The circular economy (CE) promises resource recovery and sustainable production, yet the social conditions underpinning material circulation remain unevenly recognised. This study examines informal waste labour in Lagos and Ogun States, Nigeria, and develops two related concepts: vernacular circularity, denoting locally embedded practices through which materials are recovered, exchanged and revalued, and circular inequality, describing interconnected inequalities in labour burdens, value capture, institutional recognition, participation and socio-ecological risk. The study adopts a multi-sited qualitative design based on 31 semi-structured interviews with waste pickers, aggregators, transporters and recyclers or small-scale processors, supplemented by field notes and contextual documentary sources. The findings show that informal workers sustain material recovery through their labour, embodied knowledge and social networks, but experience differentiated access to economic returns, institutional recognition, protection and decision-making. Inequalities vary across occupational positions: primary recovery involves substantial physical demands and limited bargaining power, while aggregation and processing offer different opportunities for value capture but remain constrained by market dependence and capital requirements. The study argues that material circularity does not automatically produce socially just outcomes. By distinguishing how circularity is produced from how its benefits and burdens are distributed, vernacular circularity and circular inequality offer complementary analytical tools for examining inclusive circular-economy transitions. The findings provide contextually grounded insights for policy and practice while remaining analytically transferable rather than statistically generalisable beyond the study sites.
The transition towards the Circular Economy (CE) in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) requires approaches that can be integrated into day-to-day organizational activities and decision-making processes. This study presents the INMOIN Circular indicator model, a functional-area-based framework developed to support the implementation and monitoring of CE strategies within SMEs. Designed through Action Research (AR) and co-creation methodologies, the model was developed in collaboration with 43 companies from various sectors and representatives of industrial clusters. The model comprises 439 indicators ─classified into 12 functional areas and aligned with the four CE strategies (regenerate, narrow loop, slow loop and close loop). It allows organizations to select indicators according to their specific context and needs while maintaining a holistic view of CE integration. Preliminary validation workshops involving 9 companies demonstrated the model's usability, its perceived utility in identifying relevant functional indicators, and its capacity to foster internal CE learning, providing an initial baseline for user acceptance prior to full-scale company deployment. Moreover, the model incorporates circularity assessment aligned with ISO 59020:2024. Overall, the INMOIN Circular model offers a structured and adaptable framework to guide operational self-assessment across SME functional areas, providing a replicable baseline for internal CE transition.
The transformation of kitchen and agricultural organic wastes into valuable products presents a sustainable and environmental friendly approach to mitigate the emerging challenges associated with waste disposal systems. Organic wastes, particularly fruit and vegetable peels are generated in large quantities from everyday routine household and agricultural activities and are often not properly managed. Eco-enzymes can be produced using such organic peel wastes, which possess significant potential as raw materials through controlled fermentation process. These eco-enzymes are complex bioactive solutions produced by fermenting the organic waste with sugar and water, resulting in the formation of beneficial enzymes. This review highlights the utilization of fruit and vegetable peel wastes for production of eco-enzymes and its contribution towards the various environmental applications. Interestingly, this method of producing eco-enzyme offers development of low-cost and sustainable alternatives for various environmental applications. Moreover, this article also looks into the detailed application of wastewater treatment and plant growth promoting applications using such enzymes, which pioneered the way for mitigating water pollution. This also covers the importance of circular economy by converting waste into value added functional products that could be useful in various sectors. It also explores the production processes, chemical composition, and functional properties of eco-enzymes derived from various fruit peels. Above all, this article also provides the economic significance of converting organic waste into value-added products, along with the challenges, limitations, and future perspectives associated with large-scale implementation of eco-enzyme technology.
This study examines the associations of municipal waste generation, resource productivity, financial development, globalization, and government effectiveness with municipal recycling in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden during 2000–2023. Recycling is treated as one dimension of circular economy performance rather than a comprehensive measure of circularity. Conditional quantile regressions describe associations across the recycling distribution, while alternative estimates reveal specification sensitivity. Municipal waste generation has positive coefficients throughout the estimated distribution, with nominally significant associations at the median and upper quantiles. Resource productivity is positive at the lowest quantile and negative at the median and upper quantiles, although an extreme value in its reported distribution requires validation before substantive conclusions can be drawn. Financial development has mixed associations. Globalization is negative in the quantile estimates, and government effectiveness is negative at the median and upper quantiles. Alternative estimators do not consistently preserve these signs, particularly for resource productivity and globalization. The five-country sample, dependence between countries, and changes in waste reporting limit inferential precision and generalizability. The observed patterns do not identify causal effects or demonstrate a transition to waste prevention. The policy implication is to assess recycling alongside waste generation, reuse, material use, and recovery quality, while distinguishing national financial and governance indicators from waste-specific investment and implementation capacity.
Corporate circular economy (CE) disclosure in emerging markets tends to be broad in narrative yet thin in measurement, which weakens comparability and board-level accountability. This study asks how a taxonomy-based framework can classify CE disclosures and grade their measurement maturity, and what that reveals about governance-driven reporting quality. The sustainability, integrated, annual and Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reports of fifteen large Indian firms were analysed. The firms were drawn from the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s top-1,000 listed companies and screened to a ‘Strong’ CRISIL Environmental, Social and Governance rating for 2023–24. Using a three-phase quantitative content analysis coded in Python against an ISO 59004:2024-aligned scheme, each report was scored on nine disclosure dimensions: governance, design, inputs, operations, outputs, business models, supply chains, measurement and social transition; and on a five-level measurement-maturity layer. Diffusion of innovation and adaptive governance theories frame the reading of the results. Disclosure breadth and measurement maturity behave as distinct dimensions: firms sort into Leaders, Broad-only, Measured-only and Laggards, and the gap between Leaders and Laggards turns on governance-linked measurement rather than sector or size. Waste reporting dominates, while upstream design and repairability remain largely absent. The taxonomy gives boards a diagnostic for CE governance maturity and offers regulators a tiered, phased basis for standardising disclosure, helping investors judge how far reported circularity is actually measured.
