A Virtuous Circle? Increasing Local Benefits from Ports by Adopting Circular Economy Principles

Toby Roberts, Ian Williams, John Preston, Nick Clarke, Melinda Odum and Stefanie O'Gorman
Additional contact information
Toby Roberts: Infrastructure Group, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
Ian Williams: Infrastructure Group, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
John Preston: Transportation Group, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
Nick Clarke: Ramboll UK Ltd., Southampton SO40 7HT, UK
Melinda Odum: Ramboll UK Ltd., Southampton SO40 7HT, UK
Stefanie O'Gorman: Ramboll UK Ltd., Edinburgh EH2 3AH, UK

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 13, 1-25

Abstract: As ports seek to maintain support for their operations amidst growing environmental awareness and social pressure, it is important they provide benefits for the local population to offset negative impacts. Ports can add additional economic benefits for the cities they are located in by encouraging maritime clusters, industrial development, a circular economy, and waterfront development. The current level of adoption, interest in future adoption, barriers to implementation, and attitudes towards the views of the local population were assessed via an online questionnaire sent to port authorities in 26 countries. The potential and willingness of ports to be on the frontline of the transition to a circular economy globally has been clearly identified for the first time, seeing a 60% increase between current levels of adoption and future interest in adoption. Barriers to a circular economy are comparable to barriers to widely adopted methods, such as industrial development and a waterfront economy. It is likely that circular economy activities in port cities will add additional local benefits and reduce the negative impacts of a port. A new framework is proposed to help ports and cities collaborate and encourage greater adoption of the circular economy.

Keywords: port cities; maritime clusters; industrial development; circular economy; waterfront development; sustainable development; economic; benefits; framework (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/13/7079/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/13/7079/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:13:p:7079-:d:580932

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().