| Title | Solution-focused sustainability assessments for the transition to the circular economy: The case of plastics in the automotive industry |
|---|---|
| ID_Doc | 3555 |
| Authors | van Bruggen, AR; Zonneveld, M; Zijp, MC; Posthuma, L |
| Title | Solution-focused sustainability assessments for the transition to the circular economy: The case of plastics in the automotive industry |
| Year | 2022 |
| Published | |
| Abstract | To overcome barriers and make a societal transition towards a safe, healthy, and sustainable circular economy, realistic and ambitious solutions need to be identified. This study improves the Solution-focused Sustainability Assessment framework (SfSA) with a 'chain approach', which aims to involve stakeholders from across a product chain of interest to explore the 'solution space' from different perspectives. The approach allows to gain a broad insight into the scientific and practical aspects of a problem and its potential solutions. The approach is applied to a specific case: the circular economy of plastics in the automotive industry. Stakeholders across the value-chain together identified forty-one different barriers and various solutions. The stakeholders involved considered the solutions in the realms of policy and economics, such as pricing of environmental impact and norms for recyclate, as most feasible and impactful. Reflection on these results by experts underpinned and enriched these results. The emphasis on policy and economic barriers and solutions does not necessarily mean focus should solely be on solving policy and economic restraints and improving current policy measures. The results show that barriers are connected. When one barrier is overcome, another such as safety of substances may come to the forefront. The same holds for the solutions. The transition towards circular use of plastics in the automotive industry requires a network of solutions that together create systemic change, such as policy solutions as well as gathering data for assessments. This study shows the value of bringing together stakeholders from across the value-chain in a search for barriers and solutions: i) it provides new insights and data on barriers and solutions that cannot be extracted from literature; ii) it challenges stakeholders to see the system they are part of and think in terms of solutions; iii) stakeholders learn from each other and discover that there are more opportunities than they thought of beforehand. Work has to be done to make the solutions suitable for further quantification and to continue to involve stakeholders in the other SfSA steps to gather data, assess solutions, and implement those solutions together. |
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.131606 |
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