Abstract
Despite increasing global environmental concerns, we continue to consume large amounts of products with little regard to what happens before, during, and after their use. Roughly one-third of the food produced is wasted. Because the world’s population is expected to grow to 10 billion by 2050, adopting circular economy practices will become essential. The transition towards a circular economy requires adopting business processes that support circular economy practices across supply chains. Currently, the SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Reference) model is the most widely used, and widely known, approach for studying and evaluating supply chain business processes. It is, however, unclear to what extent circular principles are included in the SCOR model. Past studies indicating missing processes for circular supply chain management in the SCOR model have made limited efforts in capturing the current state-of-the-practice. We conducted an online survey of 60 companies engaged in 14 different types of economic activities to study the SCOR level 2 business processes adopted in practice. In addition to the 22 level 2 business processes documented in SCOR, we identified six additional level 2 circular business processes that the respondents recognized as being commonly applied within their businesses. The results clearly show that the current SCOR model does not fully represent circular business processes in the state-of-the-practice.
Highlights
Despite increasing global environmental concerns, we still continue to consume large amounts of products with little regard to what happens before, during, and after their use
Respondents filled in the economic activities they recognized in their company, based on the UN’s International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities (ISIC)
Other studies indicating that processes for circular supply chain management are missing in the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model were primarily theoretical investigations
Summary
Despite increasing global environmental concerns, we still continue to consume large amounts of products with little regard to what happens before, during, and after their use. Many supply chains follow a linear model of resource consumption, in which raw materials are sourced, products are made, and the resulting waste products are disposed of. This practice results in large amounts of waste and is untenable, with the world population expected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050 [1]. Is the world population increasing, and the global middle class is expanding rapidly according to the OECD, from 1.8 billion in 2009 to 4.9 billion people in 2030 [3] This expanding middle class tends to consume increasingly more manufactured items. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation [24]
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