Measuring Circular Economy Performance of Industrial Wastes at Sectoral and Enterprise Scales: A Case Study on a Manufacturer of Electronic Parts and Components

A Circular Economy (CE) system has emerged as a widely adopted solution to address resource shortages, yielding promising results. In the realm of industrial waste management (WM), the recycling rate has traditionally served as a primary performance indicator. While its simplicity in data collection and calculation has facilitated its adoption as a CE index, it does not comprehensively reflect CE performance. This study integrates concepts of sustainable development, along with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations, into the CE operational framework, and implements a sustainability assessment for WM by applying a circularity performance calculation methodology for the industry level to enterprise scale. The study further validates this methodology through a case analysis of industrial WM in Taiwan's electronic parts and components manufacturing sector. The findings demonstrate that Circular Performance (Cp) effectively addresses the limitations of the recycling rate in evaluating CE performance for both small-scale and mesoscale applications. The results indicate a strong correlation between Cp and data (Including Waste recycling rate, Circular performance, etc.) from small-scale and mesoscale manufacturing. Consequently, Circular Performance Index (CPI) can serve as a robust measure of a company's effectiveness in advancing CE initiatives. By leveraging the Quadrant Analysis diagram results, CPI can be used to enhance CE performance and guide improvements in WM practices.