Organic solid waste management in a circular economy perspective – A systematic review and SWOT analysis

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118086

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 239, 1 December 2019, 118086

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118086 Get rights and content

Highlights

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SWOT analysis of organic waste management was performed through Circular Economy (CE) principles.
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Biomass availability and its seasonality are weaknesses of organic waste management in the CE.
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Lack of public awareness regarding bio-based products was identified as a threat to CE of organic waste management.
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Transition to CE principles requires changes in business models and consumer behavior.

Abstract

This study carried out a systematic literature review and content analysis to identify the state of the art and the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis) of organic waste management through circular economy (CE) principles and created a research agenda on the topic. The main threats and weaknesses were: logistic cost and supply chain management; seasonality; availability and lack of homogenization of the raw material (organic waste); quality and efficiency of the alternative product, which is not economically competitive with traditional ones; and lack of technical standards and regulation. The main strengths were: the possibility to turn waste streams into valuable resources, contributing to environmental improvement and greenhouse gas emission reduction and costs reduction; stimulation of cooperative projects and production of bio-based chemicals and energy; and job creation and new investment opportunities as the result of the development of a new business model and a new value chain based on organic waste, boosting companies that focus on green solutions. The proposed research agenda concentrated on emerging value chains and modifying existing business models, legislation and taxation to aid in the competitiveness of alternative materials derived from organic waste in a CE perspective.

Introduction

In the past several decades, the linear economy has played an essential role in economic development. The linear model was central to the industrial development, but it generated unprecedented pressure on natural resources and improper waste disposal (Andrews, 2015). Managing the final disposal of solid waste became one of the greatest challenges faced by society (Barles, 2014). The waste and resource management, within the current form of linear production, does not follow a holistic approach that covers the complete production chain, from product design, raw material extraction, production, consumption, and final disposal (Singh et al., 2014). This issue has become increasingly concerning due to inadequate waste management and pressure over landfills, which are an immediate reflection of consumerism and the linear economic model, where products are quickly replaced and lose their value, even though they may still be useable (Mavropoulos et al., 2015).

Local governments are usually responsible for the waste management system and must undertake the challenge of providing an effective and efficient system to the population. They often face problems beyond the boundaries of municipal authority, such as lack of organization and financial resources, and subject complexity and multidimensionality (Yukalang et al., 2017). In this context, CE has emerged as a viable model that has the objective of closing the life cycle of products, similar to what occurs with biological cycles (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015). The CE aims to reduce the use of virgin raw materials and waste production, to improve the circularity of the raw materials used, and to extend their lifetime, completing the economic and ecological cycles of resource flows (Haas et al., 2015).

Even though there have been recent works on CE and the management of organic solid waste is a well-established topic, there are few works that study the interface between the two areas. The results from the present study become relevant since they attempt to bridge this research gap. The objectives of this work are to identify the state of the art and the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis) of organic waste management through CE principles and create a research agenda on the topic.

After this introduction, the article is structured in four additional sections. Section 2 presents this research’s theoretical concepts. Section 3 presents the research method. Section 4 presents the results and discussion. Section 5 outlines this study’s conclusions and limitations and future research proposals.

Section snippets

Circular economy

CE has been extensively investigated in the recent literature on environmental sustainability (e.g., Korhonen et al., 2018; Pinheiro et al., 2019), and its concepts have been discussed for decades (e.g., Andersen, 2007; Graedel, 1996). In the 1990’s researchers started studying the areas of industrial ecology and industrial symbiosis, which consider the creation of competitive advantages by connecting industries through input exchanges (Chertow, 2000). Industrial symbiosis had low coverage in

Research methodology

Many researchers have utilized a systematic literature review combining quantitative and qualitative strategies to examine the interrelation and trends of the topics considered in this work (Gaur and Kumar, 2017; Luiz et al., 2016). For this study, the systematic review was used with bibliometric, similarity, data coding, and content analyses as used by Cui (2018) and Homrich et al. (2018). The synergy, formulated by the combination of approaches, aims to solve research issues and practical

Results and discussion

Table 2 shows the classification of the 33 articles selected based on the dimensions presented in Table 1. The next subsection presents each dimension, classified and categorized, and the main gaps and future research opportunities.

Conclusions and research agenda

The concept of CE has been discussed for some decades, but its taxonomy is recent and has been used with increased frequency by the scientific literature. Few works in this literature explore the interface between CE and management of organic waste, the latter being a well-established research topic. The objective of this paper was to fill in this research gap by means of a systematic literature review and SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), followed by a proposed

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Brazilian research funding agency CAPES.

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Organic solid waste management in a circular economy perspective – A systematic review and SWOT analysis

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Circular economy

Research methodology

Results and discussion

Conclusions and research agenda

Acknowledgments

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