The aim of this grant is to promote research projects on the circularity of packaging in agri-food distribution, as well as other scientific developments to assess the sustainability of these elements, especially around concepts such as life cycle analysis (LCA), carbon footprint and circular economy.

Sahar Azarkamand, of Iranian origin, holds a degree in Natural Resources Engineering from the Islamic Azad University of Tehran, a master’s degree and PhD in Environmental Management from the same University and a PhD in Sustainability from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

She has been director of two Masters at the Islamic Azad University, researcher in life cycle assessment at the BETA technology center and has participated in the European projects Circular Biocarbon and Fertimanure on sustainable management of waste and manure. In addition, she has published articles in several leading international scientific journals and two books on sustainable management of supply chains and environmental management of cities.

As head of the ARECO fellowship, Sahar will implement several projects for the analysis of packaging circularity in agri-food distribution, the assessment of food waste during transport and conservation at the point of sale and a study on the advantages of using recycled material in the manufacture of new packaging, among other topics.

Sahar Azarkamand, researcher of the ARECO grant, says: “To improve the sustainability of the agri-food system we need to optimize the use of resources, avoid waste and reduce environmental impacts. The key is to implement a truly circular system. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate the circularity of agri-food distribution systems, as we are doing in the framework of the ARECO Grant.”

La entrada Sahar Azarkamand, new researcher of the ARECO Fellowship of the UNESCO Chair on Life Cycle se publicó primero en ARECO.

The complexity of the SDG framework, and the challenge of measuring and monitoring the SDGs, has limited their implementation. In this regard, GRI and the UN Global Compact (2018) published a guide for businesses to be able to integrate the SDGs into their reporting. This guide proposes a three-step method (see Figure 1). First, to define the priority SDG targets, meaning to select those SDGs that are being affected or benefited by the activity of a company; second, to select indicators and collect data in relation to each indicator in order to analyze the performance on the SDGs; and, third, reporting, integrating and implementing change.

Figure 1: The steps of reporting SDGs from the guide of UN Global Compact (2018)

Nevertheless, it must be kept in mind that SDGs are interdependent and their achievement will require actions, not just by businesses, but also by governments, civil society and science. Sachs et al. (2019) proposed six transformations to organize SDG interventions (see Figure 1):

1.- Education, gender and inequality

2.- Health, well-being and demography

3.- Energy decarbonization and sustainable industry

4.- Sustainable food, land, water and oceans

5.- Sustainable cities and communities

6.- Digital revolution for sustainable development.

Figure 2. Contribution of each SDG transformation towards the 17 SDGs. Source: Sachs et al. (2019)

The SDGs in food supply chains

Focusing on supply chains, they must reshape to be greener and more competitive in order to adopt the 2030 Agenda for sustainable transition. They should be flexible as well as sustainable. Bai et al. (2020) defined the concept of Sustainable Supply Chain Flexibility (SSCF) as the supply chain that has the ability to react to market dynamics with minimal penalties in time, cost or performance; but also that helps to respond to evolving greening requirements, the environmental regulations and the achievement of Circular Economy (CE) goals. Geissdoerfer et al. (2018) defined Circular Business Models (CBM) as the sustainable business models that specifically promotes CE through a circular value chain and stakeholder incentive alignment; and Batista et al. (2018) defined circular supply chain as “the coordinated forward and reverse supply chains via purposeful business ecosystem integration for value creation from products/services, by-products and useful waste flows through prolonged life cycles that improve the economic, social and environmental sustainability of organisations.” Nevertheless, little has been published on how sustainable/circular supply chains are integrated within the SDG framework.

Reverse logistics play a crucial role in circular food supply chains for minimizing food losses and waste and reducing packaging usage (Kazancoglu et al., 2021). Within ARECO, the three food logistics companies, which provide pooling services with their reusable packaging, have defined the key SDGs that they can have an impact (see the table below). The common and key SDGs for the ARECO partners are to ensure decent work for all (SDG8), responsible consumption and production (SDG12), climate action (SDG13), and establishing partnerships to achieve the goals (SDG17). Next key step for ARECO’s partners is to ensure the establishment of measureable indicators to be able to analyze the performance on the SDGs and their contribution to the overall SDG targets.

By Laura Batlle Bayer, researcher of the ARECO postdoctoral fellowship at UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change.

References:

Bai, C., Sarkis, J., Yin, F., Dou, Y., 2020. Sustainable supply chain flexibility and its relationship to circular economy-target performance. Int. J. Prod. Res. 58, 5893–5910. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2019.1661532

Geissdoerfer, M., Morioka, S.N., de Carvalho, M.M., Evans, S., 2018. Business models and supply chains for the circular economy. J. Clean. Prod. 190, 712–721. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.04.159

GRI & UN Global Compact (2018) Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into Corporate Reporting: A Practical Guide. https://www.unglobalcompact.org/library/5628

Kazancoglu, Y., Ekinci, E., Mangla, S.K., Sezer, M.D., Kayikci, Y., 2021. Performance evaluation of reverse logistics in food supply chains in a circular economy using system dynamics. Bus. Strateg. Environ. 30, 71–91. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2610

Sachs, J.D., Schmidt-Traub, G., Mazzucato, M., Messner, D., Nakicenovic, N., Rockström, J., 2019. Six Transformations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Nat. Sustain. 2, 805–814. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0352-9

UN, 2018. Global indicator framework for the Sustainable Development Goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/indicators-list/

La entrada SDGs in food logistics se publicó primero en ARECO.

Rankin (2014) defined the material cycle as the one that integrates three components that are interlinked. First, the resource stock, which are the resources present on Earth (i.e., trees, oil); second, the material stock, which is formed by the materials obtained from the resources (i.e., timber from trees, plastic from oil); and, third, the product stock that are goods or products that are made from the materials and used by society. Nevertheless, Rankin’s framework can be further improved (see Figure 1) by, first, distinguishing two types of materials (the virgin one, which comes directly from nature; and the recycled one, that results from the technosphere) and, second, adding the circular strategies (i.e., reusing, repairing, recycling). Having in mind this material cycle, depicted in Figure 1, the key challenge is to ensure the adequate management of these 3 stocks in order to close the material cycle, and, thus, reducing the demand of virgin material and waste generation.

Figure 1: Diagram of a material cycle, adapted from the one of Rankin (2014). The blue rows and words have been added from the original diagram.

Food distribution sector

When applying this theoretical framework to the food distribution sector, four main types of crates need to be analyzed: single use cardboard boxes, single use wood boxes, single use plastic crates and reusable plastic crates. For the cardboard and wood boxes, the key strategy is to optimize the management of the resource stock (trees), since they are made of renewable resource; and for cardboard boxes, moreover, the losses in quality and the degradation of the material needs to be considered as well, since fibers can be recycled only 3 times (Delgado-Aquilar et al., 2015). However, in the case of reusable plastic crates, the key strategy is to maximize the product stock, meaning to enhance the life cycles of the product by reusing, repairing and remanufacturing it, since the resource is nonrenewable (oil).

Moreover, plastic crates can also be recycled in a close or an open loop. While in current scientific articles have been usually considered as an open loop, with a certain loss of quality (as explained in another article), plastic crates can be recycled in a close loop with a 100% of material recovery, as claimed by IFCO in its Cradle to Cradle certification. This helps to maximize the recycled material stock and to decrease the use of virgin material and closing even more the cycle.

Nevertheless, besides the management of these 3 stocks, to achieve circularity we need to keep in mind two key principles: (i) to tighten the cycle (ii) for the longest period as possible (Sazdovski et al., 2021); meaning that all the strategies that enhance the “product stock” component should be prioritized. Hence, as already discussed in a previous article (where we referred to the report from Potting et al. (2018)), all those strategies such as reuse, repair, refurbish, remanufacture and repurpose are preferable than recycling and recovery. In this regard, Erwijk et al. (2020) stated that “recycling of waste cannot create a perfect circle because the growing demand for materials exceeds the waste available from past consumption, materials are lost or degraded during processing, and the energy required for processing escalates with higher collection rates.” Moreover, they conclude that the greater circularity by increasing recycling and recovery does not imply a direct reduction of greenhouse gas emissions due to the energy use for recycling.

In summary, businesses and, in general, supply chains should have a holistic perspective on the materials/products they use/sell when redesigning their system towards circularity; always keeping in mind that the strategies to maintain the product stock are crucial, and that the material cycle should be as tight  as well as long as possible.

By Laura Batlle Bayer, researcher of the ARECO postdoctoral fellowship at UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change.

La entrada Material cycle: reuse, key to preserving resources and preventing waste se publicó primero en ARECO.