Maximising the Circular Economy and Sustainability Outcomes: An End-of-life Tyre Recycling Outlets Selection Model

Sir Yee Lee, Jiayao Hu, Ming Lim

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    46 Citations (Scopus)
    271 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    The increasing concern for sustainability and longing for the transition into the circular economy has fostered an immense interest in re-configuring the end-of-life tyre supply networks. However, the existing literature is incapable of providing sufficient guidance in regard to the allocation of end-of-life tyre among recycling outlets to maximise the circular economy and sustainability outcomes. Hence, this study aims to propose a comprehensive list of evaluation criteria to rank recycling outlets, and develop an end-of-life tyre outlets selection matrix. A hybrid method is proposed by integrating fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process, fuzzy Technique of Order Preference Similarity to the Ideal Solution, the multi-objective linear programming, and semi-structured interviews. By analysing the empirical data collected from one of the largest European collectors, this study reveals that cement manufacturing, which is the primary recycling outlet, ranks the lowest among the five recycling outlets in terms of the circular economy and sustainability outcome. Nevertheless, synthetic turf manufacturing and moulded objects manufacturing rank the highest in the circular economy and sustainability outcomes, respectively. It is proved that cost and profit are key drivers for recycling outlets selection, subjected to end consumers’ perceptions and the ease of end-of-life tyre processing. The ranking and the performance of recycling outlets also signify the competitive relationship between the circular economy and sustainability as excelling in the circular economy outcome would trade-off sustainability performance.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number107965
    JournalInternational Journal of Production Economics
    Volume232
    Early online date20 Oct 2020
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Feb 2021

    Bibliographical note

    © 2020, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

    Copyright © and Moral Rights are retained by the author(s) and/ or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This item cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

    Keywords

    • Circular economy
    • Fuzzy AHP-TOPSIS
    • Multi criteria decision making
    • Multi objective programming
    • Sustainability

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General Business,Management and Accounting
    • Economics and Econometrics
    • Management Science and Operations Research
    • Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

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