Circular economy beyond manufacturing: Exploring the challenges and opportunities for circularity in the hairdressing industry

The emergence of the circular economy (CE) as a transformative paradigm to achieve sustainable development has predominantly centred on manufacturing, leaving a significant void in exploring its applicability to service-based industries. Understanding the challenges and opportunities for implementing CE strategies in these contexts is crucial, as service businesses differ in their operations and often face unique challenges. This study utilises the hairdressing industry as a contextual lens to investigate the multifaceted manifestations of circularity within services. We conducted a systematic literature review of both academic and grey literature to examine CE approaches, including reducing, reusing, recycling, and recovery strategies, while emphasising their interconnections with environmental quality, economic prosperity, and social equity. Our results point to a bias toward recycling strategies with little attention being given to R-strategies like reduce, reuse and recover. We highlight a critical need to broaden circularity initiatives by coordinating resource efficient practices with waste management strategies. Additionally, we reveal a web of interrelated circularity and sustainability aspects that demonstrate both synergies (mutually beneficial interactions) and trade-offs (compromises) across and between these aspects. Our findings stress the importance of taking a systems perspective when examining CE initiatives, calling for thoughtful consideration of diverse pathways to achieve sustainability alongside careful evaluation of trade-offs against potential gains. The insights gleaned from this exploration in hairdressing hold promising implications for promoting integrated and socially equitable CE strategies in diverse service-based industries.