Measuring circularity performance based on the material circularity indicator for a circular economy in the seafood processing plant

Abstract

In this study, a circular economy model for seafood processing factories was proposed. The proposed solutions are based on previous studies on waste conversion techniques combined with the actual emission status of the factory. Besides, the Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) has been established and applied to the proposed circular economy system to evaluate the efficiency of waste conversion techniques. The MCI index will be used to calculate efficiency and circularity for all discarded waste to evaluate the environmental and economic effectiveness of the circular economy system. Results show that the level of recovery is higher than the level of recycling, but the difference is not too great, which shows that these are potential products, easy to recover without much loss, especially in recycling. Notably, only the water that is imported to be used to wash materials is 80% recycled. So the Fr of water has a value of 0.8. The remaining 7 waste products are 100% raw materials, with no recycled ingredients, so the Fr of these 7 products has a value of 0. The low percentage of input materials from recycled sources is because of the products. This is a waste product. A more concrete finding is that the circular economy model changes many of the fundamentals in the system compared to the current linear economic system. Therefore, some negative impacts will occur if businesses choose to switch to a circular economy system.