Moving towards a sustainable world with the circular economy practices concerning the SMEs in Visakhapatnam’s ice-cream industry

Abstract

The Circular Economy (CE) is getting its attention these days, which has a massive impact on the industries, particularly in the manufacturing segment. The countries worldwide started believing in CE, and its practices got the benefits after thoroughly implementing it to their current practices. The concept is not new, but it came up with a new ideology and new techniques already proven by countries like China and the UK. Different industries show their innovativeness by adapting to the change for the future. We found that the Ice Cream Industry is one of them that adopt change quickly. The paper discusses the introduction of the CE, the current trends, the comparison of the olden style with new style after implementing CE practices, the challenges and barriers in implementing, and the benefits of implementing CE Practices in Visakhapatnam’s dairy industry. We followed a personal interview method for getting first-hand and rich information from the CEOs and operational managers of the company. Also, we followed the case study method to extract how they shifted from traditional manufacturing practices to the current and latest trends in manufacturing. In their manufacturing practices, we aimed to get factual information on the changeover from linear to circular.