Public-sector participation in the circular economy: A stakeholder relationship analysis of economic and social factors of the recycling system

• Published in: Journal of cleaner production 2023-05, Vol.400, p.136700, Article 136700
• Main Authors: Shah, Muhammad Umair, Rezai, Ryan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Circular economy; Diversion rate; Public-sector; Recycling; Stakeholder theory
• ISSN: 0959-6526; 1879-1786
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.136700

Prior research lacks in-depth understanding about the relationships between public-sector stakeholders in advancing the circular economy (CE) agenda. Addressing this literature gap can provide useful insights to CE practitioners and policy makers. In this article, we probe the public-sector (municipal) recycling data provided by the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority of Ontario, Canada for the years 2011–2019 (n = 1591). We use the stakeholder theoretic lens to investigate the consequences of several neglected economic and social elements, such as, user pay, curbside collection, and promotion and education on diversion rate. Our findings signify user pay to have significant effect on diversion rate but negligible effect by curbside collection. Interestingly, it had no effect by promotion and education, which emphasizes the need to improve these programs through reciprocity among various public-sector stakeholders. We also discuss practical and theoretical implications and highlight study limitations that provide future research directions about the implementation of other r-imperatives (reduce, recover, rethink etc.).