Circular Economy: Exploratory Study of Steel Industry in Thailand

The Circular Economy (CE) is widely known as a possible solution to address sustainable development in the manufacturing sector. This paper investigates the adoption status of CE in the steel industry of Thailand. A survey questionnaire was designed, validated, and distributed among Thai steel manufacturing companies. The result of the study indicates that some of the participants’ organization had already implemented the CE. The implementation success of CE is moderate-high. The CE is found to be implemented mainly at the departmental level, rather than across the entire organization. The main drivers of CE implementation are internal motivations, including environmental awareness, long-term sustainable development, and cost savings from material circularity. Furthermore, reducing the environmental impact on external stakeholders is the main CE external driver. A lack of proper training and knowledge, too much effort required, and a lack of support from top management are the main barriers to implementing the CE. This study offers direct benefits for academics, researchers, and steel manufacturing companies who are interested in CE implementation. It also shows the initial evidence of CE adoption in the Thai steel manufacturing industry.N/

The adoption of operational environmental sustainability approaches in the Thai manufacturing sector

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd Evidence suggests that manufacturing companies have tried to address the current environmental challenges derived from their operations by implementing various operational environmental sustainability approaches, including green manufacturing (GM), cleaner production (CP), green lean (GL), green supply chain management (GSCM), reverse logistics (RLs) and circular economy (CE). However, although their adoption is well documented in developed nations and few other countries, very little has been done to understand such phenomenon in a rapid developing country such as Thailand. This paper aims at filling this gap by providing light into some fundamental issues regarding the implementation of these approaches in the manufacturing sector of Thailand. A survey-based exploratory research was carried out based on 287 Thai manufacturing companies. The data was analysed using a combination of descriptive and inferential statics. The study revealed that a large amount of investment capacity, and proper training & knowledge are needed to fully implement the studied operational approaches. This resulted in some of the weakest elements of Thai manufacturing firms and hence the main barriers to their implementation. The study also showed that Thai manufacturing firms consider the impact on the environment and benefits from adopting these operational approaches as company's policy and own initiative, environmental awareness, and cost saving from conservation of energy as the main reasons for adopting the studied operational approaches. Finally, the findings also indicate that Thai manufacturing firms tend to implement them because of internal factors and that they lack of motivation from external factors and involvement from other stakeholders. The paper extends the current limited knowledge on the deployment of operational environmental sustainability approaches in Asia, and its results can be beneficial for organisations that aim at effectively adopting them to improve their operation's sustainability