Sustainability vs. Circular Economy from a Disposition Decision Perspective: A Proposal of a Methodology and an Applied Example in SMEs

[EN] Disposition Decision (DD) consists of deciding how to treat a recovered product, and it is one of the most important decisions in reverse logistics. Any of the selected disposition alternatives will have a significant impact on the enterprise sustainability. However, the most sustainable alternative may not be an alternative to make circular economy (CE) possible. In these cases, if the company wishes to adopt a CE strategy, it will have to switch from the most sustainable alternative to a less sustainable one that CE allows. Then, how much should be sacrificed for each sustainability dimension to make CE possible? This paper proposes a methodology for quantitatively comparing the most sustainable disposition alternative and the most sustainable CE alternative. This comparison allows small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to know how exactly all dimensions increase or decrease when selecting the most sustainable CE disposition alternative and to, therefore, assess the interest of adopting a CE policy. The proposed methodology is applied to a used tire recovery company. The results of this example show that the CE alternative offers a better environmental result but presents worst economic and social results. This example can be used as a guide for future applications other SMEs.The authors would like to acknowledge the predisposition of the recovery and treatment company of used tires by facilitating all necessary data to be used in the example application. The support of the Project GV/2017/065 "Development of a decision support tool for the management and improvement of sustainability in supply chains" funded by the Regional Government of Valencia is gratefully acknowledged. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers and assistant editor who reviewed earlier versions of this paper.Alarcón Valero, F.; Cortés-Pellicer, P.; Pérez Perales, D.; Sanchis, R. (2020). Sustainability vs. Circular Economy from a Disposition Decision Perspective: A Proposal of a Methodology and an Applied Example in SMEs. Sustainability. 12(23):1-26. https://doi.org/10.3390/su1223101091261223Pieroni, M. P. P., McAloone, T. C., & Pigosso, D. C. A. (2019). Business model innovation for circular economy and sustainability: A review of approaches. Journal of Cleaner Production, 215, 198-216. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.01.036Geissdoerfer, M., Savaget, P., Bocken, N. M. P., & Hultink, E. J. (2017). The Circular Economy – A new sustainability paradigm? Journal of Cleaner Production, 143, 757-768. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.12.048Geisendorf, S., & Pietrulla, F. (2017). The circular economy and circular economic concepts-a literature analysis and redefinition. 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