Exploring Plausible Circular Futures

29/03/2025

05/03/2025

🔹 Join Us for an Engaging Seminar from the ExPliCit project🔹 - NOW

📌 Title: The Dynamics of Supply Chains within the Circular Economy
📅 Date: Wednesday, 5 March 2025
⏰ Time: 16:00 - 17:00 (UK Time)
📍 Location: Sheffield University Management School, Middleton Lecture Theatre
💻 Online Access: https://lnkd.in/gp2imtsG

The seminar is supported by the ExPliCit project (www.explicit-se.net).

Abstract: As firms embody the principles of the Circular Economy paradigm by reusing, remanufacturing, recycling, and sharing materials and resources, the flow of products, money, and information among the members of the supply chain increases significantly as compared to those operating under the traditional make-use-dispose model. This multiplicity of flows may exacerbate the so-called bullwhip effect, a well-known phenomenon present in supply networks where fluctuations in final customer demand are amplified upstream the supply chain, leading to inefficiencies and additional operating costs in terms of excess inventory and stock shortages. A better understanding of how the bullwhip effect operates in these supply chains may help identify its causes and limit its damage. In this talk, we will present several instances of supply chains operating under CE-related strategies (such as e.g. remanufacturing, industrial symbiosis, End-of-Life product collection strategies, etc.) and model their dynamic performance to gain insights on this harmful phenomenon and to provide guidelines for reducing its effects.

Bio: Jose is a full professor at the School of Engineering in the University of Seville and head of the Industrial Management Research Group. His research interests refer to decision systems and models in industry and services, including a range of decisions related to the design and optimization of processes, production and supply chain planning and scheduling, as well as information systems as a supporting infrastructure. In these areas, he has published over 90 papers in international refereed journals and conducted a number of research projects and industry grants. He also has some editorial duties, most notably being the current Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Industrial Engineering, a high-impact journal in Industrial Engineering. He also serves as Area Editor (Scheduling) of the Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal.

Link: https://meet.google.com/nez-pkzy-bkq?authuser=1

19/02/2025

It is a common opinion that repair cafes are some sort of white middle class establishment, normally situated in leafy neighbourhoods, where tech geeks reunite for fixing stuff while sipping a pricey caramel latte.
What happens if a grassroot repair lab starts operating in one of the most ethnically diverse working class communities in the UK? Ben Purvis, Tim Else, Andrea Jimenez Cisneros and Ram V G look at this exciting real world case study in our recent paper, one more gem flourishing from our fantastic JUST2CE project, coordinated by Mario Pansera, which has now come to an end.

The role of grassroots community initiatives remains an underexplored element in the circular economy (CE) literature. Ignoring social considerations and placing focus on economic and nominally env...

06/02/2025

The mainstream narrative associated with the transition to a circular economy is one linked to eco-modernism: paradigmatic change is depicted as an apolitical and technical matter that is fully compatible with growth-led and market-based capitalist logic. As a result of the dominance of this viewpoint, the socio-political foundations of the transition to the circular economy have largely gone unquestioned. This is particularly pronounced regarding how variations in the social relations of production could shape the transition to alternative and more radical futures. This paper aims to address this knowledge gap by incorporating social relations of production into the analysis of circular economy futures. In doing so, a set of nine future circular scenarios is developed by
drawing on a typology of five conceptual dimensions that include ownership of the means of production and access to the resulting goods. The typology and the circular scenarios are then validated by a three-part Delphi-like approach. It is argued that the proposed set of scenarios allows a more nuanced understanding of circular
economy futures than previous contributions as they provide further insights about key actors and forces of change that could drive the transition to a sustainable society beyond neoliberal capitalism (link to full papers in the comments).

31/01/2025

What if circular does not mean sustainable?
A dynamic roundtable discussion on circular economy rebound, with insights from experts David Font Vivanco and Trevor Zink.

A dynamic roundtable discussion on circular economy rebound. What if circular does not mean sustainable? The session features insights from experts David Fon...

11/11/2024

The e-book Circular Economy for Social Transformation: Multiple Paths to Achieve Circularity is one of the outcomes of A Just Transition to the Circular Economy (JUST2CE). This European Union Horizon 2020 funded project concluded this summer (2024), its aim being to understand the implications of the transition to a circular economy on the environment, economy and society.

The project aimed to assess the state of transition towards the circular economy in relevant economic sectors and analyze possible transition scenarios as well as their outcomes and impacts, identifying key factors that can stimulate or hinder this transition.

The (free to download) e-book aspires to be a map of ‘CE plurality’ by means of an overview of the current applications of CE in the international context with a particular focus on combining CE with theories of global environmental justice, social justice, gendered innovation and labour.

Here is a review of the book published by the Bassetti Foundation.
The link to the e-book is in the first comment.

The e-book Circular Economy for Social Transformation: Multiple Paths to Achieve Circularity is one of the outcomes of A Just Transition to the Circular Economy (JUST2CE). This European Union Horizon 2020 funded project concluded this summer (2024), its aim being to understand the implications of th...

25/10/2024

Over the past decade, the concept of the Circular Economy (CE) has gained significant political traction as a potential solution to the economy-environment tradeoff. Through our sister JUST2CE project, which has now come to an end, we have expressed several concerns on the fact that an apolitical framing of CE may not adequately address the root causes or consequences of environmental degradation.
Aligned with this discourse, this nice documentary we produced, reporting on some of the key case studies we analysed, highlights key elements of the Just Transition framework through the personal stories of those at the forefront of such transformative change.

Over the past decade, the concept of the Circular Economy (CE) has gained significant political traction as a potential solution to the economy-environment t...

08/10/2024

[...] After all, if planning and coordination are good enough for Walmart and Amazon, can they not be harnessed in the public realm to tackle the most crucial goals that humanity faces? [...]
Read the latest paper from the University of Sheffield team, published in the "Futures" journal, about democratic planning and the transition towards more sustainable societies.
(Link in comments - no paywall - Open Access paper)

22/07/2024

♻ Exciting updates from the ExPliCit Project!

The activities of the "Exploring Plausible Circular Futures" ExPliCit Project continue with two productive meetings held yesterday at the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture (DICAr) of the Università di Catania (UNICT).

In the morning session, secondees from the ETSI - Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería of the Universidad de Sevilla, Belén Navarro García and I, met with Salvatore Cannella, professor of economic and managerial engineering at UNICT, and Salvatore Nicosia, president of Federconsumatori Etna Sud. The discussion focused on the developments of Work Package 3, which aims to operationalize sustainable supplychain configurations. The goal is to provide insights to partners and wider stakeholder groups about disruptive market changes introduced by the transition towards a Circular Economy. Additionally, the meeting covered consumer implications and ongoing processes for the right-to-repair.

In the afternoon, a meeting with FG Recycling Systems took place, attended by Vincenzo Antonio Giuffrida, FG's technical director, Pietro Pappalardo, intern at FG and graduate student in Management Engineering, and DICAr professors Giovanni Celano and Salvatore Cannella. The discussions centered around quality grading systems for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and policies and techniques for improving the management of heat exchange electronic waste.

🌱The ExPliCit project, funded by the European Horizon MSCA-SE-2022 program and led by Andrea Genovese from University of Sheffield and Renato Passaro from the University Parthenope of Naples, is making significant contributions in advancing Circular Supply Chains and improving E-Waste management. Stay tuned for more updates!

26/06/2024

Last week, at the joint European Society for Ecological Economics / Degrowth Conference (a fantastic event, attended by 1200+ people), held in Pontevedra, Prof. Andrea Genovese, Scientific Coordinator of the ExPliCit project, had the privilege of chairing this plenary dialogue on Circular Economy policy development.
Despite legislative steps forward over the past five years, efforts to transform Europe’s largely linear, ‘throw-away’ economy into a circular one have led to little progress. Despite positive progress in recent years towards circularity in Europe, such as increased recycling rates and the emergence of a sharing economy and other circular business models, the circularity rate, measured as the use of secondary raw materials, is still at 11.5%.
What to do next? We discussed this with the European Commission Circular Economy Head of Unit, Hans-Cristian Eberl, and Dr Kersty Hobson, from the University of Cardiff.

Thursday 20 June 2024, 11.00h (Plenary tent) The dialogue will focus on the recent Circular Economy initiatives proposed by the European Union, highlighting ...

21/04/2024

One of the main objectives of the ExPliCit project is the exploration of plausible transition pathways towards a Circular Economy. To this aim, the project is also developing an adaptation of the Scenario Exploration System, a serious game developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, to the Circular Economy context. This adaptation process is being led by one of the project partners, Academy of Business in Society (ABIS).

On the 17th of April, ABIS, with the help of project partners, arranged a workshop to test the new version of the game! 20 active participants we were able to play the game in 4 tables. The participants came from very diverse settings (established businesses, SMEs, academia, policy-making, NGOs) and represented all the necessary stakeholder roles involved in the transition towards a Circular Economy.

17/01/2024

"I discovered the Explicit Project thanks to Dr. Brais Suárez Eiroa, who introduced me to it when I was finishing my masters. I really love the idea, so I join the Post growth innovation lab and I was sent for a month to Brussels, to work with the ABIS team, fantastic people who welcomed me wonderfully.
I want to talk about my experience in two ways, in a personal level and in a working level. Starting for the latter, I was working in Deliverable 1.2, doing a systematic literature review, to study how Techniques of Futuring were being used under a circular economy. It was great and challenging. It was my first job as a researcher, so everything was new and I was able to learn a lot, but the best was to feel part of a team. Not only ABIS team, they could not have treated me better, but all people I was lucky to talk with and work with inside the Explicit project did not treat me as a freshman, but as a colleague, understanding my lack of experience, helping me when need it and encouraging me in my job.
On the other hand, in a personal level, I recommend a lot this kind of experiences because they give so much in a personal developing way that I feel I could not have found at home. That is in part because of the experience itself; going alone to another country and meet new people, other spaces and so on; but it was as well because I had problems with my accommodation that position me in a hard spot, where I found myself completely out of my comfort zone and having to learn a lot about how to deal with it. But here is where my final reflection enters.
This experience made me appreciate what being in a community means and broke a little bit more this mirage of individualism that I believe this system we live in try to put upon us sometimes. Feeling accompanied in the bad movement for my loved ones and so accepted entering in a new space, made me appreciate even more the important connexions between different people and how can help you in a personal and professional way.
By the way, I found a lot of amazing places to visit in this month. Another reason to go to!"