Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The world is facing unprecedented sustainability challenges and circular economy (CE) can pro-vide some solutions to promote more sustainable practices among companies. This study aimed at exploring, discovering, analysing and synthetizing the integration and application of the CE principles (10Rs) in the shipping sector in Finland. The research approach was based on qualitative research and similar approach has been applied in multiple previous studies. The findings of this study suggest that companies place most focus on the following 10R principles: (1) replacement of products or making of products redundant (R0); (2) rethinking of products (R1); and (3) reduction of the use of resources in the manufacturing and use of products (R2). The reuse of products (R3); repair of products (R4); refurbishment of products (R5); remanufacturing of products (R6); repurposing of products and their parts (R7); and recycling and recovery of materials (R8 & R9) received significantly less attention and approaches in these fields were often non-existent. There was typically some approaches related to the R8 and R9 principles whereas were few ap-proaches were found related to R4, R5, R6 and R7. For many companies, there were no approaches at all related to R3-R7. The findings suggest that even though companies are not always reporting on and publishing online materials related to CE, many approaches related to the 10Rs are included in and integrated into current reporting and communication instruments and practices. This implies that they are also a part of management and monitoring practices including associated consideration in the context of company operations. In the future, shipping companies could place more emphasis on the aspects of CE that are linked to keeping products and materials in circulation such as repair, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacturing and repurposing. In addition, more focus is needed on recycling and recovery of all products and materials.
Source: Sustainability
DOI: 10.3390/su17125394
Author: Roope Husgafvel
Institution: Conception de Systèmes Mécaniques et Robotiques
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,896
OpenAlex ID: W4411205448