Sustainability Assessment of Circular Strategies in the Agri-Food Industry: The Case of Olive Mills' By-Product Valorization

This study integrates multidimensional sustainability indicators into a unified assessment approach to evaluate circular strategies in agri-food industry businesses. This methodological approach is applied to empirically examine the case of the olive oil industry's by-product valorization. Specifically, three valorization alternatives are evaluated: composting, gasification, and pomace oil extraction. A new integrated framework encompassing life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to assess environmental indicators, while economic and social indicators are used to assess all three dimensions of sustainability. Results suggest that extraction is the most sustainable circular strategy due to its excellent economic performance, which offsets the medium–low environmental and social performance. Gasification almost matches the overall sustainability performance of extraction, as it shows high environmental and moderate social performance, but medium–low economic performance. Composting excels in the social dimension, fostering rural employment, yet struggles with profitability. These results are confirmed by robustness tests based on Monte Carlo simulations and using different normalization, weighting, and aggregation methods.