Promoting Circular Economy Between Palm Oil Sector with Multiple Industries

Abstract

Malaysia is the second largest producer and exporter of palm oil products in the world, with the increasing production of crude palm oil (CPO) over the recent years. On the contrary, the palm oil sector has also received number of negative perceptions, such as high carbon footprint, unutilised waste and deforestation. The global organization of sustainable palm oil promotes sustainable practices to be being implemented in the palm oil sector to counter the negative image of unsustainable palm oil. One of the important areas to recover the generated waste into value-added products and energy. Therefore, the waste generation in palm oil sector can be viewed as an opportunity rather than a threat. In order to enhance the resource conservation, the generated waste can be reused/recycled within the palm oil sector, as presented in many previous research works. However, there are still large amount of waste generated being disposed. To address such issue, a circular economy approach is proposed around the palm oil industry. The generated waste from palm oil sector can be used as feedstock or input to other industries such as polymer, construction materials, furniture, paper production, etc. In this work, a systematic approach is developed to determine the optimum integrated supply chain network of palm oil sector with other industries Via such approach, materials that are low in cost, weight, renewable and biodegradable can be used as feedstock to create a self-regenerative system amongst the industries.