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Circular economy and climate change mitigation: do Reduce, Reuse and Recycle practices affect CO2 emissions? Abstract: The environmental impacts of CO2 emissions are an important global issue. The identification of solutions for the development of a low-carbon, sustainable economy is gaining growing relevance in the academic debate and circular economy has emerged as a practice that can significantly contribute to climate change mitigation. Based on the principles of reduce, reuse, and recycle, the idea of circular economy is to transform the traditional linear model based on the “take-make-consume-throw away” pattern into a circular model characterized by optimized waste management and resource use. Despite its relevance, extant research on the topic is however limited. Therefore, the goal of this research is to assess the role of circular economy in affecting CO2 emissions intensity. Relying on a panel of 684 manufacturing companies for the period 2014-2021, we test three hypotheses suggesting the existence of a negative association between circular economy practices and the level of Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions (i.e., we hypothesize that circular economy reduces emissions). The results show that circular economy can play a key role in reducing Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, but only in some sectors. In contrast, this practice can be counterproductive for the emissions generated by the supply chain partners (Scope 3). The originality of this research lies not only in the exploration of the topic using an extensive global database, but also in the adoption of a fine-grained approach to investigate emissions intensity. Several theoretical and managerial contributions can be derived from the research findings. |
September 29, 2023 (Friday) 10:00-11:00AM https://wpi.zoom.us/j/8389374249 
Margherita MolinaroMargherita is assistant professor in Management Engineering at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. She graduated in Management Engineering and holds PhD in Industrial and Information Engineering from the University of Udine, Italy. Her research interests include the areas of Industry 4.0, supply chain management and sustainability. On these topics, she published in various journals, including International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Production Research, Journal of Business Logistics and Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management. Personal webpage: https://www.unibz.it/en/faculties/engineering/academic-staff/person/43550-margherita-molinaro LinkedIn profile: |
