Advancing the Circular Economy Through Group Decision-Making and Stakeholder Involvement

Abstract

This paper discusses the potential of Multicriteria Decision-Making Methods (MCDM) to support cooperation between stakeholders and the ability to tackle bottlenecks in the recycling value chains. The empirical part of the paper is based on two MCDM exercises in which bottlenecks that hinder the efficient recycling of end-of-life vehicles and plastic packaging waste were evaluated and prioritized. The interlinked nature of the recycling chains poses challenges for the application of MCDM methods, and studies that apply group decision-making in the context of the circular economy are still rare. Despite these challenges, the findings of our case study indicate that group decision-making methods could be applied as participatory methods to enable the collection and integration of stakeholder views within circular economy policy development and implementation activities. A review of literature on existing bottlenecks for the circular economy indicates that there is an increasing need for cooperation and knowledge exchange between actors. It is proposed that in the future, MCDM methods could be used to create joint learning and idea exchange between value chain actors, as these are considered necessary for advancing the circular economy.

Multicriteria Decision Analysis Addressing Marine and Terrestrial Plastic Waste Management: A Review

“…The AHP is also the method most often combined with other methods: MAVT/MAUT, TOPSIS, or Outranking (Vinodh et al, 2014;Bachér et al, 2018;Senthil et al, 2018;Delvere et al, 2019). Vo Dong et al (2019) used Outranking (PROMETHEE) and TOPSIS in their study, while Geetha et al (2021) used Outranking (ELECTRE III) to choose their alternatives and TOPSIS for a comparative analysis.…”

“…Most studies are concerned with terrestrial settings (80%). Bachér et al (2018) evaluated bottlenecks in the recycling value chains and waste collection methods is the subject of Balwada et al (2021). A large part of terrestrial environment studies deals with end-of-life options (Gomes et al, 2008;Cardoso et al, 2009; Mechanical recycling method is the most sustainable fiber reinforced plastic waste recycling method when specific sustainability criteria are evaluated (however, lack of data about other potential sustainability criteria was signalized).…”

“…Actions and processes group of alternatives include the work of Bachér et al (2018) who proposed the assessment and prioritization of five bottlenecks in the recycling value chains to improve the co-operation between stakeholders and the circular economy. Also the work of Marazzi et al (2020) evaluated 27 consumer-based plastic reduction actions.…”

“…Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) can offer a clear, well-organized way to better inform decision-making. It can simultaneously encompass so many different facets covering all the different issues at stake and account for the priorities set by stakeholders for evaluating solutions for plastic waste management (Bachér et al, 2018;Cunha et al, 2019).…”

Cubic M-polar Fuzzy Hybrid Aggregation Operators with Dombi’s T-norm and T-conorm with Application

“…Many scientists have worked tirelessly to develop mathematical models for solving CE decision problems in unpredictable environments. The readers are referred to the following papers for ore information [5][6][7][8][9].…”