مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد تحلیل استراتژی اقتصاد دایره ای – الزویر 2019

In the circular economy (CE), the importance of the evaluation of costs, benefits, and externalities capturing the variables involved in a product’s life cycle are gaining attention both in the literature and with practitioners. In many cases, costs are isolated across the various life cycle stages and addressed in fragmented ways. The literature indicates the importance of developing and implementing life cycle costing methods from the perspective of the product/material flow life cycle. Numerical application of the product structure-based integrated life cycle analysis (PSILA) with the externalities demonstrates how this method can assist in the management of circular businesses. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the benefits of using aluminum packaging in the food sector by combining the life cycle costing (LCC) model and externalities in the CE. The results obtained through the LCC concept and externalities indicate an economic benefit and CO2 reduction. This paper seeks to fill the research gap regarding expenditures and benefits for the analysis of production costs, environmental impacts, and externalities in an integrated manner.

Introduction

From the mid-twentieth century, the circular economy (CE) concept has gained importance for academics, industry, and governments. The CE includes “closing material loops,” which aims at a more conscious use of natural resources and reusing and recycling biological nutrients to extract their maximum value with minimum expenditure (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2016; Naustdalslid, 2014; Scheepens et al., 2016; Zink and Geyer, 2017). However, according to Gregson et al. (2014), although the CE concept is gaining increasing prominence in the academic, corporate, and government sectors, its dissemination in practice is still limited. Therefore, it is interesting to discuss the theory and practice to advance knowledge, revisiting existing concepts and approaches in light of the circular models. Circular business models based on remanufacturing and reuse can generate benefits such as cost reduction and reductions in environmental impacts (Linder and Williander, 2015). However, management tools are needed to assist managers in this analysis. In this context, authors such as Florindo et al. (2017), Almeida et al. (2017), Niero and Hauschild (2017), and Bradley et al. (2018) discuss gaps in the literature related to the need for tools and methods that contribute to better management in the CE. Florindo et al. (2017) emphasize the importance of adopting methods that allow for the integration of production costs with environmental impacts established throughout the product’s life cycle to generate information for an organization’s decisionmaking process, contributing to an efficient management in terms of the creation of a combined environmental and economic value. Thus, studies that find new tools and methods for an evaluation of the costs, benefits, and externalities capturing the variables involved in the entire life cycle of a product are needed. Almeida et al. (2017) reinforce this argument, asserting that decision makers in industry are seeking evaluation methods that address the problem as a whole, and not only as the sum of its parts, to select the most appropriate and reliable option.