Resource Recovery as a Supply Chain Resilience Strategy: From Linear Material Flows to Circular Waste-to-Value Systems

Abstract

Global supply chains have experienced repeated disruptions arising from pandemics, geopolitical conflict, extreme weather, transport bottlenecks and shortages of critical inputs. These events have exposed a structural weakness in supply systems organized predominantly around linear material flows: extraction, production, consumption and disposal. This conceptual review argues that supply chain resilience should not be understood only as the diversification of suppliers, increased inventories or relocation of production. It should also include the capacity to recover value from materials already circulating within economic systems. Drawing on circular economy, industrial ecology, resource recovery and supply chain resilience literature, the paper develops a waste-to-value resilience framework linking resource recovery with three dimensions of resilience: material resilience, economic resilience and systemic resilience. The framework positions reuse, repair, remanufacturing, recycling, urban mining, industrial symbiosis and design for recovery as complementary mechanisms for reducing dependence on vulnerable virgin-material supply chains. The paper further identifies policy, technological, market and information barriers that can prevent waste streams from functioning as reliable secondary-resource systems. The paper highlights how waste-to-value approaches are only capable of enhancing resilience if recovery solutions are built on the foundation of quality, traceability, sustainability, and social protection. The paper concludes by emphasizing that circularity should not be viewed as an environmental goal alone but as a strategic supply chain approach that reduces material exposure while creating more value.