The assurance of a sustainable supply of phosphorus is an essential emerging issue. It is a nonsubstitutable component in all living plants and a significant critical material as the third element of Earth’s reserves. Moreover, concerns about social issues of the supply chain of phosphorus call for a careful evaluation of its impact on societies from regional to global scale. This paper provides an attempt to enhance our understanding of the effects of implementing circular economy of the phosphorus supply chain on social sustainable development goals. This would be likely to excite the immediate interest of sustainability scholars and practitioners focusing on social assessment of life cycle of critical raw materials.
This paper answers the critical question of whether the circular economy aims phosphorus management to tackle social issues associated with its supply chain. The proposed model provides estimations of social indicators within the linear and circular economy of phosphorus on global and country levels. The obtained results indicate impact variations of phosphorus circularity on eradicating poverty, child labor, and malnutrition; promoting gender equality; providing decent work and economic growth; maintaining sustainable water use; and finally achieving societal security in the food chain. The main finding shows the paradoxical effect of the circular economy on meeting social sustainable development goals.
This work has been done by cooperating with Viipuri Management Research Lab of LUT University by accessing to AnyLogic (University 8.5.0) software.
post.doc. Researcher
Saeed Rahimpour Golroudbary
Saeed.Rahimpour.Golroudbary@lut.fi
El Wali, M., Rahimpour Golroudbary, S., Kraslawski, A. 2021.
Circular Economy for Phosphorus Supply Chain and its Impact on Social Sustainable Development Goals, Science of The Total Environment