The role and value of data in advancing environmental sustainability with empirical evidence from tissue and textile businesses

Abstract

As the need for genuine sustainability transformation crystallises, data’s digitalisation-enabled use creates opportunities to refine how businesses and societies operate. With the power of diverse data sources, available in increasing quantity, actors can set feasible environmental targets, identify improvement opportunities, implement actions, and follow development. The dissertation explores data’s role and value for corporate environmental sustainability and specifically for circular economy from four perspectives: the customer-perceived value of data for environmental sustainability (considered via studying a tissue-paper supplier), how data’ use influences sustainability pathways toward circular economy (specifically of textiles), paradoxical tensions that arise in utilising data to drive circular economy (in the textiles context), and how the literature characterises data’s role and value in circular business models. A company case study, disaggregative Delphi and literature review were used as research methods. The work pinpointed availability of detailed, reliable product-specific data as crucial for supporting environmental sustainability and transparency of products’ value chains. Also, capturing data’s value here demands collaboration with customers and suppliers but also wider business networks, central to which are conditions for solid data-sharing. Consumers demand environmental sustainability, circularity, and accrue benefit from data-related decisions on individual purchases. The strategic and operative decisions/activities across business functions and throughout value chains further guide environmentally better-informed decisions. While use of data can be crucial to developing sustainable business models (for circularity specifically), the role varies less between models than with the activity supported. The results clearly implies that neither environment-related data nor initiatives utilising data automatically benefit the environment; the interactions are more complex. Still, the data are a critical business enabler, and anticipating future data needs should dovetail with systematically developing environment-related data-management capabilities. These findings provide rich insight as to the elements, mechanisms, and critical issues of data driving environmental sustainability and circular economy.