The scientific stakes are high. Previous modeling work has demonstrated that only extraordinarily high recycling rates, on the order of ninety-five percent, would allow plastics to remain within their share of climate and biosphere boundaries, and even that may be unrealistic without complementary reuse strategies and alternative carbon feedstocks such as biomass and CO2. Circularity, in other words, cannot be achieved through recycling alone or by isolated firms. It requires rapid, coordinated scaling across complex value chains involving manufacturers, recyclers, logistics providers, brand owners, and regulators. The problem is that plastics value chains are deeply fragmented and riddled with information asymmetries: processors often do not know the exact composition of recyclates, brand owners cannot verify whether secondary materials are free of hazardous additives, and reusable packaging systems struggle with return logistics, cleaning, and traceability. Digital platforms, the study contends, are emerging precisely to close these gaps.

The research team, led by Sophia Botsch of the German Plastics Center SKZ-KFE gGmbH and Julian M. Müller of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, conducted a qualitative case study built on eleven semi-structured expert interviews, each lasting roughly sixty minutes and conducted online between November 2025 and January 2026. The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, anonymized, and analyzed in MaxQDA following the Gioia methodology, an iterative coding approach that moves from informant-centric first-order concepts to second-order themes and finally to aggregate theoretical dimensions. Secondary material, including descriptions of material and information flows on the platforms, supplemented the interviews. The researchers drew on Resource Orchestration Theory, which describes how firms create value through three sequential activities: structuring resources by acquiring, accumulating, and divesting them; bundling them into stable, enriched, or pioneering combinations; and leveraging those bundles in product markets by mobilizing, coordinating, and deploying them. Applied to platform ecosystems, these activities extend beyond firm boundaries, requiring platform owners to attract heterogeneous participants, design governance and incentive mechanisms, and continuously adapt algorithms, rules, and boundary resources.

The central empirical contribution is the identification of three distinct platform archetypes in the plastics industry: Reusable Packaging Trackers, Reuse and Resale Hubs, and Data Platforms. Each archetype orchestrates a different kind of resource and enables a different circular business model. Reusable Packaging Trackers focus on physical asset management. Their structuring activities involve organizing return and purification infrastructures and standardizing packaging materials. Bundling occurs when the platforms combine physical containers with tracking technologies such as QR codes and Internet of Things sensors, together with logistics data, to guarantee quality and hygiene. Leveraging means scaling circulation loops across regional supply chains, effectively replacing single-use packaging with high-frequency reuse systems. As the founder of one such platform explained, the model amounts to packaging as a service: the platform delivers the packaging, collects it, rinses it, stores it, and issues it again, so customers need not worry about any of the logistics.

The numbers reported by these operators illustrate why cycle speed matters as much as cycle count. The founder of one Reusable Packaging Tracker noted that their best-performing container was used 365 times, while the average container achieved twenty uses, yet half of all containers were used fewer than ten times. In circular economy terms, a fast cycle is crucial: a container that turns over only once a year is, even after a decade, hardly better than a disposable one. This insight connects directly to the biophysical argument at the heart of the study. By orchestrating return, purification, and tracking, these platforms operationalize the principle of keeping products and materials at their highest utility and value for as long as possible, leveraging product life-extension patterns that directly reduce the carbon intensity and linear throughput of the plastics system.

Reuse and Resale Hubs, by contrast, orchestrate market mediation for secondary materials. Their structuring work involves integrating diverse material providers and rigorously standardizing data on material properties and quality. Bundling centers on matching industrial demand with available recyclate supply by combining material origin data with risk management services. Leveraging is expressed through optimized pricing and demand saturation, allowing the platform to act as a digital intermediary that lowers barriers to entry for firms seeking recycled plastics. The market for recycled materials, one platform founder observed, is highly diversified and complex despite not appearing so from the outside, and the main customer benefit is faster orientation within it. These hubs attack the critical market failure of information asymmetry. By standardizing quality data and certifying material providers, they make high-quality secondary material scalable. Notably, because many marketplaces cannot themselves guarantee material quality, they build trust incrementally: tests are carried out quickly, buyer feedback is fed back into the system, and data accumulates over time, steadily raising the probability that a given material will suit a given processor.

The third archetype, Data Platforms, orchestrates the intangible data layer of the value chain. Structuring involves collecting product data across the entire lifecycle into standardized formats. Bundling emphasizes interoperability and regulatory compliance, ensuring that information can flow securely between organizations. Leveraging is achieved by reducing information asymmetries across whole sectors, enabling complex circular strategies, and helping participants meet global reporting requirements through tools such as digital product passports. One data platform founder summarized the philosophy bluntly: you cannot circularize what you cannot measure. Many of these platforms were not conceived as circular economy ventures at all; rather, the circular agenda pushed them toward digital product passports. By using data customers already possess, creating transparency on top of it, and automating processes such as reordering, invoicing, and account reconciliation, they map the chemical identity of materials without forcing firms to surrender commercial secrets, often using confidentiality-preserving technologies such as blockchain and zero-knowledge proofs.

The theoretical implications are significant. First, the study shows that in circular ecosystems, orchestration is not a firm-centric endeavor but a meta-organizational capability: platforms must structure and bundle resources, such as material quality data and complementor networks, that they do not legally own. Their value proposition rests on aligning the heterogeneous motives of recyclers, brand owners, processors, and service providers with regulatory compliance. Second, circular business model patterns such as resource recovery and product life-extension are revealed to be dynamic outputs of specific orchestration moves rather than static design categories. Third, the research addresses a well-documented gap in platform scholarship, where business-to-business platforms remain understudied compared to consumer-facing ones. Industrial network effects, the authors find, differ fundamentally from consumer network effects: they are driven by technical standardization and regulatory compliance rather than social interaction, which means platforms must act as institutional anchors that pioneer resource combinations previously considered economically unviable.

Perhaps the most forward-looking finding concerns convergence. Although the three archetypes currently evolve largely in isolation, early signs of integration are emerging. The chief executive of one data platform described how the digital product passport is foreseen as evidence supporting sales on secondary-material marketplaces, allowing buyers of recycled materials to prove that goods genuinely come from second-life sources. Reusable packaging that is digitally monitored effectively carries a digital twin comparable to a product passport, and detailed composition data improves the feasibility of end-of-life treatment. The study envisions these platforms combining into a digital ecosystem in which data and materials cross platform boundaries, generating synergies no single actor could achieve alone. For managers, the message is to choose strategies aligned with their archetype, monetize circular network effects rather than mere transaction fees, and measure success not in gross merchandise volume but in displaced virgin material throughput. The authors caution, however, that many platforms still depend on venture capital or public grants, that high-resolution life cycle assessment data quantifying net environmental benefit is lacking, and that rebound effects from cheaper recyclates could erode gains. The transition to a circular carbon economy, they conclude, cannot be achieved by individual platforms, but platform-mediated ecosystems may supply the coordinated, large-scale intervention the plastics industry urgently needs.

Subject of Research: How B2B digital platforms orchestrate resources to enable circular economy business models in the plastics industry

Article Title: Orchestrating resources for recycling – how digital platforms enable circular economy business models

Article References: Botsch, S., & Müller, J. M. (2026). Orchestrating resources for recycling – how digital platforms enable circular economy business models. Journal of Industrial Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44498-026-00179-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44498-026-00179-w

Keywords: circular economy, digital platforms, plastics industry, recycling, resource orchestration theory, business models, digital product passports, industrial ecology, supply chain management, reusable packaging, planetary boundaries, B2B marketplaces

The scale of the material is far from trivial. An adult horse of roughly 500 kilograms produces an estimated 20 to 31 kilograms of manure and bedding per day, amounting to some 9 to 11 tonnes annually. In regions with dense horse populations, those figures rival municipal bio-waste streams. The County of Wesel in Germany’s Lower Rhine basin, for example, counts more than 8,500 horses alongside 458,000 inhabitants; in 2024 the area collected 32,700 tonnes of bio-waste and 23,300 tonnes of green waste, while horse manure is estimated at around 75,000 tonnes. Yet because many stables sit far from farmland that could recycle those nutrients, manure increasingly generates disposal costs and storage constraints rather than agronomic value.

Chemically, horse manure is a distinctive feedstock. Pure manure contains about 1.0 to 1.7 percent nitrogen on a dry basis, much of it water-soluble and plant-available, along with 0.5 to 1.3 percent phosphorus as P2O5, roughly 1.1 percent potassium as K2O, and 84 to 95 percent organic matter. Its carbon-to-nitrogen ratio typically ranges from 20:1 to 32:1, but bedding materials such as straw or wood shavings can push mixtures above 50:1. That matters agronomically: high C:N materials trigger net nitrogen immobilisation in soil, reducing short-term plant-available nitrogen and potentially depressing yields. If manure is marketed as a fertiliser substitute, customers may perceive weak or even negative fertiliser effects, undermining willingness to pay. The bedding is therefore not a passive bulking agent but a design variable that shapes composting behaviour, nutrient dynamics, and ultimately market positioning.

Controlled composting resolves many of these problems. Thermophilic phases thermally degrade pathogens, parasite eggs, and weed seeds, while microbial activity stabilises labile nitrogen compounds into more predictable, plant-available forms. Finished horse manure composts reported in the literature contain total nitrogen of 1.7 to 2.3 percent, phosphorus up to 1.3 percent, potassium around 1.2 percent, and a near-neutral pH of 6.4 to 6.7, with the C:N ratio falling from an initial 27.3:1 to roughly 15.9:1 and moisture dropping to between 8 and 15 percent. Practical benchmarks, such as the German Organic Waste Ordinance, converge on sustaining temperatures above 55 degrees Celsius for more than two weeks. Studies of small-scale composting of manure with wood shavings show that weekly turning improves hygienisation uniformity, since outer pile layers can otherwise remain insufficiently sanitised. That quality assurance is what opens quality-sensitive horticulture, landscaping, and growing-media markets to manure-derived products.

Emissions, however, constitute the central technical trade-off. Composting generally suppresses methane relative to passive storage because aerobic conditions inhibit methanogenesis, but poorly managed piles can still release considerable methane. Meanwhile, ammonia volatilisation and nitrous oxide emissions can rise, eroding the product’s nitrogen content and contributing to eutrophication and climate forcing. Turning aerates the pile and cuts methane, yet can simultaneously increase ammonia losses by exposing ammonium-rich zones during thermophilic, alkaline phases. Research on dairy manure even shows that pile mixing can raise total measured greenhouse gas emissions while lowering methane alone. The authors conclude that good composting is not a compliance exercise but a core production competence: process control determines hygiene, nitrogen retention, odour, and customer-perceived value. Facilities with optimal aeration and exhaust gas treatment are preferable, which favours centralised processing where horse density or cooperative logistics allow efficient feedstock aggregation.

The systematic EU mapping reveals a structured, application-driven compost market in which soil improvement dominates, followed by fertilising functions and a smaller but meaningful segment for growing-media components. Solid composts prevail, while compost-biochar blends and vermicomposts are increasingly documented. Application fields extend beyond agriculture into horticulture, landscaping, urban greening, engineered soils, remediation, and green roof substrates. That breadth is strategically significant for horse manure, because peri-urban stables are often spatially closer to urban green infrastructure markets than to bulk agricultural outlets, reducing transport costs and enabling circularity branding that raises willingness to pay. The trade-off is that these markets demand higher product consistency and safety, reinforcing the case for controlled composting and rigorous quality management rather than passive pile storage.

Organisational form emerges as a decisive determinant of economic viability. Centralised private plants exploit economies of scale and professional quality assurance but require collection logistics and sufficient horse density. Municipal and public-private systems monetise composting partly through avoided disposal costs and internal use of compost in public green spaces, aligning well with the peri-urban geography of horse keeping. Decentralised models suit small holdings with limited investment capacity, where the business case rests on avoided container rental, haulage, and disposal contracts rather than product sales, though governance mechanisms are needed if products leave the site. Notably, the literature review found no documented cases of co-composting horse manure with municipal bio-waste, despite the apparent synergy: blending manure with kitchen and garden waste would raise nitrogen and potassium in the finished compost and could improve the economics of both streams.

Product differentiation offers the most promising frontier. Vermicomposting can unlock premium horticultural markets through higher microbial activity and nutrient availability, but it demands prior hygienisation and careful process management, raising complexity and risk. Compost-biochar blends present a more scalable strategy: biochar incorporated during composting improves nutrient retention and microbial habitat, and its carbon can persist in soils for decades to centuries, qualifying as a plausible carbon dioxide removal pathway. Voluntary carbon markets have begun recognising biochar-based removals, suggesting that carbon monetisation is more credible in compost-biochar models than in composting alone, provided monitoring, reporting, and verification frameworks are in place. Formulation design also follows application logic: fertiliser-oriented composts target C:N ratios of 8:1 to 12:1, soil improvers sit between 12:1 and 18:1, and carbon-storage or remediation blends exceed 18:1, often above 30:1 with woody biomass or biochar.

Regulation threads through every business model. Under the EU Fertilising Products Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2019/1009) and national frameworks such as Germany’s Fertilizer Act, Fertilizer Ordinance, and Bio-waste Ordinance, requirements for storage capacity, spreading periods, and waste classification shape what is legally and commercially feasible. Directive 2008/98/EC mandates separate biowaste collection, and the EU Soil Strategy for 2030 raises demand for organic matter inputs in degradation-prone regions such as Southern Europe. The authors’ central message is that viable models must treat regulatory conformity and quality assurance as core capabilities enabling market access, not external constraints. Horse-specific data on emissions, pharmaceuticals, and antibiotic resistance genes remain sparse compared with cattle and pig systems, and systematic evaluation of decentralised peri-urban systems is scarce. Future work combining horse-specific process monitoring with economic modelling across organisational structures would strengthen the evidence base for policy and investment. The larger conclusion is striking: Europe’s horse manure problem is really a design problem, and its solution lies in engineering purpose-built compost products, organisational models, and carbon strategies around the material’s distinctive chemistry.

Subject of Research: Business models for utilising horse manure through compost-based value chains in the European Union

Article Title: Business Models for Horse Manure Utilisation in the European Union: Compost-Based Products, Market Pathways, and Carbon Integration

Article References: Pleissner, D., Podßun, P., Hölscher, P., & Friege, H. (2026). Business Models for Horse Manure Utilisation in the European Union: Compost-Based Products, Market Pathways, and Carbon Integration. Waste and Biomass Valorization. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12649-026-03776-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12649-026-03776-9

Keywords: horse manure, composting, circular economy, soil improver, biochar, carbon credits, peri-urban agriculture, EU Fertilising Products Regulation, waste valorization, growing media, greenhouse gas emissions, business models