scholarly journals Challenging Novelties within the Circular Economy Concept under the Digital Transformation of Society

2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 702
Author(s):  
Milena P. Ilić ◽  
Marko Ranković ◽  
Milutin Dobrilović ◽  
Rocsana Bucea-Manea-Țoniş ◽  
Larisa Mihoreanu ◽  
...  

The study makes, under a new configuration of the circular economy, a cross-country analysis based on the Competitiveness and Innovation Indicators in the E.U., i.e., two sub-criteria: private investments, jobs, and gross value added; and patents related to recycling and secondary raw materials as a proxy for innovation. The analysis proved that investments influence the number of patents, and participate in societal transformation. A further cluster analysis classified countries on the level of innovation. The cluster analysis in SPSS centres on significant potential, weaknesses, impact, and waste management control through blockchain technology. It is found that the factors that influence innovation, according to the Global Competitiveness Report, link the business dynamism and innovation capability with the capacity to sustain resilient ideas, such as competitive intelligence and social entrepreneurship. The discussions aim to prove that the efforts to rethink the circular economy principles contribute to its conceptual and societal transformation role through the implementation of innovative processes, inventive solutions, and blockchain technologies, and their social consequences to solve environmental problems. Once understood and accepted, CE will drive sustainable behaviour.

Molecules ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (21) ◽  
pp. 3854 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fidelis ◽  
Moura ◽  
Kabbas Junior ◽  
Pap ◽  
Mattila ◽  
...  

The circular economy is an umbrella concept that applies different mechanisms aiming to minimize waste generation, thus decoupling economic growth from natural resources. Each year, an estimated one-third of all food produced is wasted; this is equivalent to 1.3 billion tons of food, which is worth around US$1 trillion or even $2.6 trillion when social and economic costs are included. In the fruit and vegetable sector, 45% of the total produced amount is lost in the production (post-harvest, processing, and distribution) and consumption chains. Therefore, it is necessary to find new technological and environmentally friendly solutions to utilize fruit wastes as new raw materials to develop and scale up the production of high value-added products and ingredients. Considering that the production and consumption of fruits has increased in the last years and following the need to find the sustainable use of different fruit side streams, this work aimed to describe the chemical composition and bioactivity of different fruit seeds consumed worldwide. A comprehensive focus is given on the extraction techniques of water-soluble and lipophilic compounds and in vitro/in vivo functionalities, and the link between chemical composition and observed activity is holistically explained.


2021 ◽  
Vol 129 ◽  
pp. 03027
Author(s):  
Philipp Schmidt ◽  
David Elferich

Research background: Since the announcement by entrepreneur Elon Musk in the year 2021 about the inclusion of Bitcoin on the balance sheet of his automotive company Tesla, the economic significance of cryptocurrencies for the financial industry is taking on progressive importance. In addition to the financial economic consideration of cryptocurrencies, the underlying blockchain technology is undergoing a disruptive growth across industries – e.g. from automotive to real estate. Accordingly, in the report ‘Deep Shift Technology Tipping Points and Societal Impact’, the World Economic Forum predicted a far-reaching significance of the blockchain technology as early as 2015, and in 2020, the Global Future Council published a finding that the crypto market has reached a point of inevitability. Purpose of the article: The aim of this paper is to examine the degree of integration of the blockchain technology within the framework of a current market investigation using the real estate industry as an example. The leading application areas of the blockchain technology in the real estate industry will be presented. Methods: The market investigation of this paper is based, among other things, on a cluster analysis that examines a regional differentiation of the application areas on a global level. Findings & Value added: In this context, the market research indicates that the blockchain technology can be applied significantly in the real estate industry and that the Global Future Council finding can be replicated in many areas.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0734242X2110528
Author(s):  
Luís Alves ◽  
Estrela Ferreira Cruz ◽  
Sérgio I Lopes ◽  
Pedro M Faria ◽  
António Miguel Rosado da Cruz

The textile and clothing industry sector has today a big environmental impact, not only due to the consumption of water and the use of toxic chemicals but also due to the increasing levels of textile waste. One way to reduce the problem is to circularise the, currently linear, textile and clothing value chain, by using discarded clothes as raw material for the production of new clothes, transforming it into a model of circular economy. This way, while reducing the need to produce new raw materials (e.g. cotton), the problem of textile waste produced is also reduced, thus contributing to a more sustainable industry. In this article, we review the current approaches for traceability in the textile and clothing value chain, and study a set of technologies we deem essential for promoting the circular economy in this value chain – namely, the blockchain technology – for registering activities on traceable items through the value chain, and the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, for easily identifying the traceable items’ digital twins.


Author(s):  
Tetiana Petrushyna ◽  
Anatolii Arseienko

Globalization remains the most common and quite controversial concept in modern social discourse. Within the theoretical and conceptual sociological dimension, the authors analyzed the essence of economic globalization (EG) as its defining type. They studied globalization as an objective process (first of all, the international division of labour) and the subjective process of forming a global capitalist economy under the auspices of leading Western countries, supranational financial and economic institutions (primarily the World Bank and the IMF), TNCs. As the main drivers of globalization, they determine its forms and directions in the interests of the "core" of global capitalism. Within the empirical sociological dimension of EG (which involves measuring the various manifestations of the EG process itself as well as its social consequences), the authors paid particular attention to the analysis of social changes in Ukrainian society. The capitalization of the Ukrainian economy, which took place in parallel with Ukraine’s entry into the global economic space, led to degradation of the national economy, significant deterioration of living standards of most citizens, creation of anti-social state with the systemic crisis as its main attribute. To prove these conclusions, the authors analyzed the dynamics of the principal macroeconomic and sociological indicators of Ukrainian society’s life for almost 30 years of drift to the roadside of the global capitalist world, based on the study of numerous domestic and foreign sources. The authors focused on the research of eight critical areas of social changes: deindustrialization of the economy, global competitiveness and innovation, GDP dynamics, employment, income and welfare of the population, socioeconomic inequality, debt dependence and degradation of Ukrainian science. The analysis shows the need to abandon the neoliberal paradigm of development and search for the alternative and more fair models of EG.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 598-617 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.V. Ratner

Subject. The article considers the concept of circular economy, which has originated relatively recently in the academic literature, and is now increasingly recognized in many countries at the national level. In the European Union, the transition to circular economy is viewed as an opportunity to improve competitiveness of the European Union, protect businesses from resource shortages and fluctuating prices for raw materials and supplies, and a way to increase employment and innovation. Objectives. The aim of the study is to analyze the incentives developed by the European Commission for moving to circular economy, and to assess their effectiveness on the basis of statistical analysis. Methods. I employ general scientific methods of research. Results. The analysis of the EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy enabled to conclude that the results of the recent research in circular economy barriers, eco-innovation, technology and infrastructure were successfully integrated into the framework of this document. Understanding the root causes holding back the circular economy development and the balanced combination of economic and administrative incentives strengthened the Action Plan, and it contributed to the circular economy development in the EU. Conclusions. The measures to stimulate the development of the circular economy proposed in the European Action Plan can be viewed as a prototype for designing similar strategies in other countries, including Russia. Meanwhile, a more detailed analysis of barriers to the circular economy at the level of individual countries and regions is needed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Subiyanto Subiyanto

Palm oil industry in Indonesia has been growing rapidly. But, unfortunately the growth is only effective on upstream industry with low value products, such that potential downstream value added are not explored proportionally. The government is therefore in the process of developing an appropriate policy to strengthen the national palm oil downstream industry. This paper proposes that an approriate policy for developing palm oil downstream industry could be derived from the maps of value chain and existing technology capability of the industry. The result recommends that government policy should emphasize on the supply of raw materials, infrastructure and utilities, as well as developing the missing value chain industry, especially ethoxylation and sulfonation.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 3052
Author(s):  
Diego Cardoza ◽  
Inmaculada Romero ◽  
Teresa Martínez ◽  
Encarnación Ruiz ◽  
Francisco J. Gallego ◽  
...  

A biorefinery integrated process based on lignocellulosic feedstock is especially interesting in rural areas with a high density of agricultural and agro-industrial wastes, which is the case for olive crop areas and their associated industries. In the region of Andalusia, in the south of Spain, the provinces of Jaén, Córdoba and Seville accumulate more than 70% of the olive wastes generated in Spain. Therefore, the valorisation of these wastes is a matter of interest from both an environmental and a social point of view. The olive biorefinery involves a multi-product process from different raw materials: olive leaves, exhausted olive pomace, olive stones and olive tree pruning residues. Biorefinery processes associated with these wastes would allow their valorisation to produce bioenergy and high value-added renewable products. In this work, using geographic information system tools, the biomass from olive crop fields, mills and olive pomace-extracting industries, where these wastes are generated, was determined and quantified in the study area. In addition, the vulnerability of the territory was evaluated through an environmental and territorial analysis that allowed for the determination of the reception capacity of the study area. Then, information layers corresponding to the availability of the four biomass wastes, and layers corresponding to the environmental fragility of the study area were overlapped and they resulted in an overall map. This made it possible to identify the best areas for the implementation of the biorefineries based on olive-derived biomass. Finally, as an example, three zones were selected for this purpose. These locations corresponded to low fragility areas with a high availability of biomass (more than 300,000 tons/year) in a 30 km radius, which would ensure the biomass supply.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1899
Author(s):  
Fabiana Gatto ◽  
Ilaria Re

Reducing the environmental pressure along the products life cycle, increasing efficiency in the consumption of resources and use of renewable raw materials, and shifting the economic system toward a circular and a climate-neutral model represent the heart of the current macro-trends of the European Union (EU) policy agendas. The circular economy and bioeconomy concepts introduced in the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan and the Bioeconomy Strategy support innovation in rethinking economic systems focusing on market uptaking of greener solutions based on less-intensive resource consumption. In recent decades, industrial research has devoted enormous investments to demonstrate sustainable circular bio-based business models capable of overcoming the “Valley of Death” through alternative strategic orientations of “technological-push” and “market-pull”. The study highlights industrial research’s evolution on bio-based circular business model validation, trends, and topics with particular attention to the empowering capacity of start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to close the loops in renewable biological use and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. The research methodology involves a bibliographic search based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach and the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator Data Hub investigation to understand SMEs’ key success factors and start-ups of the circular bioeconomy sector. Eco and bio-based materials, nutraceuticals, and microalgae represent the most sustainable industry applications, leading to circular bioeconomy business models’ future perspective.


Author(s):  
Paola Sangiorgio ◽  
Alessandra Verardi ◽  
Salvatore Dimatteo ◽  
Anna Spagnoletta ◽  
Stefania Moliterni ◽  
...  

AbstractThe increase in the world population leads to rising demand and consumption of plastic raw materials; only a small percentage of plastics is recovered and recycled, increasing the quantity of waste released into the environment and losing its economic value. The plastics represent a great opportunity in the circular perspective of their reuse and recycling. Research is moving, on the one hand, to implement sustainable systems for plastic waste management and on the other to find new non-fossil-based plastics such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). In this review, we focus our attention on Tenebrio molitor (TM) as a valuable solution for plastic biodegradation and biological recovery of new biopolymers (e.g. PHA) from plastic-producing microorganisms, exploiting its highly diversified gut microbiota. TM’s use for plastic pollution management is controversial. However, TM microbiota is recognised as a source of plastic-degrading microorganisms. TM-based plastic degradation is improved by co-feeding with food loss and waste as a dietary energy source, thus valorising these low-value substrates in a circular economy perspective. TM as a bioreactor is a valid alternative to traditional PHA recovery systems with the advantage of obtaining, in addition to highly pure PHA, protein biomass and rearing waste from which to produce fertilisers, chitin/chitosan, biochar and biodiesel. Finally, we describe the critical aspects of these TM-based approaches, mainly related to TM mass production, eventual food safety problems, possible release of microplastics and lack of dedicated legislation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4394
Author(s):  
Margarita Ignatyeva ◽  
Vera Yurak ◽  
Alexey Dushin ◽  
Vladimir Strovsky ◽  
Sergey Zavyalov ◽  
...  

Nowadays, circular economy (CE) is on the agenda, however, this concept of closed supply chains originated in the 1960s. The current growing quantity of studies in this area accounts for different discourses except the holistic one, which mixes both approaches—contextual and operating (contextual approach utilizes the thorough examination of the CE theory, stricture of the policy, etc.; the operating one uses any kind of statistical data)—to assess the capacity of circular economy regulatory policy packages (CERPP) in operating raw materials and industrial wastes. This article demonstrates new guidelines for assessing the degree level of capacity (DLC) of CERPPs in the operation of raw materials and industrial wastes by utilizing the apparatus of the fuzzy set theory. It scrupulously surveys current CERPPs in three regions: the EU overall, Finland and Russia; and assesses for eight regions—the EU overall, Finland, Russia, China, Greece, France, the Netherlands and South Korea—the DLC of CERPPs in operating raw materials and industrial wastes. The results show that EU is the best in CE policy and its CERPP is 3R. The following are South Korea and China with the same type of CERPP. Finland, France and the Netherlands have worse results than EU with the type of CERPP called “integrated waste management” because of the absence of a waste hierarchy (reduce, recover, recycle). Russia closes the list with the type of CERPP “basic waste management”.


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