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Highlights •Biomass resource constraints impact the effectiveness of bioeconomy policies. •Bioeconomy policies may have an important impact on the sector structure in the long run, but the sector growth remains ultimately constrained by the availability of inputs. •Solutions to reduce the biomass constraint have to be included in innovation policy for the biobased economy.

Presently, an increasing human population, customer consumption, and global market competition result in the reduction of natural resources and growing environmental damage. Therefore, the current practice in the use of resources is not sustainable. The production companies have to focus not only on cost-effective and profitable operation, but at the same time environmentally friendly and sustainable production in order to increase competitiveness. New innovative technologies are required, improving the efficiency of the processes and the optimization of global supply chains (GSC) in order to establish sustainability in environmental, social, and economic aspects. The aim of the study is the GSCs’ optimization, which means forming the optimal combination of the chain members (suppliers, final assemblers, service providers) to achieve cost-effective, time-effective, and sustainable operation. This study introduces an elaborated single- and multi-objective optimization method, including the objective functions (cost, lead time) and design constraints (production and service capacities; volume of inventories; flexibility and sustainability of the chain members). Based on the elaborated method, software has been developed for the optimization of sustainable GSCs. The significance and novelty of the developed method and software is that the chain members have been required to fulfill the sustainability design constraint built into the software. A real case study is introduced, for the optimal design of a sustainable GSC, to confirm that our developed optimization method and software can be applied effectively in practice for the optimization of both profitable and sustainable GSCs.

The concept of the Circular Economy (CE) is an increasingly attractive approach to tackling current sustainability challenges and facilitating a shift away from the linear “take-make-use-dispose” model of production and consumption. The public sector is a major contributor to the CE transition not only as a policy-maker but also as a significant purchaser, consumer, and user of goods and services. The circularization of the public sector itself, however, has received very little attention in CE research. In order to explore the current state of knowledge on the implementation of CE practices and strategies within Public Sector Organizations (PSOs), this research aims to develop an overview of the existing literature. The literature review was designed combining a systematic search with a complementary purposive sampling. Using organizational sustainability as a theoretical perspective, the main results showed a scattered landscape, indicating that the limited research on CE practices and strategies in PSOs has focused so far on the areas of public procurement, internal operations and processes, and public service delivery. As a result of this literature review, an organizational CE framework of a PSO is proposed providing a holistic view of a PSO as a system with organizational dimensions that are relevant for the examination and analysis of the integration process of CE practices and strategies. This innovative framework aims to help further CE research and practice to move beyond current sustainability efforts, highlighting that public procurement, strategy and management, internal processes and operations, assessment and communication, public service delivery, human resources dimensions, collaboration with other organizations, and various external contexts are important public sector areas where the implementation of CE has the potential to bring sustainability benefits.

Abstract The sheer complexity of sustainability transitions makes it vital to develop simplifying conceptual frameworks. Starting from the contrast between the mainstream innovation-economics and systems-innovation/evolutionary literatures, this paper begins by summarising the “Three Domains” framework, which relates technology innovation and adoption choices to different domains of socio-economic decision-making, at successively larger scales of time and social structures. We note the high-level implications for policy mixes and illustrate the main themes through three electricity technology examples (lighting, fossil fuel generation, and low carbon power systems), and use these also to show that the relative importance of different policy pillars may differ substantially according to the technology and context. We then relate this to the “innovation chain” (another simplifying framework) approach to vertical innovation and show how this can help to explain radical differences in innovation intensities between different sectors. We then expand the innovation chain framework from technology to the multiple journeys required for successful innovation, ordered according to levels of decision-making and hence domains. We conclude by indicating how this can help identify key blockages in energy transformations, and potentially help to reconcile the classical innovation-economics with systems innovation/evolutionary perspectives, and explain their currently divergent policy recommendations.

The adoption of circularity indicators in the electrical and electronic sector is understood to play a critical role in organisational decision making during the transition from a linear to a circular economy. Yet, it is widely recognised that there is no standardised method of measuring circularity performance. Additionally, the extent of literature uncovers a range of shortcomings of existing cross-sector circularity indicators, including a predominant focus on end-of-life, limited coverage of social measurements, a lack of sector specificity and limited capture of product functionality, durability or sharing. Furthermore, the current electrical and electronic sector-specific circularity indicators focus greatly on repair and recycling, failing to acknowledge the significant impact on circularity of the design and manufacturing, distribution and use phases. Therefore, this research set out to answer how electrical and electronic manufacturers can measure the circular economy performance of their products by developing and testing multidimensional circularity indicators for all products’ life cycle stages. To achieve this, a two-fold qualitative approach was adopted. Firstly, a stakeholders’ workshop aiming to generate, categorise and rate novel circularity indicators was held. Secondly, a focus group piloted the resulting workshop’s circularity indicators. The findings highlight key factors that influence circularity indicators’ applicability to electrical and electronic products, including product function, service arrangement, and customer type. The research has implications for electrical and electronic organisations seeking pathways to the circular economy by understanding, assessing, and measuring the circularity of their products.

For some types of seafood, such as clams, there are now sustainability certificates that guarantee their sustainable production. However, their consumption may be associated with some ethical and sustainability concerns, as clams are harvested in ways that may be harmful to the environment. The aim of this study is therefore to investigate consumers’ sustainability concerns based on their purchasing preferences and WTP for clams with sustainability certification in three Mediterranean countries—Italy, Spain and Croatia. Data were collected online and consumer preferences were elicited using a labelled discrete choice experiment. The results show that in general all consumers prefer clams from their country of origin, while there are differences in their appreciation for the sustainability certification. While Croatian consumers are not very interested in the current Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) sustainability certification, consumers in Spain are willing to pay a higher price for it. At the same time, consumers in Italy are more interested in new certifications such as Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM). These results could be of interest to clam production and distribution companies trying to advance their corporate social responsibility activities and positioning.

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way The sustainability of commons has benefited from Elinor Ostrom´s analysis of shared resources. In her work, sustainability was described in a univocal manner–successful or not–depending on the common’s long-term capacity to survive within an uncertain environment. In recent years, this view of sustainability has been applied to the study of digital commons, including open source. Building on more recent work on sustainability, this paper challenges this univocal conception of sustainability in open source. Through a critical review of the literature, it unveils the coexistence of multiple notions of sustainability in open source and proposes a typology of sustainabilities (resource-based, infrastructural, and interactional). We propose that the degree and quality of the interrelationship between these different types of sustainability need to be explored, leading to the theorisation of three possible scenarios (trade-offs, synergy, and independence). We discuss and put forward a research agenda. Peer reviewed

The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate that clusters can support the sustainable development of rural areas through the creation of shared value. This is done via the close exam-ination of six different cases of rural clusters in Greece, Italy, Germany, Poland, Denmark, and Sweden. Qualitative as well as quantitative data were taken from the clusters, which demonstrated that their main business approaches naturally coincided with the creation of economic, social, and environmental benefits for the local communities in which they operated. The case clusters were created in a top-down manner, aimed at boosting regional R&D activities and making the local economy more competitive and more sustainable. However, private initiative took over and al-lowed these clusters to flourish because meeting the regions’ economic, social, and environmental needs successfully coincided with the target of the clusters’ own development and profitability. The results show that clusters, with their potential for shared value creation, can constitute a powerful engine for the revitalisation and development of rural areas, addressing the significant challenges which they are currently facing.