Circular Business Models versus circular benefits: An assessment in the waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipments sector

Abstract

Huge depletion of raw materials, inefficient waste management practices, increasing population and consumerist lifestyles, are even more coping companies with the adoption of Circular Economy (CE) principles in their Business Models (BMs). However, benefits coming from the implementation of CE within companies are not always clear to managers. To this aim, the paper has a multiple purpose. Firstly, the work provides to academics the list of the benefits deriving from CE adoption through a systematic literature review, declined under the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) perspective of sustainability, also by validating and grounding them through four practical use cases. Secondly, the work links CE benefits with a set of CBMs – based on Product-Service Systems (PSSs) – through a set of interviews with experts belonging to the Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) sector, trying to support industrials in both i) detecting benefits related with the adoption of CBMs, ii) increasing their awareness on benefits and iii) reaching them into practice. Given that PSS-based CBMs are renown both by the scientific and industrial community as the most suitable ones to achieve circularity, they were considered as the most appropriate to adopt also in this work. Finally, four use cases coming from the WEEE sector demonstrate how to link CBMs with CE benefits.