Abstract
The circular economy (CE) is currently a very widespread paradigm aimed at addressing the climate crisis. However, its notions seem often to be only focused on technical, industrial and economic growth-centric goals, without practically addressing social problems such as inequality and social exclusion. In this context, type B social cooperation (SC-B) emerges in the Italian context as a type of organisation explicitly aiming at addressing social issues. It has historically fulfilled this mandate by pioneering, among others, “circular” processes in the field of waste management. In doing so, it has consolidated a high level of organizational and management capacity, which has made it an exemplary model capable of innovating the CE discourse and including marginalized people while delivering high-quality environmental services. Through evidence gathered integrating different methods and sources (interviews with social cooperatives, literature review, case study research on filed actions), this paper aims to offer a reading of SC-B as a driver for promoting a social turn of CE and local development. Moving beyond waste management and towards waste reuse, SC-B could play an active role in creating local and regional waste transformation and upcycling chains, capable of creating new employment and inclusion opportunities as well as reducing environmental impacts by processing wastes directly in the territory, shortening their treatment chain.
Highlights
“umbrella term” that includes a series of concepts related to the careful and efficient use of material resources in both production and consumption scenarios [7,8,9] (For an overview of cases that exemplify the spectrum of projects considered to be “circular”, see the “Case Studies” section of the website of the Ellen McArthur Foundation available at https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/case-studies access date 5 September 2021)
The same difficulty is encountered in trying to circumscribe the domain of the circular economy (CE); often, in the commercial literature, the term is used as an approximation and without providing the necessary bibliographic references that would help define the context of implementation and the cultural matrix
It is possible to identify within the CE a mainstream thread that can be traced back to the work of the Ellen McArthur Foundation (EMF), a British think tank which has been focusing an important part of its efforts on the dissemination and implementation of the culture and principles of the circular economy since 2012
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The circular economy (CE) is promoted as a paradigm aimed, in equal measure, at all three dimensions of sustainability—environmental, economic and social [1]—in response to the current crisis in existing development models. The great diffusion and success the CE concept is experiencing is not paired with a universal and univocal agreement on its definition and aims. As will be developed there is no consensus about CE definitions and guidelines. A mainstream thread with strong emphasis on industrial, productive and technical aspects can be identified
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