Designing a Circular Economy Network for PPE Masks Supply Chain: A Case Study of British Columbia, Canada

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel circular economy model for PPE mask supply chains in British Columbia, demonstrating significant economic, environmental, and social benefits through a multi-objective optimization approach.

Contribution

It introduces a new multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming model for designing circular supply chains, outperforming linear models in sustainability metrics.

Findings

Economic benefits through profit gains and waste reduction.

Environmental improvements by reducing carbon emissions.

Social benefits including increased job creation and reduced shortages.

Abstract

In recent years, there has been growing interest in building closed-loop supply chains (SCs). However, many of the current methods struggle when it comes to fully embracing circular economy principles. Enhancing the design and management of these networks holds significant potential to promote stronger collaboration among supply chain partners, ultimately fostering more sustainable and efficient operational practices. For this purpose, this study addresses a new circular economy model based on a real case study of a mask SC in the healthcare sector in British Columbia, Canada. The objective is to show that implementing circular practices can lead to considerable financial and environmental benefits, as well as the creation of new job opportunities. To achieve this, a multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming model is developed to identify the most efficient trade-off among sustainable objectives, while adhering to imposed constraints. The proposed closed-loop SC model outperforms the existing linear model in all three aspects of sustainability, namely economic, environmental and social. The improvement leads to significant economic and environmental benefits by preventing the disposal of used masks, giving them a second chance for disinfection and reprocessing, and reintroducing them into the SC as new ones. While the results of the circular economy model demonstrate profit gains and environmental recovery, the linear SC model showed negative profit with higher carbon emissions. Regarding the social aspects, compared to the current system, our approach not only nearly doubles the number of jobs created but also significantly reduces shortages, highlighting sustainable development aspects related to equity and social welfare. The findings offer valuable insights for researchers and practitioners seeking to implement sustainability within a circular economy framework in SCs.