Impacts and insights of circular business models’ outsourcing decisions on textile and fashion waste management: A multi-criteria decision model for sorting circular strategies

Abstract

The fashion industry is one of the industries that most use natural resources and one of those in the world that most pollutes. This is caused by the excessive and often irrational consumption of textile products. Moreover, most companies in this industry operate in the linear model and despite the incentives to transition to a circular economy model, companies in developing countries face difficulties in finding strategies that are both circular and do not pose risks to their businesses. Thus, whether due to the lack of skills or the structure needed, many companies choose to outsource circular economy strategies to manage fashion waste. However, outsourcing circular decisions are underestimated and arbitrarily taken without any prior analysis of whether these strategies may or may not be outsourced. This can hinder companies' transition to a circular economy due to the lack of circularity of other companies they cooperate with. Hence, the aim of this study was to propose a novel multi-criteria decision model for sorting circular strategies into those that can be outsourced or not in adopters' and incumbents’ circular business models supported by a decision support system. Moreover, we compared them in real case studies to identify the main differences between their outsourcing decisions and their impacts on cleaner production for fashion waste management. This comparison resulted in insights that may support circular businesses worldwide to make consistent outsourcing decisions to fashion waste management, which is rarely explored in the literature with empirical evidence.