Sustainable consumption is interlinked with sustainable production. This chapter will introduce the closed-loop production, the circular economy, the steady state economy, and Cradle to Cradle (C2C) models of production. It will reflect on the key blockages to a meaningful sustainable production and how these could be overcome, particularly in the context of business education. The case study of the course for bachelor’s students within International Business Management Studies (IBMS) program at three Universities of Applied Science (vocational schools), and at Leiden University College in The Netherlands will be discussed. Student teams from these schools were given the assignment to make a business plan for a selected sponsor company in order to advise them how to make a transition from a linear to circular economy model. These case studies will illustrate the opportunities as well as potential pitfalls of the closed loop production models. The results of case studies’ analysis show that there was a mismatch between expectations of the sponsor companies and those of students on the one hand and a mismatch between theory and practice on the other hand. The former mismatch is explained by the fact that the sponsor companies have experienced a number of practical constraints when confronted with the need for the radical overhaul of established practices within the entire supply chain and students have rarely considered the financial viability of the "ideal scenarios" of linear-circular transitions. The latter mismatch applies to what students had learned about macro-economic theory and the application through micro-economic scenarios in small companies. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319656076 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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The Netherlands has always played a pioneering role in livestock and arable farming innovations. There is currently a lot of interest in our country for 'climate-smart' solutions, with closed-loop agriculture being an excellent example.
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The following paper presents an innovative approach for dealing with complex capacity problems in aviation. We introduce a sliding window framework composed by an optimization method with a simulation component. By applying this framework in diverse problems that are dependent on time it is possible to find feasible and close-to-reality solutions in shorter time than the ones that could be achieved by evaluating the problem in the complete time-horizon. The framework can be applied to solve diverse problems in aviation or similar industries. We exemplify the approach with a model of Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport in France.
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Single-Use Plastics (SUPs) are at the centre of European Union Agenda aiming at reducing the plastic soup with the EU Directive 2019/904. SUPs reduction is pivotal also in the Dutch Government Agenda for the transition to a Circular Economy by 2050. Worldwide the data on SUPs use and disposal are impressive: humans use around 1.2 million plastic bottles per minute; approximately 91% of plastic is not recycled (www.earthday.org/fact-sheet-single-use-plastics/). While centralised processes of waste collection, disposal, and recycling strive to cope with such intense use of SUPs, the opportunities and constraints of establishing a networked grid of facilities enacting processes of SUPs collection and recycling with the active involvement of local community has remained unexplored. The hospitality sector is characterised by a widespread capillary network of small hospitality firms nested in neighbourhoods and rural communities. Our research group works with small hospitality firms, different stakeholders, and other research groups to prompt the transition of the hospitality sector towards a Circular Economy embracing not only the environmental and economic dimensions but also the social dimension. Hence, this project explores the knowledge and network needed to build an innovative pilot allowing to close the plastic loop within a hospitality facility by combining a 3D printing process with social inclusiveness. This will mean generating key technical and legal knowledge as well as a network of strategic experts and stakeholders to be involved in an innovative pilot setting a 3D printing process in a hospitality facility and establishing an active involvement of the local community. Such active involvement of the local inhabitants will be explored as SUPs collectors and end-users of upcycled plastics items realised with the 3D printer, as well as through opportunities of vocational training and job opportunities for citizens distant from the job market.
De achtergrond van het project is het hoogwaardig recyclen van (autobanden)rubbers die het eind van de gebruiksfase hebben bereikt en worden aangemerkt als ‘afval’. In het beoogde proces van hoogwaardige recycling wordt het materiaal middels devulcanisatie zo ver mogelijk teruggebracht tot zijn oorspronkelijke vorm, waardoor de eigenschappen van de elastomeren grotendeels behouden blijven. Het doel is dat het materiaal bij hergebruik als wezenlijk deel van de samenstelling van een nieuw te vervaardigen rubbercompound kan dienen. Beoogde toepassing is terug in banden, dus een cradle-to-cradle loop. Naast het behoud van de unieke rubbereigenschappen is met name de homogeniteit van het materiaal en herverwerkbaarheid van belang. Tevens is het belangrijk dat de kosten van het devulcanisatieproces relatief laag zijn om het economisch aantrekkelijk te maken. De nieuwe methode van recycling past in het principe van de circulaire economie. Het onderhavige project beoogt de praktische vertaling van de kennis die ontwikkeld is in het PhD-onderzoeksproject ‘Closing the Loop’ van de Universiteit Twente in samenwerking met Hogeschool Windesheim naar een tweetal bestaande materiaalstromen. De kennis is opgebouwd voor een specifieke materiaalstroom van een specifieke leverancier, maar is naar verwachting breder inzetbaar voor meerdere materiaalstromen door aanpassing van de procesparameters. Onderdeel van het onderzoek is het analyseren van de kwaliteit van het gedevulcaniseerde materiaal en daarnaast het testen van de eigenschappen van het materiaal na toevoeging van een standaard vulcanisatiesysteem en het bijbehorende vulcanisatieproces. Het onderzoek wordt gedaan door deskundigen in het vakgebied die specifiek kennis en ervaring hebben met betrekking tot rubbermaterialen en -verwerking en recyclingvraagstellingen omtrent rubbers. Er zijn een tweetal MKB-bedrijven bij het project betrokken die jarenlange ervaring hebben met de recycling van rubbers. Daarnaast is RecyBEM, de uitvoeringsorganisatie van het Besluit beheer autobanden (Bba) betrokken bij dit project. RecyBEM organiseert sinds 2004 in Nederland de inzameling en recycling van gebruikte autobanden uit de vervangingsmarkt. Het beoogde projectresultaat betreft kennis over de technische en praktische mogelijkheden van het devulcanisatieproces voor rubber afvalstromen. Om de mogelijkheden van hoogwaardig hergebruik van deze rubbers nauwkeurig te bepalen en kunnen voorspellen worden de materialen tevens opnieuw gecompoundeerd en geanalyseerd. De opgedane kennis en resultaten worden gerapporteerd in een onderzoeksrapport. Tevens zal met instemming van de deelnemende bedrijven hierover een artikel worden geschreven.
The COVID19 pandemic highlighted the vulnerability in supply chain networks in the healthcare sector and the tremendous waste problem of disposable healthcare products, such as isolation gowns. Single-use disposable isolation gowns cause great ecological impact. Reusable gowns can potentially reduce climate impacts and improve the resilience of healthcare systems by ensuring a steady supply in times of high demand. However, scaling reusable, circular isolation gowns in healthcare organizations is not straightforward. It is impeded by economic barriers – such as servicing costs for each use – and logistic and hygiene barriers, as processes for transport, storage and safety need to be (re)designed. Healthcare professionals (e.g. purchasing managers) lack complete information about social, economic and ecological costs, the true cost of products, to make informed circular purchasing decisions. Additionally, the residual value of materials recovered from circular products is overlooked and should be factored into purchasing decisions. To facilitate the transition to circular procurement in healthcare, purchasing managers need more fine-grained, dynamic information on true costs. Our RAAK Publiek proposal (MODLI) addresses a problem that purchasing managers face – making purchasing decisions that factor in social, economic and ecological costs and future benefits from recovered materials. Building on an existing consortium that developed a reusable and recyclable isolation gown, we design and develop an open-source decision-support tool to inform circular procurement in healthcare organizations and simulate various purchasing options of non-circular and circular products, including products from circular cascades. Circular procurement is considered a key driver in the transition to a circular economy as it contributes to closing energy and material loops and minimizes negative impacts and waste throughout entire product lifecycles. MODLI aims to support circular procurement policies in healthcare organizations by providing dynamic information for circular procurement decision making.
