Robert Kelly, Pezhman Ghadimi, and Chao Wang Abstract The medical device manufacturing industry is important to the Irish economy, but it is an industry that produces a lot of waste. Therefore, the introduction of a closed-loop supply chain could be very beneficial. This empirical study was conducted to identify what barriers prevent the successful implementation of a closed-loop supply chain to the industry. Industry experts’ pairwise comparisons of the barriers were used as inputs for the Bayesian Best–Worst Method to rank the barriers based on their relative importance to remove. This method contains an error with how weight is distributed to barriers in categories of different sizes and a novel adjusted global weight approach is presented. Product design was found to be the most important barrier to remove, and customer perception was found to be least important barrier to remove. Managerial actions and government policy recommendations are made to address the most severe barriers. Keywords Irish medical device manufacturing · Closed-loop supply chain management · Barriers · Bayesian best–worst method

5.1 Introduction CLSC is a comprehensive supply chain network that not only considers the forward logistics but also the RL. The idea a CLSC network is directly linked with the CE R. Kelly School of Mechanical & Materials Engineering, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] P. Ghadimi (B) Laboratory for Advanced Manufacturing Simulation and Robotics, School of Mechanical & Materials Engineering, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] C. Wang Research Base of Beijing Modern Manufacturing Development, College of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Ghadimi et al. (eds.), Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability, Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90217-9_5

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concept. It is reported significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and water stress arises from resource extraction and processing (DCCAE 2020). Thus, the need to transition to more resource efficient operations like CLSCs is key and highlighted by the release of political action plans (DCCAE 2020;European Commission 2020), and the introduction of sustainable practices by large manufacturers (Caterpillar Inc 2019; Stryker 2019). Ireland is a global leader in MedTech producing large volumes of stents, knee implants, and contact lenses used globally and has 9 out of 10 top global MedTech companies situated in the country (Irish Medtech Association 2019). However, Irelands healthcare waste is managed poorly and results in big environmental and financial costs (Clean Technology Centre 2014). This could be from an increase in design of uncircular devices like SUDs, resulting in greater material consumption (Sherman et al. 2019). Introducing a CLSC into the healthcare industry is difficult as it very high-risk field thus, there are barriers to its implementation. As medical device CLSC is a largely unresearched area, this research aims to provide an introduction by identifying the barriers faced by Irish medical device manufacturers to introducing a CLSC and to rank them based on which is the most important to address. The project also aims to recommend manufacturer action and government policy to address the most severe barriers faced. These objectives result in the following research questions: (1) What are the main barriers faced by the Irish medical device manufacturers in the implementation of a CLSC network? (2) Which barriers are the most severe? (3) What can be done to address them?

5.2 Literature Review 5.2.1 Closed-Loop Supply Chain Management and the Medical Device Sector The healthcare sector needs to adopt sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices as a result of its level of environmental pollutants and the increased material and energy consumption (Sherman et al. 2019). Currently medical devices are difficult to recycle due to complex material combinations, lack of processing infrastructure, and infection control (Sherman et al. 2020). However, currently customer wishes, business imperatives, and the law motivate Design for the Environment (DfE) in medical devices (Moultrie et al. 2015). Circular medical device design is a key areas of focus, and strategies and design suggestions have been introduced to help overcome its associated challenges. Kane et al. (2018) developed a design heuristic and suggested strategies based on levels of device sterilization criticality and value (Kane et al. 2018). Designs increasing the sustainability of medical devices have also been published, such as the development of a modular steerable laparoscopic instrument (Hardon et al. 2019) and reusable surgical scissors (Ibbotson et al. 2013). DfE is currently taking place in some medical

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devices however, its application is patchy which could result from the perceived high cost of DfE, the reliance on the SUD business model, and the lack of DfE education (Moultrie et al. 2015). So, despite strategies and product examples, integration of circular medical products faces several challenges. CLSC activities in the medical device industry have been tested, Hasani et al. (2015) maximised profits for a disposable medical devices manufacturer and van Straten et al. (2021) found that repair and refurbishment of non-contaminated stainless steel medical instruments and recycling of unrepairable contaminated and uncontaminated medical instruments resulted in cost savings and waste level reduction (Hasani et al. 2015; van Straten et al. 2021). Additionally, using life cycle assessment and life cycle cost assessment Unger and Landis (2016) found that creating a use-reprocess-use loop for devices had human, environmental, and economic benefits over SUDs if inputs were optimised (Unger and Landis 2016). However, Damha et al. (2019) found remanufacturing and recycling activities were not present in the medical device industry despite application in other industries, believing this could be due to the potential contamination risks (Damha et al. 2019). It’s clear that help is required to increase adoption and Gautam and Sahney (2020) stated that for medical devices to be reprocessed and reused, a combination of policy, quality control through interprofessional collaboration, and stakeholder involvement is required (Gautam and Sahney 2020). Despite the challenges posed, some industry examples of RL activities are present. High value and low criticality devices have been subjected to RL activities (Butzer and Schötz 2016). Additionally, nine business models for circular medical practices have also been outlined by Guzzo et al. (2020) for various device types characterised by their criticality and value, some of which are used by large medical device manufacturers, namely Medigo, Philips, and BD (Guzzo et al. 2020). Sustainability practices have been applied to the medical industry, but research is sparce, with very few if no applications in Irish contexts. So, it is clear that medical device CLSC is still in its infancy.

5.2.2 Barriers to CLSC Implementation in Irish Medical Device Manufacturers This set of barriers is split into two barrier categories, Internal barriers (PD, ERU, IIC, BMU, MPP) and External barriers (CP, RPA, SCT). The Internal barriers represent the challenges or obstructions the manufacturers themselves must overcome to implement a CLSC. The External barriers are the challenges or obstructions the manufacturers themselves have little control over and cannot significantly contribute to their removal.

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Product Design (PD)

Redesigning products is essential if looking to implement circular practices that can cope with the inherent risks of medical devices (Guzzo et al. 2020), and product complexity makes the efficient recovery and reuse of products a challenge (Govindan and Hasanagic 2018). Medical devices are very complex, evident by the fact that devices require different circular design strategies based on levels of sterility criticality (Kane et al. 2018). Thus, designing devices that can be effectively recovered while ensuring patient safety is a barrier.

5.2.2.2

Economic Risk and Uncertainty (ERU)

Determining whether it is financially viable to recover a medical device is a key financial consideration for manufacturers (Kane et al. 2018). But this question contains a lot of uncertainty and risk. Manufacturers must know how much cheaper it is to reprocess a device than it is to manufacture one, what is the increased probability of reprocessed device failure, and how much would this failure (potentially patient harm) cost (Sloan 2007). This final consideration is difficult to estimate. Thus, determining the economic viability of a medical device CLSC is difficult as it carries a lot of risk and uncertainty.

5.2.2.3

Infrastructure Investment Cost (IIC)

The lack of recovery infrastructure makes medical device circularity difficult and firms will need to invest in the construction of RL infrastructure. Govindan and Hasanagic (2018) identified additional construction, staff training, and technology as upfront investment costs acting as a barrier to CE, which can be applied to CLSCs (Govindan and Hasanagic 2018). Su et al. (2013) found that Chinese firms had no or few incentives from the government to foot the additional infrastructure costs and carry out CLSC activities, creating a barrier (Su et al. 2013). These costs, particularly without much economic support, may look very unattractive as a business decision and act as a barrier to CLSC implementation.

5.2.2.4

Business Model Uncertainty (BMU)

Integrating a successful CLSC into medical device manufacturers requires new business models, but there is a small range of business models available for them to follow. Pieroni et al. (2021) found that high controlled sectors, such as the medical device industry, presented a reduced number of possible CE business model patterns (Pieroni et al. 2021). This could be due to the fact that although the business model structure can be useful to conceptualise a circular business models, the risk and

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sterility associated with medical devices requires additional analysis (Guzzo et al. 2020) making their generation more challenging.

5.2.2.5

Management Prioritisation and Perspective

Transitioning to a CLSC may not be a key priority for medical device companies and has often be recognised as a barrier to sustainable operations. Ahmed et al. (2020) identified “Long term strategic planning” as a barrier to CLSC and Gaberšˇcik et al. (2021) found that “Internal prioritisation” was one of the most significant barriers to CE adoption in Ireland medical device manufacturers (Ahmed et al. 2020; Gaberšˇcik et al. 2021). Management has been found to an important role in SSCM adoption in companies (Sajjad et al. 2020), and thus management outlook can act as a barrier.

5.2.2.6

Customer Perception (CP)

Customers’ acceptance of remanufactured products acts as a general barrier to products remanufactured products (Matsumoto et al. 2016), as customers can believe that new products are higher in quality than refurbished products (Govindan and Hasanagic 2018). Furthermore, Grantcharov et al. (2019) found that over half of patients, physicians, and healthcare practitioners would be uncomfortable with practices using reprocessed or reused disposable medical devices (Grantcharov et al. 2019). Thus, negative customer perception could result in an unsuccessful CLSC.

5.2.2.7

Remanufacturing Process Availability (RPA)

High risks involved with medical devices require their reprocessing techniques to be safe and financially effective. Liu et al. (2019) stated that the remanufacturing industries has been bottlenecked by the need for product quality (which is important in medical devices), but further study of intelligent remanufacturing assembly will increase efficiency and quality of remanufacturing (Liu et al. 2019). Although are currently manufacturing techniques in existence, they are still immature and need to be developed (Matsumoto et al. 2016). Thus, current manufacturing processes available are not advanced enough and are a barrier to CLSC in Irish medical device manufacturers.

5.2.2.8

Supply Chain Technology Constraints (SCT)

The Irish medical device industry exports a lot of products, making it very globalised making the management and control of products along RL very challenging. Additionally, Govindan and Hasanagic (2018) identified “Technological limitations by tracking recycled materials” as a barrier to successful CE adoption and Su et al.

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(2013) stated that an efficient information system is essential to help decision-makers plan and manage their resources in a green and economic manner (Govindan and Hasanagic 2018; Su et al. 2013). ICT Technologies like blockchain and RFID will address issues such as transparency, traceability, and security in SCCM (Kumar and Rahman 2014; Saberi et al. 2019), however, developments need to be made their limitations present a barrier to successful CLSC implementation.

5.3 Materials and Methods 5.3.1 Bayesian Best–worst Method From research, AHP and BWM were determined to be the most suitable methods to be utilised as they both make use of pairwise comparisons, which makes determining essential barriers easy for DMs (Govindan et al. 2014). But, as there are fewer required pairwise comparisons using BWM (Rezaei 2015), it was selected to be used. The BBWM variation by Mohammadi and Rezaei (2020) was selected as the final method as it was developed for group inputs and produces the outputs in the form of probability distributions which is more suitable to reflect the groups true preferences, rather than by an average operator as used by Rezaei (2015), Mohammadi and Rezaei (2020).

5.3.2 Research Methodology 5.3.2.1

Phase 1

A literature review was conducted to realise the barriers, to review ranking methods, and then to select an appropriate method. The bibliography database used primarily in the research was Google Scholar, but as the CLSC in medical devices in relatively unresearched, some grey literature is used too.

5.3.2.2

Phase 2

A questionnaire distributed to a sample population of industry experts was used to collect primary data. The questionnaire was developed on Google Forms due its simplicity of layout. The questionnaire was distributed to emails and by posting in relevant LinkedIn groups. The questionnaire was distributed to 33 emails from which there were 6 identified respondents, giving approximately an 18.18% conversion rate from the emails. The 5 other responses cannot be credited to LinkedIn or email conversions, as they are anonymous.

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Phase 3

Bayesian best–worst method

The detailed derivation and proofs of BWM and the BBWM can be found in the studies of Rezaei (2015) and Mohammadi and Rezaei (2020) respectively. The steps of the BBWM are as follows: Step 1: A set of decision criteria is established. C = {c1 , c2 , . . . , cn }

(5.1)

Step 2: From C, a DM decides which is the best or most important criterion (cB ) and which is the worst or least important criterion (cW ). Step 3: DMs disclose their preference of cB over all the other criterion in C via pairwise comparisons, using ratings in similar to those developed by Saaty (1990) producing a best-to-others (BO) vector (AB ). AB = (aB1 , aB2 , . . . , aBn )

(5.2)

where aB j represents the preference of the best criterion over criterion j and aBB = 1 always. Step 4: DMs then determine their preference of all the other criterion in C over cW via pairwise comparisons using the same scale, producing the worst-to-others (WO) vector (AW ). AW = (a1W , a2W , . . . , a nW )T

(5.3)

where a jW represents the preference of criterion j over the worst criterion and aWW = 1 always. Step 5: Each expert follows Step 1 to Step 4 and multiple sets of BO and WO vectors are obtained. Using MATLAB software, provided by Mohammadi and Rezaei (2020), the aggregated final weights of the criteria are determined through Eq. (5.4). Where AkW | w k and AkB | w k are multinomial distributions giving the WO and BO for the kth decision maker and w k | wagg and wagg are Dirichlet Distributions. P(wagg )

K 

P(AkW | w k )P(AkB | w k )P(w k | wagg )

(5.4)

k=1

Step 6: The code then produces a credal ranking visualisation which represents the confidence that one criterion is weighted greater than another. P(ci > c j ) =

Q 1  agg agg I (wi q > w j q ) Q q=1

(5.5)

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Adjusted global weighting approach

An issue was discovered with the distribution of weights between criteria from varying category sizes. A novel adjusted weighting approach is proposed in this research to ensure even distribution to the criteria in categories of different sizes. The advantage of this method is that the sum of all of the final global weights will equal 1. Step 1: The total number of categories (ncat. ) is counted, this number also represents the total amount of weight to be distributed. C i is a particular category and C n is the last category. n cat. =

n 

Ci

i=1

Step 2: The total number of criteria (mcrit. ) is obtained and number of criteria in each category is counted, where mi is the number of criteria in a particular category. C ij is particular criterion in a particular category and C nm is the last criterion in the last category. mi =

m 

Ci j , m crit. =

j=1

n 

mi

i=1

Step 3: Category ratios are then determined by dividing the number of criteria in each category by the total number of criteria. Where Ri is the ratio for a particular category. Ri =

mi m crit.

Step 4: Each ratio is then multiplied by the total number of categories to find the category multiplier. Where CX i is the category multiplier for a particular category. C X i = n cat. × Ri Step 5: Each barriers weight is then multiplied by their corresponding category multiplier to find their new adjusted local weight. Where wij is the weight of a particular criterion in a particular category. Adjusted local weight = C X i × wi j Step 6: The adjust weights are then multiplied by the category’s weight to find their final adjusted global weight. Where Zi represents the weight of a particular category. Adjusted global weight = Adjusted local weight × Z i

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Consistency

To ensure the data used in the computations were of high quality, the consistency of the experts pairwise comparisons were subjected to examination using the linear BWM (Rezaei 2016), and then compared to the output thresholds in (Liang et al. 2020). Given the smaller number of response of experts collected we have extended the threshold in each case by +0.1 to maximise the number of usable sets. This results in 3 only experts’ submissions being rejected.

5.4 Results Respondents select their believed ‘most important barrier to overcome’ and ‘least important barrier to overcome’ for the Internal barriers (cIB and cIW ) and External barriers (cEB and cEW ), from BBWM Step 2. Experts then submitted BO and WO for each barrier set to get vectors AIB and AEB , as in Eq. (5.2), and AIW and AEW , as in Eq. (5.3). Using each experts BO and WO vectors as inputs the MATLAB code computed local weights of the barriers seen in Table 5.1 and the credal rankings in Fig. 5.1. Each node in the credal rankings represent a barrier and the nodes are ordered from top to bottom from greatest to lowest weights. The arrows from one node to another, represent the importance of one barrier over another and their captioned numbers indicate a confidence level through the probability that one barrier is more important than the other. The local weights are then subjected to the adjusted global weight approach and multiplied by 0.50 (weigthing of the barrier categories were considered equal) to produce the final global weights and rankings. Table 5.1 Final weights and rankings Category

Barriers

Local weight

Global weight

Rank

Internal

PD

0.242

0.151

1

ERU

0.186

0.116

6

IIC

0.195

0.122

5

BMU

0.206

0.129

3

MPP

0.171

0.107

7

CP

0.271

0.102

8

RPA

0.329

0.123

4

SCT

0.400

0.150

2

External

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Fig. 5.1 Credal ranking of internal (left) and external (right) barriers

5.5 Discussion, Recommendations, and Conclusions 5.5.1 Barrier Ranking Discussion 5.5.1.1

Product Design

The final global weights reveal that PD is believed to be the most important barrier to be removed. As the industry is so highly regulated, using a linear model that produces devices like SUDs is more straightforward. Specific competencies, tools, and methods are required to successfully design circular products (Sumter et al. 2020). As there is an increasing reliance on SUDs in the healthcare industry and as there is a large volume of plastic waste from Irish hospitals it is apparent such competencies, tools, and methods are not practiced. Thus, to design suitable products for CLSC a full assessment of design and production capabilities followed by a complete revamp of design strategies would be necessary. Additionally, as medical devices consist of complex material combinations (Sherman et al. 2020), transitioning to devices with standardised materials and modules would be difficult. The design of medical devices is also a high-risk field, where a reduction in device functionality or any increase in risk could put a patient’s life in danger (Kane et al. 2018). All the design requirements and device complexities and dangers make the design of medical devices for CLSC a very difficult barrier to address and validates its top ranking.

5.5.1.2

Supply Chain Technology Constraints

As Ireland export a lot of medical devices, controlling global CLSC operations would be very difficult. As there would be a large volume of products flowing through the global CLSC and given the important distinctions in devices criticality and value

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for medical devices, access to accurate and instantaneous material flow information is vital for DMs. Despite some technology advances, other IT tools lag behind. Blockchain technology has been recognised as a technology suitable to application to CLSCs, as it will be able to detail five key device dimensions: what it is, its quality, its quantity, its location, and its ownership. However, technology constraints challenge its implementation like real time tracking tools and advanced cloud computing (Saberi et al. 2019). RFID has potential but there is a lack of knowledge regarding necessary implementation models to support its adoption (Kumar and Rahman 2014), and frameworks for its application (Usama and Ramish 2020). So, constraints exist reducing the potential for transparency along the supply chain and given the scale of the Irish medical device supply chain SCT is understandably one of the top barriers.

5.5.1.3

Business Model Uncertainty

Although, innovative business models have been designed for circular activities, their practice in medical device industry is limited. Business model innovation is key for industry transformation (Geissdoerfer et al. 2017) and formal publications on circular business models have been largely conceptual, often lacking clarity around how to use or implement the patterns in industry (Pieroni et al. 2021). Additionally, Guzzo et al. (2020) stated that it is “challenging for practitioners to identify business opportunities that enable and maintain resource cycles”, i.e., they do not know where and how in their operations they can implement resource circularity (Guzzo et al. 2020). As circular business models and circular supply chains are dependent on each other (Geissdoerfer et al. 2018) and as each supply chain is designed differently, it’s clear that circular business models need to be designed to suit each specific industry. Thus, this lack of assurance in how to implement and design a business model to suit a complex medical device CLSC, justifies BMUs ranking in the top 3.

5.5.1.4

Remanufacturing Process Availability

Material flowing into the remanufacturing processes arrives with uncertainty around their type, quality, quantity, and timing. Industry 4.0 and the development of intelligent manufacturing technologies could increase uptake of remanufacturing, as current processes abilities cannot match customer requirements (Liu et al. 2019). Although, remanufacturing R&D receives funding, such as from the European Commission, the development of efficient processes remains one of the key barriers to remanufacturing (Matsumoto et al. 2016). Such projects have helped the development of remanufacturing technologies, with developments in additive manufacturing, cleaning, disassembly, and repairing but they remain immature and company engagement in remanufacturing is still low (Lee et al. 2017). Advanced remanufacturing processes are essential to create value CLSCs, as the value than can be recovered from a used resource is limited by technologies ability to capture it (Jawahir and

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Bradley 2016). Therefore, RPA is an essential barrier to remove, and its 4th place ranking is understood.

5.5.1.5

Least Important Barriers

The Irish government has introduced the EPR policy, making producers accountable for the collection and recovery of consumed goods (DCCAE 2020), potentially making the initial investment in RL infrastructure necessary. There are also channels to receive financial support for CE projects through funding through CIRCULÉIRE (no date) and the EU (European Commission 2020), support like this may also have softened the gravity of the IIC barrier. These actions along with the potential virgin resource levy introduction make the CSLC implementation financial risk and the ERU barrier somewhat less daunting. Financial performance and benefits have also demonstrated in literature through industry network models (Hasani et al. 2015; Sasikumar and Haq 2011; Vahdani and Ahmadzadeh 2019) and in the success of some circular business operations in industry (Caterpillar Inc 2019; Guzzo et al. 2020; Stryker 2019) may give experts confidence and may not see CLSC as an enormous financial risk. The perceived reduction in CLSC cost and risk may have also reduced the severity of the MPP barrier. This coupled with current urgency created through the release of CE Action Plans and policy by the Irish Government may have focused management on the design of more sustainable supply chains. The link presented by Jayaram and Avittathur (2015) between government policy and customer green purchasing could impact the perceived severity of the CP barrier (Jayaram and Avittathur 2015). Additionally, European citizens are believed to also have high levels of environmental awareness (Lee et al. 2017) therefore, attitudes of managers and customers could already favour sustainable operations reducing the importance of removing the CP and MPP barriers.

5.5.2 Recommended Managerial Actions to Address Barriers 5.5.2.1

Develop Internal R&D Practices

Medical device manufacturers should increase investment into their inhouse R&D divisions to devise proprietary solutions to design and remanufacturing. Device portfolios should additionally be evaluated, focusing on device value and criticality, and application of the medical device design strategies suggested by Kane et al. (2018) should be investigated (Kane et al. 2018). Firms are advised to design medical devices suitable for remanufacture through following guidelines already in literature (Hatcher et al. 2011; Ijomah et al. 2007). Thus, development of R&D divisions may inspire the removal of the PD and RPA barriers for organisations, address PD, SCT, and BMU barriers.

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Educate and Align Workforce

Medical device manufactures must fill their design teams with the skills required to design products suitable for multiple uses or for recovery. Through education or through recruitment, organisations must have designers that possess the competencies outlined by Sumter et al. (2020). Additionally, recruiting computer engineering talent could aid the development of suitable cloud-based platforms and tracking information databases to help remove the SCT barrier. Educating the entire workforce on sustainable practices is crucial to ensure all actions are in line with CLSC objectives, leading to visionary thinking and CLSC strategy development such as innovative business models. This research also suggest that Irish medical device manufacturers should look to obtain ISO 14001 certification, educating themselves in cleaner, greener ways of working. Thus, recruitment and education may address PD, SCT, and BMU barriers.

5.5.2.3

Increase Supply Chain Coordination

Modelling tools can be very effective for spotting bottlenecks and increasing visibility along a supply chain, and is used commonly in SSCM research (Ghadimi et al. 2019). Organisations should utilise agent-based simulations, particularly in the initial stages of development of CLSC networks to validate business models and increase visibility and coordination. It is further suggested that CLSCs can profit from coordination contracts such as those suggested by Heydari et al. (2017). Increased coordination with customers, hospitals, and clinics could result in increased visibility and product returns along the supply chain resulting in greater access to their consumed products, easing BMU. Having good transparency in the flow of materials could result in the development of a framework for supply chain tracking technologies, helping to remove the SCT barrier.

5.5.2.4

Investigate Introducing Medical Devices as a Service

Medical device manufacturers should investigate the potential of applying a PSS business model. Servitization could offer economic benefits, increased customer satisfaction, and competitive advantage (Matsumoto et al. 2016). If medical device manufacturers offered a PSS approach, benefits could be obtained by all stakeholders along the supply chain (MacNeill et al. 2020). Such a business model would incentivise the manufacturers to design circular devices that are easy to disassemble and repair, so that they could repurpose and recreate value from used products. Seeing products after consumption could be a valuable asset to manufacturers and could really assist the design teams looking to improve device or component life. These motivations could further incentivise innovation in the design of products and remanufacturing processes. Therefore, PSS as a business model it could potentially help the removal of the PD, RPA, and BMU barriers.

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5.5.3 Recommendations to Policy Makers to Address Barriers 5.5.3.1

Promote Enterprise and Academic Research and Development

The government has committed to increasing R&D in Ireland, as expenditure on R&D has grown steadily since 2016 (DETE 2021b), and the urgency for more sustainable supply chains has through the prioritisation ICT, medical devices, and advanced and smart manufacturing for research (DETE 2018). These commitments will inevitably bear fruit, but further initiatives should be taken. Research at enterprise level should be endorsed through tax credits to Irish medical device manufacturers who increase investment into their own R&D. Policy introductions should also be made to increase academic R&D focus on CE, ICT, and circular medical devices through greater funding. Technical developments would rise along with developments of CLSC technical and management frameworks. Increased student research funding would also increase medical device and technology R&D. This would address SCT, BMU, PD, and RPA barriers.

5.5.3.2

Increase Sustainable Education and Awareness

Increasing student research could also expand the talent pool of those with sustainable educations entering the workforce, bolstering the sustainably educated workforce in medical device manufacturers. The government have tried to increase the sharing of the technology, skills, and expertise through ‘Knowledge Transfer Ireland’ (DETE 2021a) and through co-founding CIRCULÉIRE (n.d.), but further action should be taken. A policy should be introduced to make environmental management education mandatory for Irish medical device manufacturers and a medical device CLSC standards certification should be devised. These introductions could help address the BMU barrier. Policies should be introduced to increase awareness to medical device customers of the impacts of SUDs on the environment and the safety and benefit of circular devices. Once aware of the requirement for these devices, requests on the demand side for more sustainable products will influence the market supply, thus addressing MPP and CP barriers.

5.5.3.3

Increase Financial Support

Initiatives to redesign the waste management systems in hospitals and clinics by focusing on the sorting and segregation of devices by device type and by manufacturer should be taken by the Irish government and the EU. Such an initiative would reduce the infrastructure costs as fewer facilities would be required for each manufacturer, easing the infrastructural financial burden and increasing their visibility along their supply chains. A policy should also be introduced to reduce the financial

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impact of IIC by offering grants to medical device manufacturers for CLSC infrastructure construction projects. The government should also reward circular practices by introducing a policy which offers subsides to Irish medical device manufacturers production costs proportional to the amount of used devices re-introduced to their supply chains, such an action has been examined and shown to increase return rates (Heydari et al. 2017). These actions would help address the IIC and ERU barriers.

5.5.3.4

Introduce Environmental Levies

Although the governments ERP scheme has have been shown to work (DCCAE 2020), medical devices are not included in the identified waste streams. This this research recommends that Irish medical devices should be added the streams, making action necessary and addressing MPP, ERU, and IIC. An additional penalty should be introduced on the negative externalities created by manufactures when using virgin resources. Such a penalty, given the volume of devices produced, would be reflected in the market price, addressing CP. A market price impact like this would incentivise the demand side to request more sustainable products to generate lower product prices (Govindan and Hasanagic 2018). Such an increase in the cost of production should increase medical device manufacturer motivation to remanufacture as it may be cheaper to do so.

5.6 Conclusions This research determined eight barrier obstructing Irish medical device manufacturers from successfully implementing a CLSC and ranked them based on relative importance to remove. The eight barriers which can be seen ranked in Table 5.1, were separated into two categories: Internal and External. This empirical research utilised the BBWM to rank the barriers based on pairwise comparisons made by industry experts, submitted through a questionnaire. The main reason for BBWMs selection was due to its appropriate application to computation of weights from a group of expert inputs. The linear BWM was applied to calculate the comparisons consistencies. The BBWM has a flaw associated with the distribution of weights to barriers in categories of different sizes. This study offers a novel solution that redistributes the weights appropriately and obtains an accurate final ranking. Despite the positives associated with introducing a CLSC, medical device manufacturers in Ireland are mainly limited by product design, supply chain technology constraints, business model uncertainty and remanufacturing process availability. To address these barriers, it is essential that the manufacturers increase R&D, education, supply chain coordination and additionally try a PSS business model. Irish governments also need to introduce polices to motivate and assist the manufacturers through R&D promotion, increasing sustainable education and awareness, increased financial support, and environmental levies.

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The results obtained from this research are limited to the Irish medical device manufacturing industry. COVID-19 also limited the research in its ability to increase the sample size and have a more comprehensive set of expert’s comparisons. The study was also limited by Google Forms, as it is not a dynamic questionnaire platform and led to expert error and misunderstanding which may have impacted the consistency of the comparisons. The survey platform Qualtrics could have been used to better effect. This research suggests future studies be conducted on more models and case studies to increase confidence in the operations of a medical device CLSC and to remove uncertainties that exist with the barriers identified here. Additionally, now that barriers have been identified and ranked based on importance to remove, this study suggests that the interrelationships of the barriers should be studied using DEMETAL, ISM, or SEM between the barriers established in this research.

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Chapter 6

The Emergence of Circular Economy SMEs in Hong Kong: What is Needed to Invigorate the Dynamic B. Steuer

Abstract Later than other municipalities in the region, Hong Kong has embarked on the Circular Economy to address its sustainability challenges. While the government’s Circular Economy (CE) policy focus and support is exclusively centered on the waste recycling industry, a small but vibrant CE business segment has emerged over recent years. The present article deals with the question of how the young dynamic and the growth of this business field can be sustained into the future. By using an institutional evolutionary framework, the following paragraphs firstly analyze the divergence between official regulatory measures and CE business practices derived from a sample of 45 company cases. The resulting findings show that there is substantial room for formal institutional improvements, some of which are offered in form of a comprehensive set of general as well as tailormade recommendations. Keywords Circular economy · Sustainable development · Hong Kong · SMEs · Institutional economics

6.1 Introduction The Circular Economy (CE) has, from a global perspective, gained enormous momentum over recent years. Not only have major states such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or member states of the European Union (EU) implemented legal CE frameworks (Geng and Doberstein 2008; McDowall et al. 2017) Moreover, recent international policy measures indicate the continuation of CE-oriented development. Indications in this direction, most prominently include the EU’s 2020 CE action plan and its Green Deal, the green recovery strategy envisaged by the new administration in the US as well as the PRC’s pledge to reduce its CO2 emissions. However, some regions demonstrate a notable absence of government-led, well coordinated CE policy strategies. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region B. Steuer (B) Division of Environment and Sustainability, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Ghadimi et al. (eds.), Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability, Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90217-9_6

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(HKSAR) is a particularly interesting example in this regard. In contrast to the mainland, where policy experimentation on the CE started in the early 1990s (Steuer 2020), the HKSAR government has been comparatively dormant. Justifications for the city’s inactivity are entertained by arguments pertaining to the composition of the economy as largely service based (Steuer 2020). The lack of a diverse industry, HKSAR’s reliance on the import of finished goods and resources as well as the long-term practice of exporting recyclable waste to the mainland support the reluctant approach towards the circular idea. Yet, recent developments have significantly heightened the necessity for Hong Kong to change course. Firstly, in regard to waste management (WM), in the HKSAR has over most of the 20th by and large relied on landfilling. With land being a notoriously scarce resource in Hong Kong and available landfills reaching their upper limits (Steuer 2020), alternative methods are in dire need. Secondly, household and more generally municipal solid waste (MSW) recycling has traditionally played a negligible role until the very present. While collection and preprocessing (sorting, separating, cleaning, baling, material extraction) is conducted locally, 92% of secondary resources from waste are transferred to the mainland for major recovery and reprocessing (Environmental Protection Department Hong Kong 2020). Yet, due to gradually tightening waste import restrictions implemented in the PRC, this predominant export market has been closed and given the nature of the output alternative channels are difficult to find (Steuer 2020). In light of these challenges, Hong Kong’s government has been pushed to adopt a more proactive stance and began exploring the viability of recycling systems over recent years. Efforts include the revival of the Eco-Park in Tuen Mun District, which provides space to various recyclers covering a broad range of MSW fractions (www. ecopark.com.hk), as well as corporate sector promoted initiatives to recover beverage packaging waste (https://drinkwithoutwaste.org). So while it appears that the inertia in waste recycling is on the verge of being overcome, the overall outlook for a more holistic approach to the CE remains dim. Despite repeated emphasis of the necessity to adopt CE practices by governmental departments (Environmental Protection Department Hong Kong 2005), the narrow definition of the concept on recycling indirectly excludes the realization of its broader potential. In fact, the CE in its wider sense may encompass up to ten major strategies (1+9Rs)—refuse, rethink, reduce, re-use, repair, refurbish, remanufacture, repurpose, recycle, recover—(Environmental Protection Department Hong Kong 2021), which allow being rendered into a set of business practices. Interestingly, the viability of translating these R-principles in actual business concepts has been demonstrated by some frontrunning SMEs (small and medium enterprises) in Hong Kong. The initiatives, which are at the center of the present article, are quite unusual for a city that is often described as embracing a fast-paced lifestyle characterized by consumerism and short product life-cycles. So while non-recycling CE businesses have emerged unnoticed by research as well as government policy, the question at hand for local policy-making is if that is indeed the desired result. Given the service industry’s demise due to COVID-19, the global agreement on sustainable development (SD) to counter climate change, for Hong Kong, part of the solution could be to support this momentum generated by CE businesses

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Proceeding from this implicit suggestion, the article centers on the question of what policy measures are needed to sustain and potentially invigorate the business dynamic of local CE SMEs. In order to deliver a proper analysis in the remainder of this paper, the following pages will first introduce the materials and methods of the research. Adopting an essentially institutional, i.e. rule and regulation based, approach the subsequent analysis will then turn to the governmental framework on the CE and subsequently shift to selected business cases and their CE practices. In final instance, the paper concludes by highlighting a set of policy recommendations which are derived from the current formal regulatory shortcomings and tailormade for the existing CE business activities

6.2 Materials and Methods There are major challenges regarding available literature and information on the CE business segment in Hong Kong: The lack of research on the CE in the city (with the exception of waste recycling), the absence of any official of association based CE company register and a respective policy framework as well as the operative size of involved companies. Given these circumstances, the primary approach relevant information gathering consisted of an online desk research, which resulted in the identification of a small number of case studies (n = 45). The selection of these cases adhered to the following screening process and principles: Firstly, only entities with CE relevant practices and business patterns that pertain to the 1+9Rs were identified. Secondly, those companies that engage in waste material processing for the sake of resource recovery were excluded. Additionally, enterprises that are not situated in Hong Kong, but offer products/services for the city’s market were equally removed from the sample set. The remaining pool of firms turned out to be entirely composed of SMEs that were mostly established within the last 10 years (see Fig. 6.2). Detailed references to the respective SME websites can be found as supplementary material under (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Benjamin-Steuer). As for the other relevant stakeholder, the HKSAR government, the desk research aimed to identify policy elements pertaining to CE, SD and environmental protection in general. Materials on this subject were largely derived from governmental homepages, e.g. https://www. epd.gov.hk, and think-tank publications In terms of methods, the paper employs a model of institutional evolution initially designed by the author for the analysis of China’s CE in waste recycling (Steuer 2020). Institutions hereby refer to codified or formal as well as non-codified or informal rules, habits, routines, norms and repeated practices that structure the behavior and interaction of actors, i.e. stakeholders. The choice for an institutional approach is based on the perspective that socio-economic development follows a trajectory of action-response-patterns unfolding among a multitude of actors. It has been observed that these behavioral patterns become repetitive and form institutions (Potting et al. 2017), particularly if they prove effective for the realization of values and interests held by practicing stakeholders (Steuer 2020).

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For the case of Hong Kong’s CE development that involves business and government stakeholders with their respective values and interests, the aspect of institutional evolution is highly relevant. At the onset of such rule-based change (Fig. 6.1) is the emergence of a problem or a challenge. In the context of this paper, achieving SD via CE practices can constitute a type of challenge that both involved stakeholder groups acknowledge. In face of this problem, the model envisages that both stakeholders engage in respective institutional solution finding and selection processes. They do so in either contesting or cooperating reciprocity to each others actions as well as on the basis of their institutional influences, i.e. group-respective values, experiences and interests. The outcome of this selection is the design and implementation of a multitude of institutional practices from both sides. These patterns may be formal or informal in nature, they may be antagonistic or completing to each other. Most essentially, however, they constitute rule-based outputs that aim at (1) solving the challenge and in that process simultaneously (2) realize their group’s specific interests. As a consequence of the institutional practices from both sides, a feedback loop accrues to each side’s stakeholders, which conveys respective information and learning to the groups. By virtue of this feedback, the values and experiences of actors on both sides are enhanced, which in turn allows them to render their solution finding outputs in the subsequent cycles of decision-making ever more effective in the sense of interest realization. This institutional evolutionary procedure manifests as an ever repeating sequence of the “problem emergence and institution solution-finding” cycle. For the case of the CE in Hong Kong, the present context is one of CE practices having recently emerged from the business sector under and as a result of a preceding local policy climate in support of SD and the CE (Hodgson 2004). Given this institutional setting, the most important step for identifying necessary measures to invigorate and strengthen CE business patterns consists of pinpointing the (1)

Fig. 6.1 Projection of institutional evolution in Hong Kong’s CE business segment (based on Steuer 2020)

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Fig. 6.2 CE SMEs’ activity and respective materials/product focus

patterns of institutional practice and (2) the institutional drivers (see colored elements in Fig. 6.1) pursued and absorbed by both stakeholder groups. For this purpose, the following analytical measures were taken, which lead to the findings presented in Sect. 6.3: Firstly, for both stakeholder groups institutional practices were identified, i.e. legal measures of the government and business practices of HK based CE companies. In a second step, the analytical work shifted to identify interest and value patterns of both sides as these are the institutional influences that essentially decide over institutional selection processes. While this approach was relatively straightforward for the government’s output given the clear outline of aims and objectives in official measures, the interpretation of CE businesses required a different method. Using the outputs from online search engines, CE company pages were screened in regard to the company’s key values. Such information is usually provided on subpages titled “about us” or “our story”. As is true for government polices on the CE, companies founding values and motivations (interests) for engaging in a specific CE business model are in all cases linked to SD dimensions, i.e. environment, society and economy. While this particularity can be explained with the evident overlaps between some SDGs and the CE, e.g. SDG 12 responsible consumption and production, it requires an adequate analytical approach to categorize SD domains and weigh the respectively allocated values. Therefore the enterprises in the sample were firstly categorized in regard to their SD domain specific focus. To secondly assess each company’s SD core business values, a point system was used to rank the difference in emphasis allocated to the respective SD dimension by the corporate stakeholders. Table 6.1 separately outlines SMEs’ SD domain categorization and the quantification of SMEs’ business value. While measuring the business value emphasis and respectively allocating of points constitutes a hermeneutic approach, overall coherency is derived from a relative, case to case approach. As some company homepages would feature a higher frequency in

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Table 6.1 Hong Kong CE SMEs: (a) Categorization of SD domains & (b) quantification of business value (a) SD domain

(a) SD domain categorization (b) SD business value emphasis

(b) Quantification of business value emphasis

Environment

Resource saving/environmental protection/waste prevention

Primary interest: [Intense emphasis]

3

Society

Support/Inclusion of disadvantaged/marginalized persons

Secondary interest: [Mention]

1

Economy

Cost-saving/profit-making

No interest: [No mention]

0

mentioning SD domains than others, it was in general possible to distinguish between different levels of value emphasis: Some companies would only mention one domain and thereby clearly indicate their value preference, others would reveal a hierarchy or even equate two domains. The results of this approach are depicted in Fig. 6.3 and outline a diverse range of business value motivating their CE engagement. Contrasted with the institutional influences of official policy it is possible to identify potential shortcomings of and provide recommendations for the latter.

6.3 Discussion of Findings 6.3.1 Institutional Stance of the HKSAR Government on the CE Business Segment The most notable aspect regarding HKSAR’s environmental regulatory framework is the absence of an over-arching environmental law. Rather, various departments have issued and are in charge of enforcing pollution control ordinances pertaining for example to air, water, hazardous chemicals and waste streams (Kong and 2020). SD and CE however have received increasing emphasis in policy documents of recent years and gained in focus over the course of COVID-19 (Tong 2021; Government of Hong Kong 2018, 2019). As far as official interest in the CE is concerned, a clear preference for the WM industry has emerged. Two WM Blueprints were published in 2013 and 2021 which emphasise reduction and resource conservation next to recycling. While the government’s incremental steps towards the CE can be traced back to the early 2000s (Environmental Protection Department Hong Kong 2005), the focus is yet too narrow and isolated on one of the nine potential business segments proposed by the 9R concept. Following this policy logic, supportive fiscal policy measures appear to be exclusively designed for the WM segment. Various

Fig. 6.3 Business value preferences/emphasis of the Hong Kong CE SME case sample

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government established, financial vehicles such as the Recycling Fund, the Environment and Conservation Fund and the Innovation and Technology Fund aim at supporting concepts from within the community, but remain difficult to access even for mature recyclers due to challenging eligibility requirements (Steuer 2020). Green fiscal policy measures, i.e. green taxation, -bonds and -finance, exist and support SD efforts in various fields such energy efficient buildings, electronic vehicles, pollution prevention and resource recovery (Tong 2021; Government of Hong Kong 2018, 2019; Green bond framework the government of the Hong Kong 2019). Despite the evident interest for spurring SD, these mechanisms have yet failed to broaden their scope and include activities non-WM related CE businesses. As the government’s incrementally growing interest in support of the CE and SD is event, shortcomings regarding an overarching CE approach including clear regulatory framework and roadmaps, financial drivers, transparent and timely information services warrant an overhaul and expansion in scope.

6.3.2 CE Business Concepts and Practices in Hong Kong In light of the relatively exclusive CE policy focus and the service-sector centered nature of the local economy, the emergence of a relatively small, but vibrant CE business segment is unexpected. However, when going into detail, local CE SMEs appear to share the government’s reception of the sustainability challenge and have in the particular context of the service-oriented economy adjusted their operational portfolio. Service concepts that are particularly prominent among CE business practices pertain to the “reduce”, “rental/shared use” and “reuse” domains, which are offered by 55% of all screened business cases (Fig. 6.2). In terms of value preferences it is further notable that the “rental/ shared use” and “reuse” categories exhibit the relatively largest inclination towards economic sustainability, i.e. 72% and 44% respectively. The relatively most substantial concern for environmental sustainability is displayed by companies engaging in “substitution” “upcycling and recycling”, and “reduce”, accounting for 86%, 74% and 50%, respectively. Social sustainability, which has not been presented by any company as primary value only shows notable representation in “reduce” and “upcycling and recycling” with 35 and 21% (Fig. 6.3). The distribution of CE practices and weighted SD value preferences among local SMEs indicates a clear signal for policy-makers to adjust their institutional solution for realizing a more encompassing CE in Hong Kong.

6.4 Conclusive Policy Recommendations According to HKSAR’s Trade and Industry Department Hong Kong’s SMEs constitute 98% of the local business segment, employing around 45% of the city’s private sector workforce. These figures render their vitality and performance crucial to the

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development of HKSAR’s economy (Government of Hong Kong 2020). In light of this pivotal role and official emphasis attributed to SD and the CE, it clearly is in the government’s interest to sustain and invigorate the role of CE business activities in Hong Kong. As outlined in Sect. 6.3.1, policy-makers have gradually increased their emphasis and support of the local CE albeit in a limited manner that centers on the WM industry. After the initial and vibrant institutional practices exhibited by CE SMEs in recent years, the task to institutionally respond now rests with stakeholders of the official domain. Policy recommendations in support of this institutional solution finding process that in turn aims to advance the development of this business segment may take two forms. Firstly, a general approach towards policy innovation would require addressing the aforementioned shortcomings. This could on the one hand imply implementing mandatory measures that weed out unsustainable competitors while indirectly supporting CE oriented SMEs. In reference to the observed cases, suitable regulations should focus on prohibiting packaging waste, single use disposable items, landfill taxes and bans as well as requirements on the use of recycled or biodegradable materials for packaging products. Additionally, financial incentives for products and services in line with the CE and Sd concepts may generate the desired effect. In the context of Hong Kong’s already existing funding landscape, a further beneficial measure could be to redesign the guidelines of funding entities so as to facilitate applications from CE SMEs. Moreover, the operative structures of green finance could be extended so as to include the CE business segment. Secondly, that is in addition to the above listed general measures, thinking about policy innovations that are specifically tailormade for the observed CE SMEs may entail significant improvements for the sector’s development potential. For example, in order to induce a bottom-up invigoration of the sector, collaboration as well as information sharing and exchange platforms can help to enhance the impact range of CE goods and services to reach a wider group of consumers. In further extension, government sponsored activities to certify and commend CE products and services are conducive for forming a unique label or brand of local CE businesses. Ecolabels such as used by the European Union or Germany have had their successes and quality-ensuring approaches like life cycle assessment seem to strengthen trust in these institutional practices (Iraldo et al. 2020; Trade and Industry Department 2012). In this regard, the foundation for further steps in this direction have been laid out by the Hong Kong Green Label Scheme, which through a scientific/professional body certifies environmentally preferable products (https://www.greencouncil.org/ hkgls). In final instance, strategies to guarantee diversity in the segment are worth considering. As time passes by it is reasonable to expect more companies to enter the CE domain. In the sense of realizing a balanced approach to SD and CE, administrative coordination, eventually via financial incentives, might be useful to exploit the potential hitherto little developed business segments. In reference to the composition of the sample in this article, interesting yet hardly evolved business fields are social sustainability and material substitution. Doing so may somewhat guarantee the traditionally liberal market trend in the city, while at the same time injecting the inherently normative structure of SD and the CE into the larger economy.

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Acknowledgements I want to express my sincere gratitude to Ms. Martha Elisa Ponce Ramirez, who assisted this research with online screening and data collection on the subject matter of Hong Kong’s Circular Economy SMEs.

References Environmental Protection Department Hong Kong (2020) Monitoring of solid waste in Hong Kong—waste statistics for 2019. https://www.wastereduction.gov.hk/sites/default/files/msw 2019.pdf. Accessed 25 January 2021 Environmental Protection Department Hong Kong (2005) A policy framework for the management of municipal solid waste (2005–2014). https://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/msw/txt_en/ch03/main.htm. Accessed 05 September 2020 Environmental Protection Department Hong Kong (2021) Waste blueprint for Hong Kong 2035. https://www.enb.gov.hk/sites/default/files/pdf/waste_blueprint_2035_eng.pdf. Accessed 17 October 2020 Geng Y, Doberstein B (2008) Developing the circular economy in China: challenges and opportunities for achieving “leapfrog development.” Int J Sust Dev World 15:3. https://doi.org/10.3843/ SusDev.15.3:6 Government of Hong Kong (2018) Green tax incentives planned. https://www.news.gov.hk/eng/ 2018/03/20180301/20180301_164633_424.html. Accessed 5 February 2021 Government of Hong Kong (2019) Green bond framework the government of the Hong Kong special administrative region. https://www.hkgb.gov.hk/en/others/documents/GBF_finalised_dated_28_ March_2019.pdf. Accessed 16 April 2021 Government of Hong Kong (2020) The 2020–21 budget. https://www.budget.gov.hk/2020/eng/bud get13.html. Accessed 16 April 2021 Hodgson GM (2004) The evolution of institutional economics. Agency Structure and Darwinism in American Institutionalism. Routledge, New York Iraldo F, Griesshammer R, Kahlenborn W (2020) The future of ecolabels. Int J Life Cycle Ass 25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-020-01741-9 McDowall W, Geng Y, Huang B, Bartekova E, Bleischwitz R, Turkeli S, Kemp R, Domenech T (2017) Circular economy policies in China and Europe. J Ind Ecol 21:3. https://doi.org/10.1111/ jiec.12597 Potting J, Hekkert M, Worrell E, Hanemaaijer A (2017) Circular economy: measuring innovation in the product chain. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. PBL publication number: 2544. https://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/downloads/pbl-2016-circular-economy-mea suring-innovation-in-product-chains-2544.pdf. Accessed 10 March 2021 Steuer B (2020) Identifying effective institutions for China’s circular economy: bottom-up evidence from waste management. Res 39:7. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734242X20972796 Sustainable Development Solutions Network Hong Kong (2020) Priorities for SDSN Hong Kong. https://sdsn-hk.org/en/initiatives/un-sustainable-development-goals-prioritized-sdgs-inhong-kong. Accessed 10 March 2021 Tong C (2021) Environmental law and practice in Hong Kong: overview Thompson Reuters Practical Law Resource ID 3-503-4772. https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/3-503-4772?transitio nType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default)&firstPage=true#co_anchor_a469843. Accessed 12 March 2021 Trade and Industry Department (2012) Support to small and medium enterprises. www.tid.gov.hk/ english/smes_industry/smes/smes_content.html. Accessed 04 January 2021

Chapter 7

A Quantitative Approach for Product Disassemblability Assessment Ammar Ali, Christian Enyoghasi, and Fazleena Badurdeen

Abstract A majority of the products get discarded at end-of-life (EoL) causing environmental pollution and resulting in a complete loss of all materials and embodied energy. Adopting a closed-loop material flow approach can aid prevention of such losses and enable EoL value recovery from these products. Design and engineering decision choices and how products are used impact the capability to implement EoL strategies such as disassembly. Some underlying factors affecting the capability to implement product disassembly have been discussed in previous studies. However, relevant metrics and attributes are not well defined and comprehensive methods to quantitatively evaluate disassemblability is lacking. This study will first identify key lifecycle-oriented metrics affecting disassemblability. Then a methodology is proposed for the quantitative evaluation of disassemblability considering the quality of returns, product-design characteristics and process technology requirements. Finally, an industrial case study is presented to demonstrate the application of the proposed method. Keywords End-of-life · Disassembly · Product design · Process technology

7.1 Introduction Environmental concerns have garnered more attention on the global manufacturing platform in recent years due to the alarming rate of resource utilization and the resulting negative consequences. To address these concerns, the manufacturing industry is attempting to evolve by embracing more sustainable manufacturing practices. Such efforts have led to the expansion of traditional manufacturing concepts to include the total product lifecycle that covers the pre-manufacturing (PM), manufacturing (M), use (U), and post-use (PU) stages.

A. Ali · C. Enyoghasi · F. Badurdeen (B) Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Ghadimi et al. (eds.), Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability, Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90217-9_7

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The 6R methodology involves reduce, reuse, recover, redesign, remanufacture, and recycle to incorporate multiple lifecycles of a product and a closed-loop material flow (Jawahir et al. 2006). The 6R-based closed-loop approach enables multilifecycle material flow for optimal utilization of resources and recovery of energy embodied in manufactured products. Due to the growing focus on closed-loop material flow, the application of product recovery, reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling strategies after product end-of-life (EoL) has become more important (Badurdeen et al. 2018). Implementing these EoL strategies to facilitate the closed-loop material flow can help companies reduce environmental impact, increase regulatory compliance, and reduce the cost of manufacturing and disposal, thereby increasing the global manufacturing competitiveness (Aydin et al. 2017). Even though the benefits of EoL strategies are known, the effectiveness of their implementation varies from product to product and from one industry to another. One of the reasons for such variations is the difficulty in implementing the EoL strategies. Product disassembly is the necessary first step for recovery and remanufacture of components. Disassemblability refers to the ability to optimize the disassembly process for removal of specific parts or materials in a manner which will minimize costs and maximize the material value to be reclaimed (Johnson and Wang 1998). This paper examines key factors affecting product disassemblability to establish a method for its quantitative assessment considering all relevant factors. The paper is organized as follows: Sect. 7.2 presents a brief review of relevant literature, Sect. 7.3 describes the proposed methodology, and Sect. 7.4 presents an industrial case study to evaluate the disassemblability of two products from a remanufacturing company. Section 7.5 concludes the paper and provides directions for future work.

7.2 Literature Review Numerous studies have been presented to quantitatively evaluate the disassemblability of products after their use. Some authors such as Bras and Hammond (1996), Wang et al. (2012), Soh et al. (2015) attempted to consolidate the results of the underlying metrics into a single score. One of the earliest studies on disassemblability was presented by Suga et al. (1996). They proposed a quantitative disassembly evaluation which considered energy for disassembly and entropy for disassembly as the key factors. Johnson and Wang (1998) proposed a similar method that considers factors like disassembly cost, disassembly time, and reclamation value for disassemblability. Another study by Gungor and Gupta (1999) focused on the types of fastening methods by evaluating the connection types based on factors like complexity of disassembly motion, tool complexity, and disassembly time. Fujimoto et al. (2001) adopted an approach for assessing the ability to disassemble a product based on the factors like degree-of-freedom (DoF) of components, directionality of picking, directionality of accessibility and directionality in support. Desai and Mital (2003) have proposed a disassemblability evaluation scheme which scores the product’s disassembly process based on the effort required for: handling the core, positioning the tool, and exerting

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the force while pushing, pulling, twisting and turning. More recently Fang et al. (2016) proposed an integrated approach for product remanufacturing assessment and identified various factors and characteristics like complexity of disassembly, fastener accessibility, disassemblability, recoverability (via disassembly), and optimal disassembly sequence that effect the ability to disassemble the product. Soh et al. (2015) have also assessed disassemblability based on fastener count, angle of approach, component accessibility and optimal disassembly sequence. Other methods using optimization and software development have also been presented. Bhattacharya and Kaur (2015) proposed an optimization approach to maximize recovery value of the returned product based on whether the disassembled components were acceptable or not, number of refurbished components and demand. Gadh et al. (1998) created a virtual disassembly software tool which would assess the design efficiency of a product for its disassembly based on factors like: ease of product disassembly, disassembly sequencing and disassembly cost. In addition to the factors to be considered, metrics to assess those factors have also been presented in literature. In some early work Bras and Hammond (1996) proposed a metric for product disassembly based on the Design for Assembly (DFA) analysis which compares ideal time for disassembly with the actual time taken to disassemble. Das and Naik (2002) proposed an unfastening effort rating (U-rating) scheme. This scheme assigned different U-ratings based on the type(s) of fasteners used for assembling components. An explicit metric for disassembly that considers the number of fastener types, number of fasteners of each type and the unfastening effort involved for different types of fasteners was, however, not found. Desai and Mital (2003) presented a comprehensive scheme for scoring the handling effort required during the disassembly process. Soh et al. (2015) proposed a metric to assess the accessibility of a component during disassembly based on the information entropy approach while Fang et al. (2016) proposed a metric to assess the product complexity for disassembly based on the number of fasteners for each type and total number of fastener types. However, this approach did not consider the difficulty due to the variation of fastener types used. Incoming product quality is an important factor that affects disassemblability. Only a few studies discuss this aspect and no explicit metrics have been proposed to capture the quality of the returned product when evaluating capability to disassemble. The discussions above show that different approaches to assess product disassemblability have been presented. However, factors affecting the disassemblability and its quantitative assessment considering all relevant factors have not been fully addressed in literature. Existing studies do not collectively consider the product, process and incoming quality related aspects simultaneously to evaluate disassemblability (Ali 2017).

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7.3 Methodology for Disassemblability Assessment This section proposes a methodology for disassemblability assessment based on key factors identified in literature. A comprehensive set of factors necessary to evaluate disassemblability, identified based on literature and industry input, are shown in Table 7.1 (columns). A set of metrics (rows) is also proposed to collectively assess these factors. These metrics are then used to develop an index for disassemblability following a four-step approach summarized in Sects. 7.3.1, 7.3.2, 7.3.3 and 7.3.4.

7.3.1 Assessing Impact of Product Design The design of a product has a significant effect on the ease of disassembly. The importance of number of components, number of fasteners, different fastener types, tolerancing of critical components, etc., as well as the impact of how easily these fasteners and components can be accessed, on the ability to disassemble a product have been highlighted in the literature (Fang et al. 2016; Soh et al. 2015). This implies that the complexity and level of component accessibility will have a tremendous impact on the capability to disassemble a product. Here we use PC D and PA to denote the influence of product design complexity and accessibility on disassemblability, respectively. PC D is a measure of the complexity due to nature of fasteners (F C ) and due to other (non-fastener) components (NDC ). Fc is determined by comparing a metric based on the type of fasteners used in the product being disassembled (F A ) against a theoretical ideal measure forfastener complexity (F I ) Feng et al. (2016). F A is determined as   FA = i0 j ∗ k ∗ Log 2 (fi + 1) where j represents the fastener category (j = 1, 2, 0 for Category 1, 2 or 3, respectively, where each category is made up of fastener types according to the nature of mating relationships) and k is the U-rating for each fastener type, based on Das and Naik (2002). f i is the number of fasteners for each  fi + 1 fastener type. F I is determined through FI = Min(j) ∗ Min(k) ∗ Log 2 where Min. (j) is minimum applicable fastener category, and Min. (k) is minimum applicable U-rating for a given Min. (j). F A and F I are used to determine the relative fastener complexity (Fc) as Fc = FFAI where 0 ≤ FC ≤ 1. The disassembly complexity introduced due to other design features (NDC ) is considered along two aspects: the product design aspect, which is dependent on the number of features and the process related aspect, which is dependent on the investment involved (Bras and Hammond 1996). NDC is assessed as shown in Eq. (7.1), where l is the number of non-fastener components inspected during disassembly, T l is the total number of available features for inspection in the lth component, I l is the total no. of inspected features of lth component, and W l (= CCl l ) is the cost based weight for the inspection of lth component where Cl denotes the cost of the inspected lth component.

Quality of return

Disassembly effort

Disassembly score

Product accessibility

Fastener complexity

Non-fastener complexity

Product complexity

x

x

Number of fastener types

x

x

x

x x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

Difficulty Number of Disassembly Disassembly Labor Setup Quality Dimensional Degree of Number of Total number Cost of new of total time effort cost and of access of freedom of inspected of components fastener components tool returns components components components non-fasteners types cost

Table 7.1 Relevant factors and metrics proposed to assess disassemblability

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NDC =

  l  Il 1− ∗ Wl 1 Tl

(7.1)

With Fc and NDC assessed as discussed, PC D is represented as shown in Eq. (7.2) where z = total number of non-fastener components/(total number of components). PC D = z∗NDC + (1 − z)FC where 0 ≤ PC D ≤ 1

(7.2)

Accessibility refers to the ease of grasping a part by hand or a tool for removal and can have a significant impact on product disassemblability (Soh et al. 2015). For each type of component, dimensional access in the X, Y and Z directions Iacc is determined using Eq. (7.3) where X, Y and Z, represent the exposed dimensions in the three directions, respectively (Soh et al. 2015). Iacc

       X Y Z + log2 + log2 = − log2 X Y Z

(7.3)

For consistency, Eq. (7.3) is modified to a metric between 0 and 1 as shown in Eq. (7.4) where AN is the metric for the Nth component, AN is the component’s accessibility rating (Iacc * number of units of Nth component), and Min. AN and Max. AN are minimum and maximum values of all AN , respectively. AN = 1 −



AN − Min.AN Max.AN − Min.AN

where

0 ≤ AN ≤ 1

(7.4)

The influence of component accessibility on disassemblability

(PA) is  the average N  1 (AN ) where 0 ≤ of the components’ accessibility metrics represented as PA = N PA ≤ 1.

7.3.2 Assessing Impact of Process Technology Here, the metric ‘Process Technological Capability for Disassemblability (PT D ) is used to represent the ability to disassemble a product based on the process technology used. Disassemblability is a measure of time and effort. Modifying the approach presented by Bras and Hammond (1996) to consider the actual and planned disassembly times for components, the disassembly time rating (D) shown in Eq. (7.5) is developed.  D =1−

Actual disassembly time − Planned disassembly time Planned disassembly time

 where 0 ≤ D ≤ 1

(7.5)

The effort required during the disassembly also has a significant influence on the product disassemblability (Desai and Mital 2003). Various steps must be followed

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during disassembly to facilitate the step-by-step removal of all the components. The handling or effort invested in performing these tasks is referred to as the disassembly effort (Desai and Mital 2003). The scoring scheme by Desai and Mittal (2003) considers different criteria of operator handling such as disassembly force, material handling, tools required, accessibility of joints/grooves, and tool positioning. In this research, the same comprehensive scheme is used to score all the different steps involved in the disassembly of the product but aggregated to obtain a value for the actual effort (denoted by E DA ) required during the product disassembly. A normalized metric is then obtained as shown in Eq. 7.6 for disassembly effort (E D ) where EDA , EDMax, and EDMin refer to the actual effort, maximum and minimum disassembly efforts, respectively.  ED = 1−

EDA −EDMin EDMax − EDMin

where 0 ≤ ED ≤ 1

(7.6)

7.3.3 Assessing Incoming Quality Despite the availability of facilities, the disassembly of a product can be limited due to its incoming quality (Bhattacharya and Kaur 2015). The time and resources required for the disassembly process depend significantly on the incoming quality of the returned product. The importance of this information for disassemblability has not been considered in previous studies. Here we introduce the concept of costbased quality of return (QD ) to integrate the influence of incoming product quality on disassemblability. Each component is assigned with a cost-based relative weight considering the total cost of the product. QD is computed using Eq. (7.7) where qDN is a binary rating forthe Nth component (0—rejected and replaced, and 1—accepted) and wN (= C N / C N ) is the relative cost-based weight for the Nth component, where C N is the replacement cost for the Nth component. QD =

N 1

qDN wN

(7.7)

7.3.4 Consolidated Index Development The last step involves the integration of all the metrics discussed in the previous sections to develop a consolidated index to measure product disassemblability. The F-measure approach proposed by Amigo et al. (2011) is used first to combine the metrics for product complexity (PC D ) and accessibility (PA), as opposed to simple aggregation, to determine the combined impact of these aspects (related to product

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design) on disassemblability (PDD ). This is assessed using Eq. (7.8). 2 (PC D )−1 + (PA)−1

PDD =

(7.8)

Process Technological Capability for disassembly (PTD ) is an integrated index based on ‘D’ and ‘ED ’. This index is established following an approach similar to that in Bras and Hammond (1996) as shown in Eq. (7.9), where WD and WED are relative weights based on the process investment required for ‘D’ and ‘ED ’.  PT D =

WD WED + D ED

−1 (7.9)

The Process Quality for disassembly (PQD ) is established as PQD = PT D ∗ QD . A consolidated index for product disassemblability (EoLD ) is then established by combining PDD and PQD as shown in Eq. (7.10) EoLD =

2

(PDD )

−1

−1  + PQD

(7.10)

Readers are referred to Ali (2017) for further details about the approach summarized in the four steps.

7.4 Case Study and Application To demonstrate the application of the proposed methodology, a case study of a remanufacturer of large engines, hydraulics and power train components for a wide range of OEMs, is presented. The proposed methodology is used to assess the disassemblability of two different products referred to as Series A and B, as shown in Fig. 7.1.

(a) Series A Fig. 7.1 Front and rear appearance of products

(b) Series B

7 A Quantitative Approach for Product Disassemblability Assessment Remove Packaging

Stacking

Remove Spark Plug Carrier and Flange

Reject

Remove Keepers, Spring Retainer, Valve Springs (4 nos.) and Flat Washers

Reject/ Reuse

Remove Valve Sleeves and Seals (4 nos.) Seat Removal

Remove Keepers, Spring Retainer, Valve Springs (4 nos.) and Flat Washers

Reject/ Reuse

Reject

Remove Valve Sleeves and Seals (4 nos.)

Reject

Reject

Seat Removal

Reject

Remove Packaging

Sand Blasting

Sand Blasting

Polishing, Grinding & Buffing

Polishing, Grinding & Buffing

Visual Crack Inspection

(a) Series A

81

Reject

Stacking

Visual Crack Inspection

Reject

(b) Series B

Fig. 7.2 Disassembly process sequence

For each product type, the disassembly process sequence used is shown in Fig. 7.2. Decisions to reject/reuse respective components based on quality inspection at each step of the process are also indicated. The initial step in the application of the proposed method is to assess the complexity of the products (PCD ), fastener complexity (FC ), and non-fastener complexity during disassembly (NDC ). To do this, all the non-fasteners, fasteners and number of fasteners for each component type are identified. These were used to determine the values of F A , F I , and subsequently F C as described in Sect. 7.3.1. By inspecting the critical components during disassembly, NDC was determined using Eq. (7.1). The non-fastener ratio (z) was computed for each product and used to determine the overall product complexity (PC D ) according to Eq. (7.2). Product accessibility (PA) was assessed using the dimensional data for each component. Component accessibility was first measured for all the components, individual adjusted component scores were established, and the overall PA was assessed as discussed in Sect. 7.3.1. Time studies for Series A and B products were conducted to obtain the actual disassembly times. These times are used in Eq. (7.5) to assess the disassembly time rating (D). Then, the minimum effort, actual effort, and maximum effort scores for disassembly were determined and disassembly effort rating (E D ) of Series A and Series B were assessed according to Eq. (7.6). To access the quality of returns (QD ), the cost-based weight and quality grading information for each component were determined. Thereafter, product complexity (PC D ) and product accessibility (PA) were consolidated using Eq. (7.8) to evaluate the impact of product design on disassemblability (PDD ). Process technical capability for disassembly (PT D ) is assessed by combining ‘D’ and ‘E D ’ according to Eq. (7.9). The assessed value of PT D was multiplied with the quality of return to estimate the process-quality value for disassemblability (PQD ). Finally, the overall end-of-life disassemblability (EoL D ) was assessed by consolidating the values for the different metrics. Table 7.2 shows the calculated values. A visual comparison of EoLD is shown in the spider chart (Fig. 7.3a). Space limitation prevents including the raw case study data (available in Ali 2017) used to compute the different metrics summarized in Table 7.2.

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Table 7.2 Inputs and results of disassemblability assessment FA

FI

D

ED

QD

PA

NDC FC

PT D PC D PQD PDD EoLD

Series 10.45 5.42 0.70 0.83 0.70 0.87 0.83 A

0.52 0.71

0.82

0.50

0.84

0.62

Series 11.67 5.90 0.81 0.84 0.76 0.90 0.89 B

0.51 0.81

0.87

0.62

0.88

0.73

EOLD 1 ED

0.8

PDD

0.6

1

0.4

0.8

0.2 PA

PQD

0

0.6 0.4

Series B

0.2

QD

PCD

Proposed Methodology (Quantitative)

PTD Series A

Series A

0

Series B

(a) Assessment metrics

Experts Opinion (Qualitative)

Series A

Series B

(b) Qualitative validation

Fig. 7.3 Disassemblability assessment comparison (Series A vs Series B)

Better (higher scores) component accessibility (PA) and non-fastener component complexity (PC D ) reflects the superiority of the product design (PDD ) for Series B, compared to Series A, from a disassembly perspective. The incoming quality (PQD ) of the Series B products is also better than for Series A. These factors contribute to a higher disassemblability index (EoL D ) for Series B (0.73) products compared to Series A (0.62). To validate the approach proposed in this research, results of the assessment were compared with the expert opinion (qualitative) from the industry partner. The experts who currently manually assess the incoming EoL items were asked to score both products for ease of disassembly, based on their experience. Results from the qualitative assessment are shown in Fig. 7.3b. On a scale of 0–1, the average score for Series A product is 0.52, while that of series B is 0.70. These scores assigned by the experts are comparable to those derived from the proposed method.

7.5 Conclusions and Future Work Studies providing a comprehensive quantitative assessment method for product disassemblability is lacking in literature. This paper identified set of factors and metrics essential to evaluate product disassemblability. The metrics were consolidated to

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propose a quantitative index to evaluate product disassemblability. The proposed methodology was applied to an industrial case study involving two automotive products. The results show that the method can comprehensively evaluate disassemblability. Assessment of same products for disassemblability by expert industry operators helped validate the method. Further improvements can be made to the proposed approach to increase its practical usability. Though multiple calculations are involved, the method required only a few input parameters. Therefore, a simple spreadsheet tool can be developed to compute the EoL D in the shop floor for easy implementation. The approach used to quantify incoming product quality in the research needs further improvement. Future work can also focus on applying this approach for various other products across different industries.

References Ali A (2017) Product disassemblability and remanufacturability assessment: a quantitative approach. Master’s thesis. University of Kentucky, USA Amigó E, Gonzalo J, Artiles J, Verdejo F (2011) Combining evaluation metrics via the unanimous improvement ratio and its application to clustering tasks. J Artif Intell Res (JAIR) 42:689–718 Aydin R, Brown A, Ali A, Badurdeen F (2017) Assessment of end-of-life product lifecycle ‘ilities’”. In: Proceedings of IISE annual conference and expo, 20–23 May 2017, Pittsburgh, PA Badurdeen F, Aydin R, Brown A (2018) A multiple lifecycle-based approach to sustainable product design. J Clean Prod 200:756–769 Bhattacharya R, Kaur A (2015) Allocation of external returns of different quality grades to multiple stages of a closed loop supply chain. J Manuf Syst 1–11 Bras B, Hammond R (1996) Towards design for remanufacturing—metrics for assessing remanufacturability. In: Proceedings of the 1st international workshop on reuse, pp 5–22 Das S, Naik S (2002) Process planning for product disassembly. Int J Prod Res 40(6):1335–1355 Desai A, Mital A (2003) Evaluation of disassemblability to enable design for disassembly in mass production. Int J Ind Ergon 32(4):265–281 Fang HC, Ong SK, Nee AYC (2016) An integrated approach for product remanufacturing assessment and planning. Procedia CIRP 40:262–267 Fujimoto H, Ahmed A, Sugi K (2001) Product’s disassemblability evaluation using information entropy. Electronics 353–359 Gadh R, Srinivasan H, Nuggehalli S, Figueroa R (1998) Virtual disassembly-a software tool for developing product\ndismantling and maintenance systems. Annual reliability and maintainability symposium. 1998 proceedings. In: International symposium on product quality and integrity, pp 120–125 Gungor A, Gupta SM (1999) Issues in environmentally conscious manufacturing and product recovery: a survey. Comput Ind 36(4):811–853 Jawahir IS, Dillon OW, Rouch KE, Joshi KJ, Venkatachalam A, Jaafar IH (2006) Total life-cycle considerations in product design for sustainability: A framework for comprehensive evaluation. In: Proceedings of the 10th international research/expert conference, Barcelona, Spain, pp 1–10 Johnson MR, Wang MH (1998) Economical evaluation of disassembly operations for recycling, remanufacturing and reuse. Int J Prod Res 20–23(12):3227–3252 Soh S, Ong SK, Nee AYC, Soh SL (2015) Design for assembly and disassembly for remanufacturing. Assembly Autom 36(1):12–24

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Suga T, Saneshige K, Fujimoto J (1996) Quantitative disassembly evaluation. In: Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE international symposium on electronics and the environment. ISEE-1996, pp 19–24 Wang LL, Zhang ZM, Chen C (2012) Evaluation model for product green design based on active remanufacturing. Appl Mech Mater 215–216:583–587

Chapter 8

A Review on the Life Cycle Assessment Phases of Cement and Concrete Manufacturing Nitin Ankur and Navdeep Singh

Abstract Concrete is the most used construction material around the globe. The prime constituent of concrete is cement and its production accounts for 5% of the world’s CO2 emissions. Ingredients involved in cement and concrete manufacturing are derived from natural resources and their processing involves high energy demand and further emits lots of emissions. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used to assess the environmental impacts associated with the construction industry. This paper is a brief review of the methods followed in existing investigations on LCA of cement and concrete. The majority of LCA studies are following the ‘Cradle-toGate’ approach and primarily consists of global warming potential and greenhouse emissions while neglecting various other impacts like water consumption, wastewater, and solid waste generation along with harmful toxic emissions. These emissions along with the modern-day practice of utilizing various industrial waste in cement and concrete manufacturing must be included in inventory analysis to determine the best available technology for the construction industry. Keywords Cement · Concrete · Functional units · Life cycle inventory · Life cycle impact assessment

8.1 Introduction The environmental, economic, and social impacts associated with concrete form the three basic pillars of sustainability in the construction sector. Among all the construction materials, concrete has the lowest embodied energy. One of the prime constituents of concrete is cement and its production accounts for 5% of the world’s CO2 emissions and is produced at a very high rate of 3 billion tons per year. Every N. Ankur (B) · N. Singh (B) Department of Civil Engineering, Dr BR Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar 144011, India e-mail: [email protected] N. Singh e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Ghadimi et al. (eds.), Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability, Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90217-9_8

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year, 10 to 30 billion tons of concrete are being used globally for the construction of various industrial and residential structures. Increasing population will further lead to an increase in economic activity and therefore, the demand for concrete will also increase leading to more environmental impacts as overexploitation of the natural resources will occur. Sustainability in the concrete industry is highly required as most of the materials used in concrete manufacturing are extracted from natural resources. The concrete industry is also one of the most flexible industries that allow the incorporation of various waste materials as replacement or addition of the conventional materials and provide a firm scope of ‘waste management (Kumar and Singh 2020; Ankur and Singh 2021). This further demands the analysis of the environmental impacts of recycled waste-based concrete as they can be a source of heavy metals and toxic emissions. The sustainability parameters associated with concrete can be measured using the concept of ‘Life Cycle Assessment’ (LCA). LCA offers mathematical formation for quantitative analysis and comparison of various processes, products, and systems and assesses the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product or process (ISO 14040 2006). Figure 8.1 represents the framework of life cycle assessment (ISO 14040 2006). LCA enables the engineers to study various aspects of a material or process that could harm or benefit the environment and allow them to create a set of matrix parameters by which a material can be judged whether it will be environment friendly throughout its life cycle. LCA can also assist in improving the environmental performance of a product at various stages of its life cycle and decision-making for strategic planning of manufacturing process redesign. LCA is an overall indicator of environmental aspects and impacts throughout the product life cycle starting from the acquisition of raw material, production, use, recycling, and final disposal i.e. ‘cradle to grave analysis’. This paper is an attempt to present a brief review of the existing literature on the environmental impacts of cement and concrete production. The studies based on LCA guidelines were selected from various peerreviewed journals and reports. The paper discusses the available literature based

Fig. 8.1 Life cycle assessment framework (ISO 14040 2006)

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on the following three important phases of LCA as discussed in ISO 14040 which includes Scope and goal definition, Life cycle inventory analysis, and Life cycle impact assessment. The various materials, system boundaries, and environmental impact considered or omitted in the LCA of cement and concrete manufacturing are summarized in the subsequent sections. General conclusions can be drawn from the above-mentioned three phases of LCA that can further help the researchers in decision making on how to carry out the LCA of concrete, and what are the factors that need to be studied while doing an LCA study on cement and concrete production.

8.2 Phase I: Scope and Goal Definition 8.2.1 Goal and Scope of Cement and Concrete Manufacturing LCA The goal of carrying out an LCA study of concrete is to state the prophesied use and the reasons for conducting the study. Scope of concrete manufacturing LCA consists of the production systems that are to be studied, the functional unit, system boundaries, and the allocation procedures along with the types of impacts and the methodology followed for the assessment of the impacts. Figure 8.2 represents the cradle-to-gate scope of concrete production. Cement manufacturing is one of the major sources of CO2 emission in the entire concrete industry, hence almost all the LCAs studying the raw material of concrete focus on cement production (Gursel

Fig. 8.2 Representation of the scope of cradle-to-gate concrete production

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2014). Many studies are based on the impacts of extraction and preparation of raw materials in a cement plant along with the other processes like fine mixing of raw material and clinker grinding (Thwe et al. 2021; Çankaya and Pekey 2019; Moretti and Caro 2017). In cement manufacturing, clinker production is the major source of energy consumption and emissions, and the effect of waste co-processing and different kiln technologies was studied by Boesch and Hellweg (Boesch and Hellweg 2010) using a technology and input specific cradle to gate LCA model. Environmental impacts of producing different types of cement were also studied under LCA of cement manufacturing to determine the potential CO2 emissions associated with the production of different types of cement including cement with natural pozzolans, recycled kiln dust, blast furnace slag, spent volcanic soil, etc. (Huntzinger and Eatmon 2009; Josa et al. 2007; Navia et al. 2006). Marceau et al. reported a framework for carrying out the LCA of US Portland cement manufacturing with four types of cement plant kilns to determine the environmental impacts associated with cement manufacturing (Marceau et al. 2006). Josa et al. carried out a relative analysis of the inventories associated with different types of cement in Europe (Josa et al. 2004). Heede and Belie provided a comprehensive review based on energy used and emissions data for traditional concrete comprising of conventional natural ingredients and for green concrete comprising of fly ash and blast furnace slag (Heede and Belie 2012). Prusinski et al. studied the life cycle inventory of concrete prepared with a high volume of slag cement (Prusinski et al. 2004). Blengini et al. carried out an LCA based on the aggregate production and the use of conventional natural aggregates and construction and recycled aggregates in concrete to avoid the landfilling impacts (Blengini et al. 2012). The comparative studies based on cost and greenhouse emissions of ordinary Portland cement-based concrete, blended cement concrete, and geopolymer concrete were also carried out by many researchers (McLellan et al. 2011; Habert et al. 2011; Chen et al. 2010; Flower and Sanjayan 2007). Evaluation of primary energy demand, global warming potential, and water demand associated with different building materials can also be scope for carrying out an LCA of concrete manufacturing (Bribián et al. 2011). Flower and Sanjayan also reported the greenhouse gas emissions associated with fine and coarse aggregate production and transportation (Flower and Sanjayan 2007). Leaching is also considered as one of the prime concerns associated with the life cycle of concrete (Kuhlman and Paschmann 1996).

8.2.2 Functional Units and LCA Approach In cement and concrete LCA, the most common functional units studied are 1 kg of clinker (Valderrama et al. 2012) and 1 kg of ordinary Portland cement (Josa et al. 2004; Heede and Belie 2012). However, the quantity of the functional unit can be varied as few studies considered 1-tonne clinker and cement as a functional unit (Huntzinger and Eatmon 2009; Marceau et al. 2006; McLellan et al. 2011; Yang et al. 2017; Stafford and Raupp-pereira 2016; Chen et al. 2015; Li et al. 2014,

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2015). Blengini et al. studied 1 ton of aggregate as a functional unit. Per cubic meter of concrete was also considered as a functional unit to carry out the comparative analysis between ordinary concrete and geopolymer concrete (Habert et al. 2011). Per unit mass of each product can also be considered as a functional unit (Marceau et al. 2007). Process-based LCA consisting of both life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment was the most common applied LCA approach throughout the literature, however, some studies only investigated the life cycle inventory of cement and concrete manufacturing (Prusinski et al. 2004; Flower and Sanjayan 2007).

8.3 Phase II: Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCI) The main aim of the inventory analysis is to collect the data and determine the procedures to be carried out to quantify the inputs and outputs of a system (ISO 14040 2006). A significant amount of energy is used in cement manufacturing in kilns that are primarily derived from fossil fuels like coal and alternative fuels like waste tires, liquid and solid waste, and natural gas. Almost every stage of cement production be it crushing, grinding, conveying, kiln rotation makes use of electricity. This huge amount of energy consumption is generally taken from the national averages in almost every LCAs (Josa et al. 2004). Variations in regional availability of technology and resources are usually not considered in carrying out the LCI that restricts the implementation of these LCI in the cement plants that differs considerably from the national averages. Also, the energy consumption in the production of domestic and imported clinkers is considered to be the same in LCI (Marceau et al. 2006). Cement manufacturing also leads to the generation of major air emissions like SO2, NOx , volatile organic compounds (VOC), etc., and these are generally studied in LCI (Boesch and Hellweg 2010; Josa et al. 2004). Particulate matter is also produced in every stage of cement manufacturing and 90% of the particulate material associated with the cement industry comes from the quarrying process (Marceau et al. 2006). Natural raw materials also include some amount of organic carbon content that leads to the emission of CO and hydrocarbons during the pyroprocessing and are included in the inventory analysis of many investigations (Navia et al. 2006; Marceau et al. 2006). Waste included as replacement of conventional ingredients can also be a source of heavy metals and their burning in the kiln can lead to higher toxic emissions (Boesch and Hellweg 2010). The amount of water consumed in cement manufacturing is hardly covered in any investigation and none of the investigations studied the impacts of water consumption on the environment. The environmental impacts associated with the concrete industry are also highly influenced by fuel and electricity consumption and 4% of the embodied energy of concrete comes from energy consumption (Marceau et al. 2007). The CO2 emissions are the most commonly studied impact associated with the concrete in LCA and non-LCA studies. Most of the LCAs carried out on concrete focus on the greenhouse emissions aspects of manufacturing green concrete with the use of recycled waste as a replacement of conventional concrete (Flower and Sanjayan 2007).

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The VOCs emitted during concrete production also need attention where chemical admixtures are used (Kuhlman and Paschmann 1996; Gäbel and Tillman 2005). Other impacts that need to be categorized in inventory analysis consist of toxic emissions, heavy metals, dioxins, and carcinogens associated with the production of concrete (Prusinski et al. 2004). There is very limited data available on the disposal of solid waste like cement kiln dust, supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) preparation, aggregate grinding, etc. that is generated during cement and concrete manufacturing. This waste can significantly increase the environmental impacts associated with cement and concrete manufacturing. The liquid and solid waste generated from the batching plants are still the concerned areas as these waste lack inventory data. Data availability is one of the most prime challenges encountered during the collection of inventory data (Ayres 1995). Table 8.1 summarizes the scope definition, LCI categories and LCIA categories studied in the existing literature.

8.4 Phase III: Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) The prime objective of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is to unite life cycle inventory results to the equivalent environmental effects. There is a large number of studies available on the LCIA of cement production, however, very limited studies are reported on the LCIA of concrete manufacturing. There are two major approaches to the assessment of environmental impacts. The first one is the ‘mid-point approach’ which is a problem or pressure-oriented approach that groups LCI results into midpoint categories. The major methods that are based on this approach are CML (Centrum voor Milieuwetenschappen in Leiden), TRACI (Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other Environmental Impacts), EDIP (Environmental Development of Industrial Products). CML methods consider 10 major environmental impacts that mainly consist of Global warming potential (GWP), abiotic depletion, human and water toxicity, ecotoxicity, eutrophication, etc. TRACI method includes GWP, fossil fuel depletion, criteria air pollutants, human health, etc. The second approach revolves around the tangible effects and is called the ‘end-point or damage-oriented approach. These impact categories consist of damage to resources (fossils and minerals), ecosystem, energy, and human health e.g. Ecoindicator 99. Majorities of the study used various versions of the CML approach to calculate the LCIA associated with cement and concrete manufacturing and the LCIA was conducted using SimaPro software. Very few studies are based on Ecoindicator 99 only. Global warming potential (GWP) is the most assessed impact in cement and concrete manufacturing, due to ease of accessing embodied energy and carbon content data of the material used (Braga et al. 2017; Miller et al. 2016). Other regional impacts in cement and concrete LCIA are acidification and NOx and SOx emissions. Few studies also include ammonia emissions as part of acidification (Boesch and Hellweg 2010; Chen et al. 2010) while some studies did not include the said emissions in determining the categories acidification impact (Huntzinger and Eatmon

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Table 8.1 Summary of the scope definition, LCI categories, and LCIA categories studied in the existing literature

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2009; Navia et al. 2006). Most of the LCIs do not consider the effect of chemical oxygen demand, total nitrogen, etc. that leads to some inconsistencies in the development of factors that are needed for the interpretation of the results. There is also uncertainty on how to translate the toxic emissions into impact categories like impact on human health or human toxicity. Heavy metals and other emissions are generally left out while carrying LCIA of cement and concrete as it is not possible to categorize pollutants based on the available data on their toxicity and these metals are present in very less concentration and chances of exposure are very minimal. Also, there are very few studies available that are based on the damage-oriented assessment as most of the studies are based on traditional problem-oriented LCIA (Gursel 2014). The reduction in the number of assumptions and complexity involved in modeling and results in the traditional approach makes an easy choice for carrying out LCIA.

8.5 Identified Gaps and Avenues for Future Research Most of the studies investigating the LCA of concrete and cement manufacturing are primarily based on greenhouse gas emissions and global warming potential. Other impacts like toxic air emissions and pollutants along with heavy metal emissions and impacts to human health are ignored in most of the studies and are generally not included in life cycle inventory analysis. Also, the water consumption along with wastewater and solid waste generation have been kept out from most of the LCA studies. Various industrial and agricultural wastes (like construction and demolition waste, fly ash, coal bottom ash, slag, copper and steel tailings, metakaolin, fibers, rice husk ash, incineration ash, etc.) are now being utilized in the cement and construction industry as a replacement of conventional materials. This utilization promotes the idea of waste minimization, resource conservation, and cleaner production in the construction sector. These modern-day manufacturing processes must be incorporated in the LCA studies and inventory inputs and outputs must be enhanced and updated to determine the best available technologies in this sector.

8.6 Conclusions As the demand for concrete is increasing day by day along with the mounting demand for environmentally friendly and sustainable construction, LCA can play a vital role in making the construction industry green. Cement and concrete manufacturing consist of various processes and concrete can be used in many ways and it is very difficult to perform cradle-to-grave analysis and check all the impacts associated with the life cycle of concrete. Cradle-to-gate or gate-to-gate analysis is more common in practice due to the simplicity in performing the LCA. Most existing studies use the Cradle-togate approach. With the help of LCA, the construction industry can work in a better way to minimize the environmental impacts associated with the industry. However,

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few processes can increase the environmental impact of concrete throughout its life cycle but are still not considered in the LCIA studies. Emphasis should be made on ecological toxicity along with the damage to human health which is generally not included in LCIAs due to lack of data availability.

References Ankur N, Singh N (2021) Performance of cement mortars and concretes containing coal bottom ash: a comprehensive review. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 149:111361 Ayres RU (1995) Life cycle analysis: a critique. Res Conserv Recycl 14:199–223 Blengini GA, Garbarino E, Šolar S, Shields DJ, Hámor T, Vinai R, Agioutantis Z (2012) Life Cycle Assessment guidelines for the sustainable production and recycling of aggregates: the Sustainable Aggregates Resource Management project (SARMa). J Clean Prod 27:177–181 Boesch ME, Hellweg S (2010) Identifying improvement potentials in cement production with life cycle assessment. Environ Sci Technol 44:9143–9149 Braga A, Silvestre J, de Brito J (2017) Compared environmental and economic impact of the life cycle of concrete with natural and recycled coarse aggregates. J Clean Prod 162:529–543 Bribián IZ, Capilla AV, Usón AA (2011) Life cycle assessment of building materials: comparative analysis of energy and environmental impacts and evaluation of the eco-efficiency improvement potential. Build Environ 46:1133–1140 Çankaya S, Pekey B (2019) A comparative life cycle assessment for sustainable cement production in Turkey. J Environ Manage 249:109362 Chen C, Habert G, Bouzidi Y, Jullien A (2010) Environmental impact of cement production: detail of the different processes and cement plant variability evaluation. J Clean Prod 18:478–485 Chen W, Hong J, Xu C (2015) Pollutants generated by cement production in China, their impacts, and the potential for environmental improvement. J Clean Prod 103:61–69 Flower D, Sanjayan JG (2007) Green house gas emissions due to concrete manufacture. Int J Life Cycle Assess 12:282–288 Gäbel K, Tillman AM (2005) Simulating operational alternatives for future cement production. J Clean Prod 13:1246–1257 Gursel AP (2014) Life-cycle assessment of concrete: decision-support tool and case study application. University of California, Berkeley Habert G, d’Espinose de Lacaillerie JB, Roussel N (2011) An environmental evaluation of geopolymer based concrete production: reviewing current research trends J Clean Prod 19:1229– 1238 Huntzinger DN, Eatmon TD (2009) A life-cycle assessment of Portland cement manufacturing: comparing the traditional process with alternative technologies. J Clean Prod 17:668–675 ISO 14040 (2006) Environmental management—life cycle assessment: principles and framework (Geneva, Switzerland) Josa A, Aguado A, Heino A, Byars E, Cardim A (2004) Comparative analysis of available life cycle inventories of cement in the EU. Cem Concr Res 34:1313–1320 Josa A, Aguado A, Cardim A, Byars E (2007) Comparative analysis of the life cycle impact assessment of available cement inventories in the EU. Cem Concr Res 37:781–788 Kuhlman K, Paschmann H (1996) Environmental compatibility of concrete from the starting of materials through to its re-utilization. Concr Precast Plant Technol 1:112–121 Kumar P, Singh N (2020) Influence of recycled concrete aggregates and Coal Bottom Ash on various properties of high volume fly ash-self compacting concrete. J Build Eng 32:101491 Li C, Nie Z, Cui S, Gong X, Wang Z, Meng X (2014) The life cycle inventory study of cement manufacture in China. J Clean Prod 72:204–211

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Li C, Cui S, Nie Z, Gong X, Wang Z, Itsubo N (2015) The LCA of Portland cement production in China Int. J Life Cycle Assess 20:117–127 Marceau ML, Nisbet MA, VanGeem MG (2006) Life cycle inventory of Portland cement manufacture Marceau ML, Nisbet MA, VanGeem MG (2007) Life cycle inventory of Portland cement concrete McLellan BC, Williams RP, Lay J, van Riessen A, Corder GD (2011) Costs and carbon emissions for geopolymer pastes in comparison to ordinary portland cement. J Clean Prod 19:1080–1090 Miller S, Monteiro P, Ostertag C, Horvath A (2016) Concrete mixture proportioning for desired strength and reduced global warming potential. Constr Build Mater 128:410–421 Moretti L, Caro S (2017) Critical analysis of the life cycle assessment of the Italian cement industry. J Clean Prod 152:198–210 Navia R, Rivela B, Lorber KE, Méndez R (2006) Recycling contaminated soil as alternative raw material in cement facilities: life cycle assessment. Res Conserv Recycl 48:339–356 Prusinski JR, Marceau ML, VanGeem MG (2004) Life cycle inventory of slag cement concrete international conference on fly ash, silica fume, slag and natural Pozzolans in concrete—Supplemental papers (Farmington Hills, MI) Stafford FN, Raupp-pereira F (2016) Life cycle assessment of the production of cement: a Brazilian case study. J Clean Prod 137:1293–1299 Stafford FN, Dias AC, Arroja L, Labrincha JA, Hotza D (2016) Life cycle assessment of the production of Portland cement: a Southern Europe case study. J Clean Prod 126:159–165 Thwe E, Khatiwada D, Gasparatos A (2021) Life cycle assessment of a cement plant in Naypyitaw, Myanmar. Clean Environ Syst 2:100007 Valderrama C, Granados R, Cortina JL, Gasol CM, Guillem M, Josa A (2012) Implementation of best available techniques in cement manufacturing: a life-cycle assessment study. J Clean Prod 25:60–67 Van den Heede P, Belie De N (2012) Environmental impact and life cycle assessment (LCA) of traditional and ‘green’ concretes: literature review and theoretical calculations. Cem Concr Compos 34:431–442 Yang D, Fan L, Shi F, Liu Q, Wang Y (2017) Comparative study of cement manufacturing with different strength grades using the coupled LCA and partial LCC methods—a case study in China. Resour Conserv Recycl 119:60–68

Chapter 9

Use of Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement and Recycled Waste Glass as Partial Aggregate Replacements in Concrete Pavements Nisha Patel, Shohel Amin, and Rahat Iqbal Abstract This paper investigates the optimal ratio of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) and recycled waste glass (RWG) in concrete pavements ensuring the standard structural strength and reducing the environmental costs. The absorption, compressive, flexural and splitting tensile strength tests were carried out on three groups of concrete specimens comprised of varying proportions of RAP and RWG. The laboratory experiments showed that concrete specimens containing recycled materials had better structural quality than that of controlled specimens with virgin aggregates. The specimens with 15% RAP and 15% RWG increased the compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strength by 9.36, 1 and 3.88%, respectively. The concrete blocks with 10% RAP and 20% RWG increased the compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strength by 18.77, 48.9 and 3.09%, respectively. The mixture of RAP and RWG in the concrete pavement would offset the environment impact of road construction by reducing the demand for virgin aggregates and pavement thickness. Keywords RAP · Recycled waste glass · Concrete pavement foundation · Highways · Aggregate

9.1 Introduction The construction industries use approximately 200 to 220 million tonnes of natural aggregates annually from quarries and gravel pits (British Geological Survey 2008; Tu et al. 2006). High dependence on natural aggregates urges the use of recycled materials. In addition, asphalt along with mineral wastes are the major waste products that account for 36.4% of the total waste generated in the UK (Department for N. Patel · S. Amin (B) Energy, Construction Environment, Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry CV1 5FB, UK e-mail: [email protected] R. Iqbal Interactive Coventry Ltd., Coventry University Technology Park, Puma Way, Coventry CV1 2TT, UK © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Ghadimi et al. (eds.), Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability, Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90217-9_9

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Environment Food and Rural Affairs 2019). Packaging glass wastes contribute significantly to the total volume of waste and only 67% of waste glass is recycled in the UK (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs 2019). Highways England aims to reuse the recycled materials for the highest value purpose in their sustainable development strategy by reducing the demand for primary resources through maximising the resources that are already in use on the road (Highways England 2017). Reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) is widely used as a constituent for the concrete at the base and binder courses of new roads in the UK. Eighty percent of base binder courses of the roads in Westminster City Council are made of RAP (Neville 2019). There are limited studies on using RAP and recycled waste glass (RWG) in pavement applications (Savas and Marva Angela 2014; Hossiney et al. 2010; Arulrajah et al. 2013). Savas and Angela (2014) investigated the compressive strength and dynamic elastic modulus of the concrete with 100% RAP and argued that concrete with RAP was not suitable for structural applications due to very low compressive strength. However, concrete pavements do not need higher compressive strengths as the wheel loads transfer to the subgrade soil. Hossiney et al. (2010) mixed RAP of 0%, 10%, 20% and 40% volume of concrete specimens to examine the mechanical properties of concrete and found that the compressive strength and elastic modulus were decreased with increasing proportion of RAP. However, the experiments observed that the maximum stress to flexural strength ratio of specimens with RAP was reduced compared to the control concrete advocating the improved performance of concrete containing RAP. Hossiney et al. (2010) also argued that a higher proportion of RAP in concrete had adverse effects on its strength properties. Huang et al. (2005) mixed both the fine and coarse RAP with the Portland cement to examine the toughness and probability of brittle failure. Despite the improvement of energy absorbing toughness, the compressive and split tensile strengths of the Portland cement were reduced. Huang et al. (2005) used laboratory fabricated RAP instead of RAP from the road structure suggesting that physical properties of RAP from fabricated and highways might be different. Arulrajah et al. (2014) designed a 200 mm thick base and subbase layer for a concrete pavement by mixing different proportions of fine recycled glass, recycled rock and concrete aggregates into concrete base and subbase layers. The strength, stiffness and water absorption tests of the base and subbase layers suggested that recycled glass could improve the concrete quality, however the layers did not contain RAP and the concrete was cured for 3 days before the tests. Similarly, Arulrajah et al. (2013) claimed the advantages of using crushed glass in concrete with lower absorption rate and higher durability to abrasion in comparison with other recycled waste materials. Arulrajah et al. (2013) suggested that fine crushed glass had a good potential in concrete pavements if mixed with additives or higher quality aggregate blends that argues the use of RWG and RAP mixture into the concrete pavement. Jamshidi et al. (2016) claimed that the optimum content of crushed glass in the concrete mixture containing recycled aggregates or waste rock was 20% based on reviewing previous studies.

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Previous studies examined the individual performance of RAP and RWG, but no study examined the performance quality of both RAP and RWG as the partial aggregate replacements in the concrete. This paper investigates the use of RAP and RWG in the concrete base layer for highway applications. Different proportions of RAP, RWG and virgin aggregates were investigated to find out the optimum ratio for the best strength characteristics in the concrete. The experimental concrete mixture would reduce the demand for virgin aggregates and improve the durability of concrete pavement.

9.2 Materials and Methods 9.2.1 Sample Design The concrete samples were designed using the Building Research Establishment (BRE) Design of Normal Concrete Mixes to a strength of C8/10 as required by the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (DMRB) for class 3 foundations. Class 3 was chosen to show whether these recycled materials could meet the requirements for the highest strength specified in DMRB. Three mixes of concrete specimens were prepared with varying proportions of RAP and crushed glass, including a control mix (Mix 1) made with virgin materials only (Table 9.1). Mix 1 was designed and adapted for the second and third mixes by replacing the virgin coarse and fine aggregates with the chosen proportions of RAP and crushed glass. Mix 2 contained 15% RAP and 15% crushed glass, while Mix 3 contained 10% RAP and 20% crushed glass (Table 9.1). These proportions were selected based on the findings of Hossiney et al. (2010) and Jamshidi et al. (2016) who found that 10% RAP and 20% RWG were the best performing proportions in the concrete mixture, respectively (Fig. 9.1). The overall percentage of recycled aggregates remained constant at 30% to determine the optimum ratio of the recycled aggregates in the concrete. The particle sizes of virgin coarse aggregates and RAP were within in the range of 10–20 mm (Fig. 9.2), however Table 9.1 Concrete mix designs Cement (kg) Water (kg) Fines (kg) Coarse (kg) RAP (kg) Crushed glass (kg) Mix 1—control

12.6

10.7

46.4

52.4

0

0

Mix 2—15% 12.6 RAP + 15% glass

10.7

39.5

44.5

7.9

7

Mix 3—10% 12.6 RAP + 20% glass

10.7

37.2

47.1

5.2

9.3

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Fig. 9.1 Recycled crushed glass in 3 mm sieve

Fig. 9.2 RAP in 10 mm sieve

there was a variation in the fine aggregate (RWG) sizes within a range of 3–4 mm (Fig. 9.1). These aggregate sizes are within the standard of BS EN 12620:2013. Slump tests were carried out to determine the workability of the control concrete mix. The control specimens achieved a slump of 70 mm. The mass of water required for the Mix 2 and 3 specimens was less than the control mix (Mix 1) at 8.7 and 7.9 kg, respectively. The proportion of RWG was inversely related to the required mass of water in the concrete mixes. In addition, the RAP was 100% recycled RAP (ULTITREC) and the remnants from the road materials and binders might affected the interactions with concrete constituents, particularly with cement. Singh et al. (2017) examined the workability of concrete with untreated and treated RAP by abrasion and attrition and found out that the treated RAP improved the workability of concrete mix. The specimens were cast in the moulds and left to set for 24 h. They were removed from the moulds after this period and were air cured for 7 days (Fig. 9.3).

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(a) 100 x 100 x 100mm cubes

(b) 100mm diameter x 200mm height cylinders

(c) 500 x 100 x 100mm mini beams

Fig. 9.3 Experimental concrete specimens

9.2.2 Laboratory Experiments The compressive, splitting tensile, flexural and absorption tests were carried out on the concrete specimens. The standard axle loads of heavy good vehicles (HGV) were applied on the concrete specimens during the compressive strength test. The compressive strength of concrete pavement depends on the cement hydration and compaction which increases the friction between the particles in the concrete mix resulting in increased initial load bearing capacity and strength (Chhorn et al. 2018). The standard

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flexural and tensile strength tests tested the concrete pavement’s resistance to fatigue cracking. The flexural strength is defined by the failure due to bending stress while the splitting tensile strength defines the point of failure when the compressive load induces tensile stress along the diameter of the specimen (Chhorn et al. 2018). The absorption test of concrete indicates the longevity of concrete pavement subjected to freeze/thaw effect (Willway and Reeves 2008). The five concrete cubes of each mix were weighed before and after submerging into the water for 10 min and their absorption was calculated as a percentage of dry mass. These concrete cubes were placed in an oven to dry for 24 h at 80 °C preparing for the compressive strength test to ensure that no water remained in the concrete voids. The cubes were removed from the oven and left to cool for 2 h before proceeding for compressive strength tests in accordance with BS EN 12390-3:2019. The BS 1881-122:2011 guide was used for the compressive strength tests (Fig. 9.4b). During the splitting tensile strength test, the cylindrical samples were placed in the jig (Fig. 9.4a) horizontally with packing strips that were made from medium density fibreboard to ensure the samples did not roll in accordance with BS EN 12390-6:2009. During the flexural strength test, the beams were placed in the machine following BS EN 12390-5:2019 (Fig. 9.4c). Each sample was visually inspected before testing to examine the presence of cracks in the concrete from the curing process due to shrinkage that would affect the outcome of the test.

(a) Cylinder placed in jig

Fig. 9.4 Laboratory experiments

(b) Avery Denison compressive and splitting tensile strength

(c) Flexural strength testing

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9.3 Results and Discussion 9.3.1 Absorption Test

Fig. 9.5 Absorption test results

Absorption as a Percentage of Dry Mass (%)

The absorption was calculated from the dry and saturated masses and the density of each concrete specimen was calculated from the dry mass and volume of the cube. The replacement of virgin aggregates with RAP and RWG did not change the water absorption, except for cube 2 from mix 2 (Fig. 9.5). The cube 2 mix 2 didn’t have significant density difference with other samples suggesting that the absorption variation in cube 2 mix 2 was not caused by large internal voids, rather by human errors (Table 9.2). The water absorption was decreased by 1.29 and 1.12% with increasing proportion of RWG in mix 2 and mix 3 due to glass impermeability, respectively. The fine particles of control mix can be compacted closer together causing the effect of capillary action whereby water is absorbed through the capillary pores against the pull of gravity (Khatib and Clay 2004). The greater capillary action in mix 1 explains the higher absorption in the control mix. In addition, the glass particles were larger than that of virgin aggregates creating larger voids and promoting higher infiltration rate of water from the control specimens. A higher infiltration rate increases the ability of permeable pavement system to absorb and retain stormwater up to a saturation limit but also retain the nutrient contaminants infiltrate to groundwater (Heweidak and Amin 2019). A higher infiltration rate in mix 2 and 3 concrete specimens also reduces the likelihood of freezing effects within the voids in the pavement. Mix 2 and 3 have lower density compared to that of the control mix (Table 9.2) suggesting more voids and less absorption in the concrete mix. The findings of the absorption tests are supported by the study of Iffat (2015) that found that concrete with less density aggregates had reduced absorption. 6.00 5.00 4.00 Cube 1 Cube 2

3.00

Cube 3 2.00

Cube 4 Cube 5

1.00 0.00 1

2

Mix Number

3

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Table 9.2 Density of cubes Mix 1

Mix 2

Mix 3

Cube No.

Dry mass (kg)

Density (kg/m3 )

1

2.1486

2148.6

2

2.1505

2150.5

3

2.159

2159

4

2.1672

2167.2

5

2.1346

2134.6

1

2.0424

2042.4

2

2.1076

2107.6

3

2.2275

2227.5

4

2.142

2142

5

2.1861

2186.1

1

2.1875

2187.5

2

2.2073

2207.3

3

1.9924

1992.4

4

1.9742

1974.2

5

2.1966

2196.6

9.3.2 Compressive Strength Test

Compressive Strength (N/mm2)

22 20 18 Cube 1

16

Cube 2

14

Cube 3

12

Cube 4

10

Cube 5

8 6 1

2

Mix Number

(a) Compressive strength

3

Tensile Splitting Strength (N/mm2)

The compressive strength of the concrete specimens was calculated from the failure loads. Increasing the proportions of RAP and RWG incrementally increases the compressive strength of the concrete specimens except for samples 3 and 4 of mix 3 (Fig. 9.6a). The average compressive strengths of Mix 1, 2 and 3 are 13.53, 14.80 and 16.07 N/mm2 , respectively (Fig. 9.6a). The increase in the average compressive strength from 13.53 N/mm2 for control mix to 14.8 N/mm2 for mix 2 samples explains 3.5 3 Cylinder 1

2.5

Cylinder 2 Cylinder 3

2

Cylinder 4 Cylinder 5

1.5 1 1

2

3

Mix Number

(b) Tensile splitting strength

Fig. 9.6 Results of compressive and splitting tensile strength tests

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that the partial replacement of virgin aggregates with RAP (15%) and RWG (15%) can improve the concrete’s ability to withstand compressive loading. The increased proportion of RWG also improves the compressive strength for lower water-cement ratio (Fig. 9.6a). A lower water-cement ratio increases the concrete strength as it enables the optimal hydration process. Excess water remaining after the hydration process reduces the concrete’s ability to withstand compressive forces (Li et al. 2003). The higher compressive strength of concrete pavement reduces the stress on the subgrade soil and is more effective at dissipating the applied loads. The RAP and RWG mixtures also reduce the required thickness of the concrete required for each foundation class. There might be deviation of compressive strength of the concretes in highway construction as those are cured in air temperature and the concrete specimens in this study were cued in an oven (Chen et al. 2009). However, the specimens from all three concrete mixes were cured in the oven, the curing process might not have any effect on their relative compressive strengths.

9.3.3 Splitting Tensile Strength Test The splitting tensile strength did not increase for concrete mix 2 in comparison with control mix but an increase of 48.9% (0.842 N/mm2 ) was observed for mix 3 (Fig. 9.6b). The higher tensile strength of mix 3 could be due to the shape and texture of RAP and RWG. The angular shape and rough surface of RAP and RWG create more friction between aggregates and provide a greater surface area for the interfacial transition zone around the aggregates within the concrete to bind the aggregates together which is primarily responsible for the tensile strength of the concrete (Ollivier et al. 1995). A 20% proportion of RWG was also identified as the optimal ratio for fine aggregates in the concrete for splitting tensile strength (Sharif et al. 2014). The increase of splitting tensile strength was observed with the increase of RWG, however the effect of the Alkali Silica Reaction (ASR) may reduce the tensile strength of the concrete in the long-term due to the forming of ASR gel within the cracks of RWG. The penetrable micro cracks form during the RWG crushing process causing the ASR gel. The expansion of ASR gel causes internal pressures resulting in cracks and the failure of concrete (Du and Tan 2014). This study used 3–4 mm size RWG, however glass particles less than 0.6 mm do not enable the ASR because these particles do not have the penetrable cracks (Farshad et al. 2010). Further study may investigate the tensile stress of concrete containing RAP and RWG of particle size less than 0.6 mm to determine the impact of particle size on the concrete strengths.

9.3.4 Flexural Strength Test The flexural strength test compressed the top and induced tension along the bottom of concrete beam to determine the ability of concrete slab to resist failure in bending.

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The compressive and tensile stresses are resisted by frictional forces between the aggregates acting in opposite directions. The frictional forces and aggregate interlock are reduced with an increased volume of voids in the concrete beam resulting in a lower flexural strength. Figure 9.7 shows the trivial 0.25 and 0.20 N/mm2 increase of flexural strengths for mix 2 and 3 specimens, respectively. However, beam 1 and 2 had relatively more coarse aggregates and larger voids than other samples in mix 3 due to constituent settlement and separation (Figs. 9.8 and 9.9). The average flexural strength of mix 3 increased to 7.82 N/mm2 , an increase of 1.17 N/mm2 compared to the control mix, excluding these two outlying results. Concrete pavements perform

Flexural Strength (N/mm2)

10 9

Beam 1

8

Beam 2

7

Beam 3

6

Beam 4

5 4

Beam 5 1

2

3

Mix Number

Fig. 9.7 Flexural strength test results

Fig. 9.8 a High stress area directly under wheel load, b reduced load at subgrade level (Calvarano et al. 2017)

Beam 1

Beam 2

Beam 3

Fig. 9.9 Concrete mix 3 specimens for flexural strength tests

Beam 4

Beam 5

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Table 9.3 Ratios of compressive and flexural strengths Avg. flexural strength (N/mm2 ) Avg. compressive strength

(N/mm2 )

Ratio

Mix 1—control

Mix 2

Mix 3

6.65

6.90

6.85

13.53

14.80

16.07

1:2.03

1:2.14

1:2.35

better with higher flexural strength because the repeated loads of vehicles are mostly concentrated on the top layer of the pavement slab and dissipated downwards through the subgrade soil (Fig. 9.8). The toughness of concrete mixed with RAP and RWG was assessed by using the ratio of compressive strength to flexural strength. A higher ratio of flexural strength to compressive strength results in increased toughness of concrete specimens (Pargi and Alam 2016). The ratio of flexural to compressive strength increases with the increase in RWG proportions suggesting that the compressive strength is more positively affected by RWG than the flexural strength (Table 9.3). The specimens of concrete mix 3 observe the highest increase in compressive and flexural strengths. The ACI330-R guideline states that the standard ratio of the compressive strength to modulus of rapture for concrete pavement is 2.3 (ACI 2002). An improvement in the flexural strength of brittle concrete is desirable to improve the capacity of the concrete pavement to resist the repeated loading of vehicles. The ratio of splitting tensile strength to compressive strength decreases as the compressive strength increases (Arιoglu et al. 2006; Lavanya and Jegan 2006). The ACI 207R suggested the standard tensile strength of concrete is 6.7 to 4 times the square root of the compressive strength (ACI 2002). The experimental results of splitting tensile strengths for mix 2 and 3 are above the recommended tensile strengths which are 1.49 and 1.52 N/mm2 compared with the compressive strengths. The concrete specimens of mix 3 have the lowest ratio of splitting tensile strength to compressive strength despite their average splitting tensile strength being approximately 47% higher than mixes 1 and 2 (Table 9.4). This ratio for mix 3 is more advantageous for concrete pavement than the ratios of control mix and mix 2. The horizontal tensile stress is the most critical factor for fatigue failure in concrete pavement and a significant increase in the splitting tensile strength of the recycled material concrete compared to virgin aggregate concrete would directly contribute to an extended design life (Akbulut and Aslantas 2005). Table 9.4 Ratios of compressive and splitting tensile strength Avg. tensile strength

(N/mm2 )

Mix 1—control

Mix 2

Mix 3

1.73

1.74

2.57

Avg. compressive strength (N/mm2 )

13.53

14.80

16.07

Ratio

1:7.82

1:8.50

1:6.25

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9.4 Conclusions This paper investigated the mechanical properties of concrete with the combined use of RAP and RWG as partial aggregate replacements for highway applications. Three concrete mixes such as the control mix (1:2:4 of cement, fine and coarse aggregates), mix 2 (15% RAP and 15% RWG) and mix 3 (10% RAP and 20%RWG) were experimented in the laboratory environment and the results are: • The average absorption for the control mix, mix 2 and mix 3 was 1.29, 1.18% and mix 3 was 1.12%, respectively. Mix 2 and 3 showed 8.53 and 13.18% decrease in absorption, respectively. • The average compressive strength for control mix, mix 2 and mix 3 was 13.53, 14.80 and 16.07 N/mm2 , respectively. Mix 2 and 3 specimens had 9.36 and 18.77% increase of compressive strength, respectively. • The average splitting tensile strength for control mix, mix 2 and mix 3 was 1.73, 1.74 and 2.57 N/mm2 , respectively. Concrete specimens in mix 2 and 3 showed 0.93 and 48.90% increase of splitting tensile strength, respectively. • The average flexural strength for control mix, mix 2 and mix 3 was 6.65, 6.90 and 6.85 N/mm2 . Mix 2 and 3 showed 3.88 and 3.09% increase in flexural strength comparing to that of control mix, respectively. The experimental results show that RAP and RWG improve the mechanical properties of concrete. Concrete strengths were highest for the concrete mix of 10% RAP and 20% RWG. The use of RAP and RWG in concrete pavements would significantly reduce the demand for virgin aggregates and the thickness of pavement concrete to achieve the required strength under repeated loads of vehicles. This study only tested three combinations of concrete mixtures based on the findings from the literature review. The physical strength tests of different combinations of RAP and RWG in concrete specimens might enable the optimal ratio of RAP and RWG in concrete pavement to be found. The absorption test was carried out with an assumption that concrete is saturated with rainfall water. The absorption due to capillary action continues long after precipitation as the soil remains saturated beneath the foundation. This paper did not experiment the freeze/thaw effects on the concrete specimens.

References ACI (2002) Effect of restraint, volume change, reinforcement on cracking of mass concrete. ACI207.2R-95. American Concrete Institute, USA Akbulut H, Aslantas K (2005) Finite element analysis of stress distribution on bituminous pavement and failure mechanism. Mater Des 383–387 Arulrajah A, Piratheepan J, Disfani MM, Bo MW (2013) Geotechnical and geoenvironmental properties of recycled construction and demolition materials in pavement subbase applications. J Mater Civil Eng 1077–1088

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Arulrajah A, Ali MY, Disfani MM, Horpibulsuk S (2014) Recycled-glass blends in pavement base/subbase applications: laboratory and field evaluation. J Mater Civil Eng Arιoglu N, Girgin ZC, Arιoglu E (2006) Evaluation of ratio between splitting tensile strength and compressive strength for concretes up to 120 MPa and its application in strength criterion. ACI Mater J 103(1):18–24 British Geological Survey (2008) The need for indigenous aggregates production in England Calvarano LS, Palamara R, Leonardi G, Moraci N (2017) 3D-FEM analysis on geogrid reinforced flexible pavement. IOP Conf Ser Earth Environ Sci Chen B, Li C, Chen L (2009) Experimental study of mechanical properties of normal-strength concrete exposed to high temperatures at an early age. Fire Saf J 997–1002 Chhorn C, Hong SJ, Lee SW (2018) Relationship between compressive and tensile strengths of roller-compacted concrete. J Traffic Transp Eng (Engl Ed) 5(3):215–223 Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (2019) UK statistics on waste. Government Statistical Service Du H, Tan KH (2014) Effect of particle size on alkali–silica reaction in recycled glass mortars. Constr Build Mater 275–285 Farshad R, Hamed M, Fischer G (2010) Investigating the alkali-silica reaction of recycled glass aggregates in concrete materials. J Mater Civil Eng 1201–1208 Heweidak M, Amin S (2019) Effects of OASIS® phenolic foam on hydraulic behaviour of permeable pavement systems. J Environ Manage 230:212–220 Highways England (2017) Sustainable development strategy. Highways England Hossiney N, Tia M, Bergin M (2010) Concrete containing RAP for use in concrete pavement. Int J Pavement Res Technol 251–258 Huang B, Shu X, Li G (2005) Laboratory investigation of portland cement concrete containing recycled asphalt pavements. Cement Concr Res 2008–2013 Iffat S (2015) Relation between density and compressive strength of hardened concrete. Concr Res Lett 182–189 Jamshidi A, Kurumisawa K, Nawa T (2016) Performance of pavements incorporating waste glass: the current state of the art. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 211–236 Khatib JM, Clay RM (2004) Absorption characteristics of metakaolin concrete. Cement Concr Res 19–29 Lavanya G, Jegan J (2006) Evaluation of relationship between split tensile strength and compressive strength for geopolymer concrete of varying grades and molarity. Int J Appl Eng Res 10(15):35523–35529 Li Z, Wei X, Li W (2003) Preliminary interpretation of portland cement hydration process using resistivity measurements. ACI Mater J 253–257 Neville I (2019) Use of recycled asphalt in Westminster city council (N. Patel, Interviewer) Ollivier J, Maso J, Bourdette B (1995) Interfacial transition zone in concrete. Adv Cem Based Mater 30–38 Pargi A, Alam MS (2016) Effects of curing regimes on the mechanical properties and durability of polymer-modified mortars—an experimental investigation. J Sustain Cement Based Mater 5(5):324–347 Savas E, Marva Angela B (2014) Environmental performance and mechanical analysis of concretecontaining recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) and waste precastconcrete as aggregate. J Hazard Mater 403–410 Sharif MB, Mehmood A, Yousaf M, Ghaffar A, Goraya RA (2014) Performance of concrete containing waste powdered glass as partial replacement of fine aggregate. NED Univ J Res 43–49 Singh S, Ransinchung G, Kumar P (2017) Feasibility study of RAP aggregates in cement concrete pavements. Road Mater Pavement Des 151–170 Tu TY, Chen YY, Hwang CL (2006) Properties of HPC with recycled aggregates. Cement Concr Res 943–950 Willway T, Reeves S (2008) Maintaining pavements in a changing climate. Department for Transport

Chapter 10

Recycling of Chrome-Copper-Arsenic Timber Through Cement Particleboard Manufacture J. L. Liow, A. Khennane, M. Muley, H. Sorial, and E. Katoozi

Abstract The use of chrome-copper-arsenic (CCA) treated timber for the manufacture of cement particleboards was studied to determine the mix design that provides the best mechanical strength. The cement particleboards showed a maximum in strength for a composition of cement-wood ratio of 1.5 which corroborates existing results in the literature. The thermal conductivity of the cement particleboard was lower than most building material but slightly higher than that of insulating materials. The thermal conductivity showed a variation with the water content indicating its suitability for use as a thermal regulator. Leaching studies revealed that the CCA leached from non-decontaminated CCA treated chips is high and decontamination will be required. The results showed that recycling of decontaminated CCA treated timber into cement particle board can constitute an economical solution for its disposal. Keywords CCA timber · Cement particleboard · Recycling · Leaching

10.1 Introduction Chrome-copper-arsenic (CCA) treated timber has been extensively used in Australia for decades but recently its use has been restricted (APVMA 2005). The finite life of CCA treated timber has led to large quantities of spent timber being stockpiled as landfills are increasingly reluctant to accept them due to the need for expensive site treatment to ensure CCA compounds do not leach into the ground and contaminate ground water sources. In Australia, spent CCA treated timber from vineyards alone will result in up to 160,000 m3 being stockpiled per annum by 2039 (Sinclair Kinght Merz 1999). The re-use of CCA timber is a solution to keep it out of landfills and facilitate a circular economy for this resource. Numerous studies have been published on the removal of the CCA compounds from CCA treated timber and they can be classified as involving chemical, biological J. L. Liow (B) · A. Khennane · M. Muley · H. Sorial · E. Katoozi School of Engineering and Information Technology, UNSW Canberra, Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Ghadimi et al. (eds.), Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability, Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90217-9_10

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and/or physical remediation processes. Chemical remediation processes are the most widely used processes and include leaching with organic (Clausen and Smith 1998; Clausen 2004a) and inorganic (Janin et al. 2009a) acids, and the use of chelating (Janin et al. 2009b) and oxidising (Gezer and Cooper 2016; Kazi and Cooper 2006; Kim et al. 2004) agents. Bioremediation have included bacterial (Clausen 2004b) and fungal degradation (Kartal et al. 2006) processes. Physical remediation methods have included electrodialytic processes (Christensen et al. 2006) and steam explosion (Clausen and Smith 1998). In the leaching of the CCA compounds, most of the studies have concentrated on the use of inorganic acids, such as nitric and sulphuric acids. Although these acids are promising candidates, the waste streams generated results in a disposal problem. The use of organic acids has been promising and two of them, oxalic and citric acid, decompose to water and carbon dioxide when oxidised resulting in less waste being generated. Commercialisation of the processes has not been achieved as decontamination is an added cost to the user, hence stockpiling or dumping is the usual route taken for used CCA treated timber. Landfills in Australia still take in CCA treated timber in small quantities as part of building or household general waste. As of early 2021, the Queanbeyan-Palerang council (Queanbeyan-Palerang 2021) charges A$108–186 per tonne of building waste, the Moreton Bay Regional Council (Moreton Bay 2021) charges A$210 per tonne at its Bunya, Caboolture and Dakabin waste management facilities, while in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) there is no separation and CCA treated timber is charged at $171 per tonne and considered as general commercial waste (ACT 2021). Commercially in Australia, Cleanaway combust CCA timber in specialised furnaces (Cleanaway 2021). Re-use of decontaminated timber or legislation may provide the incentive to recycle the CCA treated timber. A study (Smith 2003) has shown that if CCA treated timber classification is changed from a non-RCRA hazardous to hazardous, the cost of disposing a ton of such wood will increase from US$61 to US$291 for the state of California. This large cost change may make decontamination of CCA treated timber more economical. An alternative is to find a product market for decontaminated CCA treated timber so that the valuable end-product may offset the cost in decontamination. It is to this end, that we are studying the use of both CCA treated timber for the manufacture of cement particleboards. The use of CCA treated timber for production of valuable products have been studied previously (Huang and Cooper 2000) but few of the studies have attempted to optimise the product composition and the conditions under which the CCA treated timber will be safe for consumer use. The use of wood chips for cement particleboards has shown to provide both thermal and acoustic properties that enable buildings to moderate the climatic conditions within as well as reduce noise penetration in urban environments (Amziane and Sonebi 2016; Li et al. 2018). In this study, CCA treated and untreated timber chips were used for the manufacture of cement particleboards. The cement particleboards were then tested for their mechanical and thermal properties, and extent of CCA leaching. This provides a reference for future leaching requirement of the CCA treated timber its safe use in recycled material.

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10.2 Materials and Methods Wood chips were prepared from both non-treated and CCA treated timber. The nontreated wood chips were obtained from recycled radiata pine timber framing sections while the CCA treated timber were obtained from treated radiata pine vineyard posts. The vineyard posts were split with a hydraulic log splitter prior to chipping through a wood chipper. For each batch of wood chips, the first batch was used to clean the wood chipper and discarded. The size distribution of the wood chips is shown in Fig. 10.1. Prior to mixing, the wood chips were soaked for 24 h, drained, and conditioned to a saturated surface dry (SSD) condition whereby the water content was 80% by weight relative to the dry wood weight. It is assumed that around 30% of the water was available for cement hydration and this was used to adjust the water to cement ratio. The mix design is composed of wood chips, ordinary Portland cement (OPC— Blue Circle general purpose cement), and water. Table 10.1 lists the different mixtures tried and this was based on recommended ranges of optimal material ratios in the literature (Huang and Cooper 2000; Jorge et al. 2004; Da Gloria and Filho 2016). Trial mixes were used to determine that a water-cement ratio of 0.40 was optimal for strength and this was fixed for all the different mixes. The cement, wood chips and water were mixed with an electric mixer for four minutes, subjected to 2 min of vibration and then transferred to a mould. Mixes having a cement-wood ratio of 0.8 and 1.0 did not have sufficient cohesiveness to bind solely by vibrating, so they were poured into the mould in two separate layers and then compacted manually. The mixtures were first cured at 25 °C at 65% humidity for the first 24 h while subjected to an even 2.2 kPa of pressure. The samples were then removed from the moulds Fig. 10.1 Particle size distribution of wood chips

114 Table 10.1 Summary of the cement particleboard compositions

J. L. Liow et al. Designation

Chip type

Cement-wood ratio

Water-cement ratio

NT 0.8

Untreated

0.8

0.45

NT 1.0

Untreated

1.0

0.45

NT 1.5

Untreated

1.5

0.45

NT 2.0

Untreated

2.0

0.45

CCA 0.8

CCA

0.8

0.45

CCA 1.0

CCA

1.0

0.45

CCA 1.5

CCA

1.5

0.45

CCA 2.0

CCA

2.0

0.45

after 24 h and transferred to a fog room at 20 °C at 100% humidity for 27 days of curing. The testing of the samples was conducted at 28 days of age. The moulds had to be designed to match the test being carried out. Different mould designs were constructed from plywood. The dimensions for the different test are: bending test, 650 × 76 × 30 mm; compression and tensile tests, 264 × 50 × 50 mm then cut to 30 × 50 × 50 mm cuboids with a tile cutter; thermal conductivity measurements, 200 × 200 × (5–50) mm. For the cement-wood ratios of 0.8 and 1.0, the surface of the samples for tensile testing required grinding to provide a smooth surface as the high wood density made the surface rather rough. Sample homogeneity is governed by the size of the samples made, which was easier with large sized than with small sized samples.

10.3 Results and Discussion The samples were tested for their mechanical and thermal properties. The three-point bending, compressions and tensile tests were conducted in accordance with ASTM D1037 and D3501. The thermal properties were measured using a Netzsch Heat Flow Meter 446 Lambda Series.

10.3.1 Flexural Testing Some changes to the testing methods were required given that the existing ones were developed for resin-based particleboard products. As the wood chips were held together by cement rather than resin, the samples were relatively brittle and weaker. This required the loading rate and the span to thickness ratio of the sample to be changed from that specified in ASTM D1037 to account for the brittleness during flexural testing. The loading rate was reduced to a lower value of 1 mm/min from

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2.4 mm/min and the span to thickness ratio was reduced to 20 from 24. An existing three-point bending fixture was adapted to suit the requirements of the flexural test. Figure 10.2 shows the load deflection curves for all the samples. For all samples, the material showed an initial linear elastic behaviour without any visible cracking. This stage accounts for about two third of the ultimate strength. Beyond this point the material starts to exhibit nonlinear behaviour up to the peak strength, which is then followed by a descending branch. For similar cement-wood ratios, the nontreated (NT) timber exhibits higher strengths than the CCA treated timber. The modulus of rupture (MOR) and modulus of elasticity (MOE) for the samples are shown in Fig. 10.3. The results show that the non-treated wood samples have on average larger values than the CCA treated wood samples. The results show a

Fig. 10.2 Load deflection of the cement particleboard in flexure

Fig. 10.3 Modulus of elasticity (left) and modulus of rupture (right) value of the cement particleboard from flexural testing

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similar trend to the density of the samples, and it is inferred that the MOR and MOE are strongly influenced by the density of the product. The non-treated wood samples generally showed a higher density than the CCA treated wood samples. The density, MOR and MOE all exhibit a maximum in the middle of the cementwood ratio range studied. The exact cause has not been clarified but it is attributed to the variation in compaction during casting as the workability of the mixture is strongly affected by the cement-wood ratio. Dissection of the cement-wood ratio of 2.0 samples showed a much larger fraction of large voids being present. This suggests that the manufacturing process may need to be optimised, with the help of mechanically assisted mixing, to remove any inconsistencies and achieve an even product.

10.3.2 Digital Image Correlation (DIC) Analysis The strength of the particleboard sample relies on the ability of the cement to fully encase the wood particles and provide bonding to hold the mixture together. When an optimum amount of cement to wood ratio is present, it is expected that the stress concentration around each wood particle should become increasingly diffused (Zhou and Kamdem 2002). The data suggests that a cement-wood ratio of 1.5 is optimal for flexural strength but this may need to be confirmed when the manufacturing process is optimised. This value agrees with that of Papadopoulos, Ntalos and Kakaras (Papadopoulos et al. 2006) who also quoted a cement-wood ratio of 1.5 as optimal for bending performance. DIC was used to confirm the location and magnitude of the cracking during the flexural tests. As shown in Fig. 10.4, cracking was found to occur at the base of the sample for all the samples. Cracking occurs at the point of stress concentration. The cracking location was found not to be necessarily below the centre load point, with some samples having the crack location up to 80 mm from the centre load point. For a homogeneous sample, the stress concentration should be greatest directly under the centre load point. The results indicate that the cracking

Fig. 10.4 DIC analysis for the observation of the failure of the sample under flexural testing

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and hence failure are occurring at a weak point in the structure of the composite, confirming the possibility that the mixture may not have been homogenized well during manufacture.

10.3.3 Tensile Testing The tensile strength of the samples was evaluated by conducting a tensile test perpendicular to the sample surface. It was not possible to machine a homogeneous and stable test piece for the standard tensile testing procedure. A bespoke attachment was designed and manufactured to suit the Shimadzu AGS-100 kNX Universal Testing Machine (UTM) for this purpose and the sample was attached by epoxy resin. Load and displacement data was recorded for all tests. Failure during the test across a horizontal plane near the sample centre was obtained with lower cement-wood ratios while failure at or near the boundary of the surface and attachment occurred more frequently with the higher cement-wood ratios. The failure at or near the surface boundary is attributed to the accumulation of cement fines at the surface of the sample and as such the tensile force may not have been evenly distributed over the cross section of the sample. Multiple tests were done to obtain adequate data from samples with failure across the sample centre. As shown in Fig. 10.5, the samples displayed an initial linear elastic region before reaching a peak stress and then softening. Analysis of the strain response curve indicated that the samples exhibited brittle failure because of the abruptness of the descending branch. However, this decreases as the cement-wood ratio decreases and the curves shows some similarity with the flexural tests. The maximum ultimate stress was observed at a cement-wood ratio of 1.5 for both non-treated and CCA samples. This suggests, that like bending, the optimal cement-wood ratio for strength is 1.5. The MOE from the tensile testing ranged between 3.8 and 5.5 MPa with the mid-range cement-wood Fig. 10.5 Stress strain curves of the cement particleboard in tension

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Fig. 10.6 Evolution of the tensile strength as a function of the cement-wood ratio

ratios showing the higher values. There was not much difference in the range of MOE between the untreated and CCA treated wood samples. Figure 10.6 shows that the ultimate tensile strength peaks at a cement-wood ratio of 1.5 which correlates well with the flexural test results.

10.3.4 Compression Testing Compression testing was also performed with the UTM. The stress strain responses of the samples are shown in Fig. 10.7. The failure mechanisms of the samples were Fig. 10.7 Stress strain response of the cement particleboard under compression test

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similar. Failure occurred near the edges of the sample whereby major cracking developed along the outer edge of the sample with minor cracks propagating into the centre of the sample. As the edges are unconfined and subjected to the greatest lateral deformation, this couples with the outside expansion of the material under compression to give rise to high tensile forces. Cracking was found to be less prominent for samples with a low cement-wood ratio. An observation was that these low cement-wood ratio sample also displayed more ‘spring back’ when the load was removed. The stress strain curves show three distinct material behaviour. The first region was during the initial loading where an irregular stress response was obtained which can be attributed to the poor surface condition of samples. This was followed by a second region where an elastic response occurs. The third region occurred when the response plateaus, indicating the yield point and transition into the plastic region. It is in this region where the cell structure began to deform and collapse with the formation of visible major cracks. The point at which the stress response became exponential identified the ultimate stress and point of densification. At this stress, cracks had reached a critical size and complete material failure occurred. Densification involved the complete compaction of the sample, and subsequent crushing of the remaining material.

10.3.5 Thermal Conductivity and Specific Heats The thermal conductivities and specific heats were measured for three cement-wood ratios of 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 and under dry, 50% and 100% water adsorption conditions. Prior to testing the samples were dried at 40 °C for 24 h to remove all the free water present. The 100% moisture content was introduced by submerging the sample in water for a minimum of 48 h and drained to produce a saturated surface dry (SSD) condition. The change in weight due to water adsorption is used to produce the 50% water adsorption samples. Each sample was wrapped in cling wrap to prevent evaporation and condensation when tested. The cling wrap was found to contribute negligibly to the thermal conductivity and specific heat values obtained. The thermal conductivities and specific heats obtained are shown in Fig. 10.8. The thermal conductivity increased with increasing water content of the samples and increasing cement-wood ratios. The filling of the voids by water and the higher thermal conductivity of cement as compared to wood are the main contributors to the observations. The specific heat shows a decrease with increasing cement-wood ratio for the fully saturated samples, but a minimum at a cement-wood ratio of 1.5 for the dry and 50% water adsorption samples. The variation is a consequence of high specific heat of water dominating the physical property values when it forms a substantial proportion of the components in the wood sample. The minimum in specific heat is not easily explained and further test with optimised mixing procedures and a larger range of cement-wood ratio will be required to elucidate the physical phenomena that may be at play within the cement-wood composite.

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Fig. 10.8 Thermal conductivity (left) and specific heat (right) of the cement particleboards with varying cement-wood ratios and moisture content

The thermal conductivities of the wood-cement composites are significantly lower than comparable building material, such as brick (~0.6 W/m·K) and concrete (~1.6 W/m·K) but higher than insulators such as fibreglass and polystyrene. The lower thermal conductivity of wood chips with the cellular matrix creating voids reduces the thermal conductivity of the wood-cement composites significantly.

10.3.6 Leaching Test of Samples and CCA Wood Chips There are differing reports on the leachability of cement-wood composites as well as CCA wood chips. Most suppliers of CCA treated timber claim that leaching is minimal once the CCA has bonded within the cells of the wood. A cement particleboard cube of 6 cm length and loose wood chips were leached using deionised water in accordance with Method 1131 (US-EPA 1992). Samples were collected at 0.25, 1, 3, 7, 9, 11, 14, 16 and 18 days from the start of leaching with the solution replaced by fresh deionised water at each collection. Figure 10.9 compares the cumulative amount of arsenic and chromium leached from the cement particleboard with that of the CCA treated wood chips over time. The cement particleboard does restrict the leaching of the arsenic and chromium while copper was not detected in the leachate. In comparison, the CCA treated wood chips leached most of the arsenic, and substantial amounts of chromium and a smaller amount of the copper. Although the cement particleboard can restrict leaching of the heavy metals, this is still not acceptable as it is mainly arsenic and chromium that is leached; both of which have carcinogenic properties. The CCA treated timber will need to be decontaminated prior to use in the cement particleboard.

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Fig. 10.9 Percentage of arsenic and chromium leached from the CCA treated cement particleboard and the CCA wood chips

10.4 Conclusion CCA treated wood chips have been used to make cement particleboards. A cementwood ratio of 1.5 has been found to result in the maximum strength for the cement particleboard. The thermal conductivity and specific heat were found to be affected by the water content of the cement particleboard which can provide good thermoregulating properties for use as a green construction material in buildings. The amount of arsenic and chromium leached from the cement particleboards made with nondecontaminated CCA treated wood chips is high and hence the wood chips will require decontamination prior to use. Further work on the decontamination of CCA treated wood chips are on-going utilising green chemistry and the cement particleboards made from the decontaminated wood chips will be tested to ascertain that they still retain their mechanical properties.

References ACT (2021) Waste disposal charges. https://www.cityservices.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/ 0004/1233859/Amended-large-load-Waste-Disposal-Charges-A4_WEB-4.8.20.pdf. Accessed 7 Apr 2021 Amziane S, Sonebi M (2016) Overview on bio-based building material made with plant aggregate. RILEM Tech Letters 1:31–38 APVMA (Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority) (2005) Arsenic timber treatments (CCA and arsenic trioxide) The reconsideration of registrations of arsenic timber treatment products (CCA and arsenic trioxide) and their associated labels. Review scope document. Canberra, Australia. Christensen IV, Pedersen AJ, Ottosen LM, Ribeiro AB (2006) Electrodialytic remediation of CCAtreated waste wood in a 2 m3 pilot plant. Sci Total Environ 364:45–54

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Clausen CA (2004a) Improving the two-step remediation process for CCA-treated wood: Part I Evaluating oxalic acid extraction. Waste Manage 24:401–405 Clausen CA (2004b) Improving the two-step remediation process for CCA-treated wood: Part II Evaluating bacterial nutrient sources. Waste Manage 24:407–411 Clausen CA, Smith RL (1998) Removal of CCA from treated wood by oxalic acid extraction, steam explosion and bacterial fermentation. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 20:251–257 Cleanaway (2021) Timber waste collection, transport and recovery. https://www.cleanaway.com. au/waste/timber/. Accessed 7 April 2021 Gezer ED, Cooper PA (2016) Effects of wood species and retention levels on removal of copper, chromium, and arsenic from CCA-treated wood using sodium hypochlorite. J Forestry Res 27:433–442 Da Gloria MYR, Filho RDT (2016) Influence of the wood shavings/cement ratio on the thermomechanical properties of lightweight wood shavings-cement based composites. In: Proceedings of the “6th amazon & pacific green materials congress” and “sustainable construction materials Lat-RILEM conference”. Universidad del Valle/Facultad de Ingeniería/Escuela de Ingeniería de Materiales, Cali, pp 365–374 Huang C, Cooper PA (2000) Cement-bonded particleboards using CCA-treated wood removed from service. Forest Prod J 50(6):49–56 Janin A, Blais JF, Mercier G, Drogui P (2009a) Optimization of a chemical leaching process for decontamination of CCA-treated wood. J Hazard Mater 169:136–145 Janin A, Blais JF, Mercier G, Drogui P (2009b) Selective recovery of Cr and Cu in leachate from chromated copper arsenate treated wood using chelating and acidic ion exchange resins. J Hazard Mater 169:1099–1105 Jorge FC, Pereira C, Ferreira JMF (2004) Wood-cement composites: a review. Holz Als Roh- Und Werkstoff 62:370–377 Kartal SN, Katsumata N, Imamura Y (2006) Removal of copper, chromium, and arsenic from CCA-treated wood by organic acids released by mold and staining fungi. Forest Prod J 56:33–37 Kazi FKM, Cooper PA (2006) Method to recover and reuse chromated copper arsenate wood preservative from spent treated wood. Waste Manage 26:182–188 Kim GH, Ra JB, Kong IG, Song YS (2004) Optimization of hydrogen peroxide extraction conditions for CCA removal from treated wood by response surface methodology. Forest Prod J 54:141–144 Li M, Khennane A, Brandelet B, El Ganaoui M, Khelifa M, Rogaume Y (2018) Modelling of heat transfer through permanent formwork panels exposed to high temperatures. Constr Build Mater 185:166–174 Sinclair Kinght Merz (1999) Review of the landfill disposal risks and the potential for recovery and recycling of preservative treated timber. South Australia EPA. www.epa.sa.gov.au/pdfs/timber. pdf Moreton Bay (2021). https://www.moretonbay.qld.gov.au/Services/Waste-Recycling/Waste-Facili ties/Locations. Accessed 7 Apr 2021 Papadopoulos AN, Ntalo GA, Kakaras I (2006) Mechanical and physical properties of cementbonded OSB. Holz Als Roh- Und Werkstoff 64:517–518 Queanbeyan-Palerang Council (2021). https://www.qprc.nsw.gov.au/files/assets/public/resourcesamp-plans-and-documents/strategies/fees-and-charges-december-2020-update.pdf. Accessed 7 Apr 2021 Smith ST (2003) Economic analysis of regulating treated wood waste as hazardous waste in California. AquAeTer Inc. MT, Report for Western Wood Preservers Institute, p 27 US-EPA (1992) Method 1311. Toxicity characteristic leaching procedure. US Environmental Protection Agency Washington, DC, USA Zhou Y, Kamdem DP (2002) Effect of cement/wood ratio on the properties of cement-bonded particleboard using CCA-treated wood removed from service. Forest Prod J 52(3):77–81

Chapter 11

Circular Economy in the Textile Industry: Evidence from the Prato District Gianmarco Bressanelli, Caterina Nesi, Nicola Saccani, and Filippo Visintin

Abstract The transition towards a Circular Economy is a topic of great concern for the textile and fashion industry, since such industry is one of the main polluting in the world. Although Circular Economy is now on the rise in the academia and on the policy agendas, this model is still underdeveloped in practice. Unlike polyester, wool has long been compatible with recycling processes, thus reducing environmental impact and contributing to closing the loop in a Circular Economy. In this context, the industrial district of Prato (Italy) has successfully established a woollen industry based on recycled wool since centuries. Thus, this paper presents three case studies of companies operating in the Prato district, to explore challenges and opportunities of Circular Economy in the textile industry. Design, legislation and competences emerged as the main challenges preventing the uptake, on a larger scale, of this model. Keywords Circular Economy · Sustainability · Fashion industry · Circular Supply Chain

11.1 Introduction: Circular Economy and the Textile Industry Circular Economy is gaining more and more attention as a means to reach sustainability by decoupling economic growth from resource extraction and environmental losses (Tunn et al. 2019). In a Circular Economy, energy and material efficiency is pursued, while waste is turned into raw materials (Bressanelli et al. 2019). Consequently, energy and material consumption are reduced, products are reused, components are remanufactured, and materials are recycled. To that end, a systemic change G. Bressanelli (B) · N. Saccani RISE Laboratory, Università Degli Studi Di Brescia, Via Branze 23, 25123 Brescia, Italy e-mail: [email protected] C. Nesi · F. Visintin IBIS Laboratory, Università Degli Studi Di Firenze, Viale Morgagni, 40, 50134 Firenze, Italy © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Ghadimi et al. (eds.), Role of Circular Economy in Resource Sustainability, Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90217-9_11

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in the design of products, business models and supply chains should be pursued by companies. Products should be redesigned in a way to extend their lifespan and improve their recyclability (Bovea and Pérez-Belis 2018); business models should be moved towards the offering of the service instead of products, as in the case of pay-per-use or sharing models (Tukker 2015); supply chain should be closed by collecting products after use for creating value from them (Batista et al. 2018). The transition towards a Circular Economy for the textile and clothing industry is a topic of major concern, since the fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world (after oil and gas): each year it consumes 98 million tons of non-renewable resources, over 93 billion m3 of water and emits about 1.2 billion tons of CO2 (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2017). Nowadays, the 63% of the global fibres production are derived from petrochemicals as polyester, while the 22% is derived from cotton (Sandin and Peters 2018; Fischer and Pascucci 2017). In the last 15 years, with the spread of fast fashion, clothing production has doubled. While on one hand the production has increased, on the other hand the life of a garment has been drastically reduced: in the same time-period, the average use of dress decreased by the 36% (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2017). Although Circular Economy is now on the rise in the academia and on the policy agendas, this model is still underdeveloped in practice (Vehmas et al. 2018). For instance, textile recycling is a way to implement Circular Economy. However, little is known about how recycling is put in practice, and only 20% of all textiles are recycled—meaning that the 80% is still landfilled and incinerated (Koszewska 2018; Sandvik and Stubbs 2019). Moreover, in most cases recycling means downcycling (e.g., using textiles for making cleaning towels), thus very far from how Circular Economy should be applied in practice (Fischer and Pascucci 2017). Unlike textile fibres as polyester, used wool clothing has long been compatible with recycling processes, thus reducing environmental impact and contributing to closing the loop (Ravasio and Rodewald 2018). Previous research shown that wool garments have the potential for two or more usage cycles, for a total active life of 20–30 years. The industrial district of Prato (Italy) successfully established a woollen industry based on recycling since centuries, where yarns are produced from scraps and fibres obtained from pre- and post- consumer textiles (Borsacchi et al. 2018; Leal Filho et al. 2019). In the Prato district, each year about 22,000 tons of rags are recycled, leading to savings of about 18,000 tons of CO2 (Prato Chamber of Commerce 2019). Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to explore challenges and opportunities of Circular Economy in the textile industry, using three case studies of companies operating in the Prato district.

11.2 Materials and Methods To explore the challenges and the opportunities of Circular Economy in the textile industry, the Prato textile industrial district has been investigated. First, secondary

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sources have been scrutinized and analysed to understand and depict the wool regeneration process in a Circular Economy context (Sect. 3). The supply chain representation is complemented by direct company and plant visits. Then, given the exploratory nature of the research as well as the initial stage of exploration of the Circular Economy paradigm, a multiple-case study methodology was chosen (Yin 2009). To enhance the validity and the reliability of the study, a research protocol was developed, encompassing four stages: sample selection, data collection, data analysis and results formalization. According to the research protocol, a judgmental sampling technique was used to select cases: companies should: (i) belong to the Prato textile industrial district, (ii) being involved in Circular Economy and (iii) cover different supply chain activities. Three companies have been selected (their identity is concealed to ensure confidentiality). Following the research protocol, semi-structured interviews were carried out (one hour per each interview), and different company roles were consulted. All interviews were transcribed, coded and validated with the respondents. Secondary sources have been used for triangulation. The data analysis and coding were carried out within cases, to search for cross-patterns (Yin 2009). Results were then formalized, and the findings were used to discuss the challenges of Circular Economy in the textile industry.

11.3 The Prato Regenerated Wool Supply Chain The Italian city of Prato is one of the most important textile production centres in the world (Borsacchi et al. 2018). According to Borsacchi et al. (2018) the Prato textile district counts about 7,200 companies and 35,000 direct employees and covers the 17% of Italian textile exports. In the Prato textile district, the regenerated wool production process is not usually fulfilled by a single company performing all the phases (carding, spinning, weaving, dyeing, finishing, to mention a few). Instead, many companies, highly specialized in one or more phases of the production process, are coordinated by focal firms (yarn or fabric producers), which own the relationship with the customer. In the following, the overall Prato regenerated wool supply chain is described, focusing on the production processes needed to recycle used clothes (Ravasio and Rodewald 2018; Prato Chamber of Commerce 2019). The overall wool regeneration process can be split into three main steps (Fig. 11.1). The aim of such process is to recycle clothes and scraps into new fibres, to be used for realizing wovens, knits and thus new garments. First, materials are taken from both pre-consumer (such as textile production scraps, weaving trims or leftover yarns) and post-consumer (i.e., wool clothing and garments) textiles. In the case of post-consumers, materials generally come from post-consumer traders of garments from all over the world and are received in pre-picked bales. Such materials differ by colour, composition and quality. Then, a manual sorting procedure is carried out. This activity is still done manually, relying on competences of technical personnel (in Italian these workers are called “cenciaioli”) who sort materials by colour, material and quality. This sorting activity requires

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Fig. 11.1 Prato wool regeneration process, adapted from Ravasio and Rodewald (2018)

specialized personnel: years of experience are needed to be able, only through the touch, to understand the fibres composition of rags. In this step, all foreign materials (e.g., buttons, zippers or labels) are cut out. Second, sorted materials undergo a tearing and fraying process. Since wool coming from rags always contains impurities and foreign fibres, before being recycled it undergoes a carbonization process. In this process, sulfuric acid in the form of vapor solution is used for destroying these particles. This step can also be used to remove cotton or other cellulosic material from the wool garments, since the cotton is chemically degraded during this process, thus leaving the wool behind. This phase does not affect the colour and the composition of the material to be regenerated. Then, a tearing and fraying phase is carried out through a special “tear and scrub” machine that simultaneously carries out the washing and the fraying phases. The material is reworked several times to obtain the desired quality, ensuring that the entire rag is converted back into fibres. Lastly, a spin dryer phase dries the materials. Then, the colour composition of the final yarn is determined in laboratory. In this step, fibres of different colours are blended to obtain the desired colour. The purpose is to obtain the desired colour outcome (as required by the customer) avoiding the dyeing phase of the fibres. The ability to blend the fibres batches is thus critical and requires personnel with specific skills and competences (in Italian, they are called “feltrinisti”). In the laboratory, the fibres blending is usually done using a lab-scale carding machine, which produce a carded web (containing fibres of different colours) to simulate the outcome of the overall process. Third, and last, the full-scale bulk blending process is carried out through the

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traditional carding, spinning, weaving (or knitting), finishing and garment-making processes. These steps are the same as those performed for virgin fibres. First, blended fibres are transformed into a carded web through carding. Carding is a mixing and disentangling process where fibres are passed through a series of rotating toothed rollers in order to form a rope-like structure. The carded web is then packaged and sent to the next phases, which consist of spinning, winding on bobbins and delivery for weaving/knitting. The spinning phase transforms the carded web into a yarn, thanks to the combined action of stretching and twisting. This phase gives to the yarn the characteristics of resistance, elasticity and strength. Weaving is the process that transforms the yarn into a fabric. It is carried out by a loom able to weave weft and warp. Lastly, the garment making phase (finishing) is carried out, which consists of laying and cutting the fabric, assembly, ironing, pressing and vaporization, final control and packaging.

11.4 Case Studies A. Company A Company A is a family-run company (today it has reached the third generation) in the textile district of Prato. The company was founded in 1951, with initial activities in the marketing and processing of textile raw materials that has been extended, over the years, until turning Company A in a real woollen mill. To date Company A offers a wide range of carded yarns and fabrics, together with the marketing of textile raw materials. The company has 35 employees and a turnover of about e 10 million. Revenues are equally split into regenerated wool (33%, sold as raw material), carded yarns (34%, sold to finishing companies) and fabrics (33%, sold to garments making companies). Customers are based all over the world, but especially in Italy and Sweden. Each year, the company transforms with its own production plant about 5 million kg of textile waste, mainly coming from post-consumer use and otherwise sent to landfill. Company A carries out all the activities needed to recycle wool fibres, as described in Sect. 3 (carbonization, tearing and fraying), internally: the company owns a carbonization and a water-shredding plant. A first concern regarding the materials to be recycled arises in this step: if the garment has not been designed with recycling in mind, the entire cloth cannot be further processed. An example is given by woollen garments with gaskets in polyester: since the recycling process is not designed to eliminate polyester (the chemical process is not able to erase plastics), the entire garment is sent to landfill. Since Company A is a member of a consortium that offers a refining system for the recovery and reuse of wastewater, the water used during the tearing process is treated and subsequently reused for industrial and civil purposes. After the carbonization and raying process, the rags become fibres ready to be processed as regenerated wool. Company A owns a laboratory where fibres are blended, and colours are tested. The ability of the “feltrinisti” in this stage is vital: if they work well, the dyeing phase can be avoided, saving the related costs and avoiding

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the connected environmental impact. Company A is certified GRS (Global Recycling Standard), i.e., a certification owned by Textile Exchange (non-profit organization) for the promotion and development of sustainability to increase the use of recycled materials. According to Company A evidence, the Italian legislation about the End of Waste Directive seems to complicate rather than facilitate the wool recycling process. More specifically, it is not clear which products should be considered waste and which by-products. The company is thus committed in the current working table organized by the Italian Ministry of Environment to improve legislation. B. Company B Company B is a family-run company founded in 1984. Company B employs about 10 employees and sells regenerated carded yarns to wool mills, for an annual turnover of around e 6 million. The main market is based on Italy (85%), even though the company is also expanding to foreign countries such as Spain, Portugal and Japan. The company has always specialized in regenerating wool, integrating perfectly within the Prato textile tradition: 80% of the volumes are made up of regenerated fibres obtained from both pre- and post-consumption processes. Consequently, the strategic goal of Company B is to increase customer awareness from an environmental point of view: carded yarns in regenerated wool have the same characteristics as virgin wool yarns but they lead to environmental advantages as the reduction of water consumption (about 500 liters less per kg of yarn), lower CO2 emissions (36.3 kg of CO2 less per kg of yarn) and the recovery of material that would otherwise go to landfill. As far as customers are concerned, the main difficulty is to make them understand the importance of regenerated carded yarns and their conditions. As in the case of Company A, also Company B relies on an external spinning mill, while sourcing the regenerated fibres from the so-called “cenciaioli”. Since the most important partners are the spinning mills, Company B has established a strong collaboration with one of them. This fact shed light on a limit in the current Italian End of Waste legislation: a large amount of material deriving from pre-consumption is conceived as waste by the current Italian regulation, and therefore is no longer reusable within the processing cycle. However, this amount of material does not even differ from the final product and thus could be considered as by-product. An example is provided by the winding phase in which there is about a 2% of scraps. These scraps would already be good yarns, since they have the same product characteristics but, due to the structure of the current legislation, they should be treated as waste (thus needing special authorizations to be further processed). As Company A, also Company B has the GRS certification. The company is also committed to avoid as much as possible the dyeing phase, trying to obtain the desired colour by mixing and blending the fabrics to be recycled. C. Company C Company C is a start-up Prato-based company founded in November 2017 with the aim of offering clothing and accessories that are locally produced (within the Prato district) and made using 100% recycled textile fibres. In 2019 the company achieved a turnover of e 300,000, employing less than 5 employees. The company

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sells garments and fashion accessories that are made using 100% recycled fibres. For Company C, the main source of competitive advantage is undoubtedly to be inside the Prato district, in order to both exploit the skills and to reduce management costs due to proximity with partners. Company C internally carries out the design, R&D, marketing, communication and after-sale activities. Collection, sorting, manufacturing and transport activities are outsourced. It is thus clear that a strong cohesion and collaboration among the supply chain actors is fundamental. In this regard, Company C collaborates with about 10 companies. A peculiar feature of the process is the avoidance of the dyeing phase, which is very impactful from an environmental point of view. All the sorting and selection work is done directly by “cenciaioli”, who are one of the main partners. This task requires a high degree of experience as well as years of practicing. Moreover, customers can bring their used sweaters directly to the company store for repair or for fibres recycling and regeneration, to transform the old sweater into a new one with the same quality as the original. Even though repair has a lower environmental impact, to date regeneration is the main activity carried out by the company (about 99% of the total). Even though offering regenerated products targeting high-segment customers, the company prices are competitive. This is achieved through three reasons: the adoption of a direct-to-consumer sale model (without the presence of intermediaries), a make-to-order production policy (which minimizes waste and the inventory costs) and the lower cost of regenerated yarn (for instance, in the case of cashmere, the regenerated yarn costs less than the virgin one). Using recycled materials, Company C reduces energy consumption by the 77%, chemical pollution by the 90%, CO2 emissions by the 95% and the use of dyes by the 90%. The company products are certified GRS.

11.5 Discussion and Conclusion Case studies about the Prato wool industrial district presented benefits but especially challenges. While benefits and opportunities seem evident—i.e., reusing existing resources at a lower environmental impact and at lesser production costs—challenges Table 11.1 Overview of the three companies investigated Company A

Company B

Company C

Position in the supply chain

Woolen mill (regenerated wool, carded yarns and fabrics)

Provider of regenerated carded yarns (stock-service)

Start-up providing regenerated garments

Employees

35

10

12

5.58

2.5–4.0

B50/10% SPPM

1678

720/1400

133

29.63

>12

9.65

2.5–4.0

B50/4% SPPMa

1415

720/1400

165

16.03

>12

3.73

2.5–4.0

B50/4% EOLPa

1529

720/1400

180

15.35

>12

4.16

2.5–4.0

a Grinded

plastic samples to 1.5–4.0 mm mesh

bitumen blend (Nkanga et al. 2017). Nevertheless, from these data it is possible to observe decreasing density values when higher concentrations of non-grinded SPPM are present. This is probably due to reduced homogeneity of the bitumen/plastic mixture which affects the density of the samples. In fact, in the presence of 4 wt% grinded SPPM, density values equivalent to the normal bitumen are restored. Similar results are obtained with the addition of 4 wt% EOLP. The stability and durability of asphalt mixtures are known to be highly influenced by air voids which are correlated to the volumetric fractions and space distribution (Chen et al. 2013). Air voids generally require to be within an optimal range defined by standard methods (see Table 12.1), since low air void values cause rutting due to plastic flow, whereas an excess of air voids may lead to premature cracking or raveling due to oxidation and moisture (Chen et al. 2013).

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Examining the data in Table 12.1, it emerges that good results are achieved when 4 wt% of grinded SPPM or 4 wt% of EOLP is added. Less satisfactory data obtained with non-grinded SPPM are probably to be attributed to low homogeneity of the plastic material within the bitumen. The results obtained for indirect tensile strength (ITS), indirect traction coefficient (ITC) and Marshall tests for the different mixtures containing SPPM and EOLP are reported in Table 12.2. Data achieved have been compared to those obtained by the standard control sample. The mixtures produced with coarsly grinded SPPM show an increase in resistance of the asphalt mixture as shown by the values of ITS, ITC and Marshall value compared to B50 indicating an increase in asphalt resistance. Nevertheless, this positive effect is accompanied by a significant increase of Marshall quotation reaching values far beyond the reference value in the presence of 10 wt% of SPPM (9.65 kN/mm vesus a maximum value of 4.0 kN), which indicate a high stiffness of the material leading to premature cracking and severe damage. On the contrary, very good results are measured for specimens containing 4 wt% of grinded SPPM and EOLP allowing to achieve ITS values higher than standard B50 alone, which is reasonably higher than the CSA ANAS requirements, together with very satisfactory Marshall values and quotations. It is important to underline that both SPPM and EOLP mixtures achieved a good compromise between resistance ITS, ITC and Marshall value versus elasticity (Marshall Quotation), which are good requisites to produce long lasting road asphalt. From the data above it clearly emerges that the size of the plastic particles added to the mixture play a crucial role in affecting the characteristics of the final manufact. This behavior is probably related to the reinforcing role of the polymeric mixtures added, which is maximized when smaller particles are used. From an economical point of view, it must be stressed that EOLP is presently sent to incineration with considerable economical (about 110 e/ton) and environmental burden. SPPM instead is already sold to produce recycled plastic materials and is thus an expensive source of polymeric additives for asphalt production. Based on the experimental evidences, an estimate of the economic and environmental advantages foreseen using B50/4 wt% EOLP for the layout of a 25–30 mm height top layer, 4 m wide and 1 km long road, are reported in Table 12.3. Economical data, shown in Table 12.3, clearly highlight the EOLP advantages in asphalt production. Main results are: (i) reduction of fossil derived products (bitumen and additives); (ii) reduction of end-of-life incineration which is known to produce about 1 ton of CO2 for ton of plastic burned; (iii) reduction in waste management and disposal; (iv) increase in optimization of EOLP recycling and reuse. Prudentially we have not taken into consideration the CO2 savings derived from the reduced consumption of bitumen, additives and reduced road maintenance, to counterbalance possible CO2 burden (charge/load) coming from the exploitation of EOLP.

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Table 12.3 Economic and environmental comparison between standard B50 and B50/4% EOLP Materials

Standard bitumen process

EOLP bitumen process

Savings (e)

Bitumen 50/70 (400 e/ton)

111.330 kg

106.880 kg

1.780

EOLP

–

4.450 kg

Additives (4 e/kg)

4.450 kg

–

Carbon credit achieved avoiding burning plastics EOLP waste management (110 e/ton)

17.800

4.5 ton 490

12.4 Conclusions In this study, End-of-life Plastics were demonstrated to be suitable as bitumen modifiers, despite their complex and variable composition. Two different plastic waste, SPPM and EOLP, have been used as bitumen modifier and their performance compared to standard bitumen 50/70 (wear 0/12) used for road asphalt. SPPM is a PP/PE mixture similar to conventional plastic additives tested in the literature, while EOLP has a very complex and heterogeneous composition. Data clearly show that grinding of the plastic waste used (