Abstract
A circular economy aims to capture the remaining value in waste through several disruptive actions such as reuse, recycle, recover, and regenerate. However, stakeholders in this transition often find themselves in conflict due to their different objectives and priorities. Cooperation is regarded as a critical feature in the implementation of a circular economy; however, it is not easily achieved in practice. Additionally, there is limited research regarding stakeholder cooperation in circular economy development. This paper aims to address this gap by analysing the characteristics of stakeholder cooperation through questionnaire surveys of two stakeholder groups with an interest in the adoption of circular economy principles for municipal solid waste management in Birmingham, UK: 101 MSc students focussing on urban sustainability and 27 businesses engaged in alternative sustainable materials. The paper’s primary contribution, being the first to survey participants about perceptions of other stakeholders, has been to gain insights into how stakeholder cooperation is key to facilitating the transition to a circular economy approach. The analysis demonstrated that circular economy awareness, cooperation, and readiness from stakeholders were high, yet their practices do not sufficiently align with this necessary foundation. That said, the study also revealed several encouraging perspectives from stakeholders toward circular economy development, despite benefits and costs not always being evident to all participants.
Highlights
IntroductionA necessary primary condition for the successful implementation of a Circular Economy (CE) at a city scale is the joint support and continuous interest of all stakeholders [1]
A necessary primary condition for the successful implementation of a Circular Economy (CE) at a city scale is the joint support and continuous interest of all stakeholders [1].Therein stakeholder cooperation is a vital feature to successfully achieve CE implementation, in particular by overcoming barriers that arise in the design and adoption stages
The largest differences between cohorts’ viewpoints were for Technology suppliers, followed by Waste management operators Entrepreneurs (73.0% and 37.0%). Results of this question show that Private investors, Local politicians, Local policymakers, Local inhabitants/citizens and Technology suppliers received the highest number of votes by total respondents. This is comparable with the outcomes from recentlypublished research [17,18] in which nearly 59% of respondents agreed on including all of the actors asked
Summary
A necessary primary condition for the successful implementation of a Circular Economy (CE) at a city scale is the joint support and continuous interest of all stakeholders [1]. Therein stakeholder cooperation is a vital feature to successfully achieve CE implementation, in particular by overcoming barriers that arise in the design and adoption stages. A cooperative result is less likely to happen unless a third party (i.e., an external authority) is involved and exerts an influence [2]. Enforcing cooperation is not the only way of improving sustainable performance; Robèrt and Broman [3] heavily criticise this type of approach through the following misconceptions: Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. We rely entirely on authorities to force trust (cooperation) towards sustainability; and Policy-makers shape law based on this misunderstanding, which results in reinforcing the previous mindset
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