Prioritizing Circular Economy actions for the decarbonization of manufacturing companies: the C-Readiness tool

Climate change is pushing manufacturing companies to adopt sustainable solutions for reducing their carbon emissions. Circular Economy emerged as a suitable strategy for the decarbonization of industrial organizations, offering the potential to decouple economic growth from natural resource extraction and waste generation. However, achieving circularity requires significant transformation in the design of products, production processes, business models and supply chains, and some Circular Economy actions may be more effective than others in reducing carbon emissions, depending on the product and company carbon footprint structure. Facing low awareness and limited resources, manufacturing companies frequently fail in understanding where to start in approaching such a systemic transition. Despite these challenges, the literature overlooks the linkages between Circular Economy initiatives and their potential for reducing carbon emissions, and in particular how Circular Economy actions can be prioritized for decarbonization purposes. To fill these gaps, this paper develops an original and systemic tool (C-Readiness) for assessing the readiness of manufacturing companies for the Circular Economy, and for prioritizing Circular Economy actions for decarbonization. The tool is developed based on a literature review and critical comparison of existing tools for assessing circularity readiness at the micro level. The tool has been applied to four manufacturing companies, to showcase its potential in designing Circular Economy-based decarbonization paths. This paper contributes to the literature on strategic Circular Economy implementation in manufacturing companies by integrating circularity readiness evaluations with quantitative carbon footprint assessments. It provides a structured approach and a simple yet effective tool to help industrial organizations reduce their environmental impact through Circular Economy practices.