Implementing circularity in food supply chains: the facilitating role of intermediaries

According to FAO estimates, food waste represents one third of the globally produced food, entailing a considerable waste of resources. Circular economy (CE) principles, which aim at reducing the use of resources and at the elimination of waste flows, have the potential to mitigate the generation of food waste. CE adopts a system perspective, meaning everyone should be involved in the efforts for circularity, and collaborations between companies and sectors are encouraged to extract as much value as possible from waste flows. However, there are several barriers encountered by companies in the shift to circularity. These have been widely explored in the literature, and include the uncertainty about material flows, difficulties in finding the appropriate partners, and the geographical dispersion of companies able to valorize the waste. Overcoming such barriers is paramount to implement CE in food supply chains (SCs). Therefore, this work aims at exploring how an external actor in the form of an intermediary might orchestrate the flows of waste materials to effectively manage the circularity of food SCs and mitigate the obstacles that companies might face. Different types of intermediaries have been presented in the existing literature, such as scavengers, brokers, or facilitators, and these external actors are often engaged in a multitude of activities. By adopting a systematic literature review methodology their description in literature is explored, and the functions of intermediaries are clustered into nine categories, also allowing to understand their peculiar characteristics, roles, and positioning in the SC. Given the numerous barriers faced by food companies, the insights gathered on the existing barriers and on the intermediaries’ functions will be combined to conceptualize how an intermediary might mitigate the obstacles to CE and facilitate the development of circular food SCs.