Toward circular and sustainable wine supply chains: a social insight

Nowadays, an increasing number of initiatives aims to promote the transition to a circular economy as an alternative to the current linear economic model. However, this transition does not necessarily result in sustainability: the research found that adopting a circular solution does not guarantee, per se, sustainability, which should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. The CICULAGRIS project (Towards Circular and Sustainable Agri-food Systems: Metrics for Assessment) (Prot. 2022JNNJJX) investigates the debated correlation between circularity and sustainability through the identification and application of appropriate metrics to assess circularity and sustainability with the aim to understand whether and to what extent the adoption of circular practices in some crucial Italian agrifood-chains (i.e. wine, olive oil and bread/pasta) leads to an improvement in sustainability. The processes and activities associated with the circular practices identified in each supply chain will be evaluated by applying the circularity assessment methods and related indicators that emerged from a review of the existing literature on the topic. Then, a sustainability assessment will be performed by applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), with some necessary adaptations depending on data availability and supply chain-specific methodological challenges. Finally, the circularity and sustainability assessment results will be correlated to understand whether and in what terms the circular systems analysed are also sustainable. This study will focus on the social issues associated with circular practices in the wine supply chain. Indeed, the transition to circular economy solutions has an influence on several stakeholders, both in a positive and negative way. However, in this context, social issues are still rarely taken into account. Therefore, indicators of social circularity in the wine sector will be identified through a systematic literature review. Then, the study will evaluate whether and how the identified indicators can be integrated within an S-LCA study.