Search Results (1,663)

This article examines oil-spill-related environmental damage in the Russian North as an eco-social risk that affects ecosystems, Indigenous communities, traditional nature management, and territorial welfare. This paper develops a qualitative conceptual analysis based on interdisciplinary document analysis, literature-based synthesis, and illustrative case contextualization. It contributes to debates on eco-social policy and sustainable welfare by arguing that environmental remediation and monetary compensation often remain insufficient when ecological harm disrupts land-based livelihoods, food autonomy, cultural ecosystem services, and Indigenous participation. This article proposes the concept of traditional nature management as a form of territorial welfare: a place-based welfare arrangement that supports food security, mobility, intergenerational knowledge transfer, cultural continuity, and community autonomy. The analysis identifies several interconnected transformation channels through which oil spills affect Indigenous communities: resource degradation, disruption of mobility routes, weakening of traditional food systems, erosion of cultural ecosystem services, compensation conflicts, and marginalization of Indigenous and local knowledge. The synthesis further shows that the most important assessment gaps arise where legally recognized ecological damage is disconnected from fishery and food-system losses, seasonal mobility, cultural ecosystem services, and Indigenous participation. In the context of Russian legal policy, existing mechanisms recognize traditional nature use and compensation for damage to Indigenous habitat and livelihoods, but non-market territorial-welfare losses remain only partially operationalized in environmental damage assessment. The paper argues that these consequences reveal an institutional missing link between environmental liability, social protection, Indigenous rights, and corporate responsibility. To address this gap, this article proposes an eco-social assessment framework that combines economic valuation with participatory mapping, cultural ecosystem service assessment, Indigenous and local knowledge, long-term welfare-oriented compensation, and community-based monitoring. The framework is intended as a conceptual and policy-oriented instrument rather than an empirical valuation model; the 2020 Norilsk diesel spill is used solely as an illustrative vignette to demonstrate the institutional disconnect between legally recognized environmental damage and broader welfare-related losses. The findings are relevant for eco-social policy debates because they show how extractive-sector risks reshape welfare arrangements in peripheral regions and create new entanglements between state responsibility, corporate welfare, and community resilience in the context of conflicting ecological transitions. More broadly, this study demonstrates that sustainable recovery in northern resource-dependent territories requires the integration of ecological restoration, legally grounded compensation, long-term welfare monitoring, and meaningful Indigenous participation. Comparative Russian evidence from the Nenets and Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrugs, Sakhalin, and Yakutia further indicates that compensation and benefit-sharing arrangements vary substantially with regard to procedural inclusion and transparency. The framework does not replace existing Russian statutory loss-calculation procedures; its added value is to connect them with community-defined territorial relationships, participatory mapping, co-validation of locally relevant indicators and repeated assessment of welfare recovery. Full article

Poultry feather waste, one of the major by-products of the poultry industry, represents an underutilized protein-rich biomass with significant potential for sustainable valorization within the circular bioeconomy. This narrative review examines recent advances in the use of poultry feathers as a renewable source of keratin for the development of keratin-based biomaterials. A structured literature search of original research articles published between 2015 and 2026 resulted in a final primary evidence map of 524 records, which was used to evaluate current knowledge on poultry feather management, keratin structure and properties, extraction technologies, and the development of feather-derived biomaterials. The reviewed literature indicates that keratin recovery can convert feather waste into higher-value materials, although its environmental performance depends on the extraction route, energy and chemical requirements, and comparison with established feather-management pathways. Recent advances highlight the potential of feather-derived keratin for biodegradable films, composites, hydrogels, coatings, packaging, biomedical, agricultural, and environmental applications. However, challenges remain regarding scalable extraction technologies, material performance, process standardization, and industrial implementation. This review provides a comprehensive overview of current research and identifies future directions for integrating poultry feather valorization into circular bioeconomy strategies, supporting resource efficiency and the development of sustainable bio-based materials. Full article

During the production of wet-process phosphoric acid, large quantities of acidic wastewater rich in phosphorus, fluoride and other components are inevitably generated. Selective separation and efficient enrichment of phosphorus and fluoride from such wastewater using appropriate technologies are conducive to resource recovery and recycling, thereby contributing to the sustainable development of the wet-process phosphoric acid industry. In this study, four commercial nanofiltration membranes with different molecular weight cutoffs were selected to treat acidic water from a phosphorus-chemical plant in Guizhou Province, China. The results show that metal ion rejection is governed not only by the membrane pore structure but also by the speciation of the ions in the acidic water system, whereas anion rejection is determined jointly by size sieving and ionic speciation. Among the four membranes, NF7 possesses the smoothest surface, the best hydrophilicity, a positive charge under the experimental condition, and a relatively broad pore size distribution. These characteristics enable NF7 to exhibit the highest pure water flux (62 L·m⁻²·h⁻¹) and maintain >90% rejection of Fe³⁺ and Mg²⁺ while allowing >70% permeation of phosphorus and fluoride, demonstrating considerable potential for the purification of phosphorus-fluoride-containing acidic wastewater generated during wet-process phosphoric acid production. Full article

Lithium recovery from salt lake brines with high Mg/Li ratios remains highly challenging due to the comparable physicochemical properties of Mg²⁺ and Li⁺, while lithium–aluminum-layered double hydroxides (Li/Al-LDHs) have emerged as promising lithium-selective adsorbents. However, their practical application is hindered by particle aggregation, limited structural stability, and insufficient processability under continuous-flow conditions. Herein, a mineral-directed synthesis strategy was developed to construct natural mineral-supported Li/Al-LDHs composite adsorbents using three abundant clay minerals, chlorite, montmorillonite, and illite, as structural substrates. The mineral crystal structures were demonstrated to regulate the nucleation, growth behavior, and dispersion of Li/Al-LDH nanosheets, resulting in distinct hierarchical architectures and lithium adsorption performances. Comprehensive structural characterization revealed the successful integration of Li/Al-LDH phases with different mineral matrices while preserving the intrinsic layered structures of both components. The results demonstrated that different mineral substrates significantly influenced the crystal growth, dispersion, and interfacial structure of Li/Al-LDHs. Among the prepared composites, montmorillonite @Li/Al-LDHs exhibited the optimal lithium adsorption performance, achieving a lithium adsorption capacity of 6.0 mg·g⁻¹ and a remarkable Li⁺/Mg²⁺ separation factor of 73.5 in a brine with a high Mg/Li ratio of 61.25. Furthermore, the optimized adsorbent maintained 81.7% of its initial adsorption capacity after 100 adsorption–desorption cycles and demonstrated stable lithium recovery performance under continuous-flow conditions. This work establishes the relationship between natural mineral crystal structures and Li/Al-LDH adsorption behaviors, providing new insights into the rational design of economical, scalable, and environmentally friendly lithium adsorbents for sustainable recovery of lithium resources from Mg-rich brines. Full article

As urban mining plays an increasingly important role in resource security and sustainable development, insufficient coordination among reverse supply chain participants has become a major constraint on the efficient recovery of urban mineral resources. From the perspective of interfirm cooperative innovation, this study takes waste mobile phones as an application context and develops a four-party evolutionary game model involving the government, recyclers, remanufacturers, and consumers. The model incorporates opportunistic behavior in cooperative innovation, government subsidy intensity, and product pricing into a unified analytical framework. Replicator dynamics, Jacobian-based stability analysis, and numerical simulations are employed to examine the evolutionary mechanisms and stability conditions of multi-actor collaborative governance. The results identify four stable equilibrium configurations and show that: (1) excessive innovation spillovers and asymmetric interdependence between recyclers and remanufacturers may weaken incentive compatibility and induce opportunistic behavior; (2) the effects of government subsidies vary across evolutionary stages and depend on the strategic responses of other actors; and (3) interfirm transfer prices and final market prices promote stable cooperation only within specific ranges. These findings provide a theoretical basis and policy implications for improving collaborative governance in reverse supply chains for urban mineral resource recovery and supporting sustainable urban mining. Full article

The circular economy (CE) has gained increasing attention as a framework for improving resource efficiency and sustainability in agricultural systems. However, circular agriculture remains an evolving field characterized by conceptual diversity, heterogeneous practices, and different assessment approaches. This review examines its conceptual foundations, practical applications, and policy implications through combined bibliometric and qualitative thematic analysis. Following a structured literature search and screening process, 462 publications were analyzed using VOSviewer to identify the thematic structure and evolution of the field. The bibliometric analysis reveals a research landscape dominated by nutrient cycling, waste management, resource recovery, and environmental sustainability, while economic, social, governance, and implementation dimensions remain comparatively less developed. The qualitative synthesis shows that nutrient and biomass recycling, integrated farming systems, and resource-efficient and digital technologies can support resource circularity, although their sustainability outcomes are context-dependent. Importantly, greater circularity does not necessarily imply greater sustainability due to potential economic, environmental, technological, and system-level trade-offs. Future research should prioritize multidimensional assessment frameworks, long-term empirical evidence, economic and social performance, and governance conditions for implementation. Circular agriculture should ultimately be evaluated by whether resource recirculation generates measurable and lasting sustainability benefits. Full article

Self-leadership is increasingly important in service and knowledge-intensive work, yet sustained self-regulation may also create hidden psychological costs. This study introduces self-leadership overload (SLO) as a distinct self-regulatory strain state and examines whether it emerges nonlinearly, whether the self-leadership–SLO association is stronger under high work pressure, and whether SLO shows indirect associations with employee outcomes through work rumination. A two-wave survey of 408 full-time employees across seven service and knowledge-intensive sectors was analyzed using scale-development procedures, iterative PLS-SEM, two-stage nonlinear and moderation models, bootstrapped indirect-effect analysis, incremental-validity tests, and supplementary robustness checks. Self-leadership was positively associated with work happiness and sustainable performance, while its quadratic terms for these outcomes were nonsignificant. By contrast, the quadratic self-leadership–SLO term was positive and significant, indicating a progressively stronger association with overload at higher levels of self-leadership, and work pressure strengthened this association. SLO was associated with lower work happiness and sustainable performance and higher burnout and turnover intention; significant indirect associations through work rumination were observed for all four outcomes. SLO also explained additional variance beyond demographic and employment controls, conventional self-leadership, work pressure, and organizational and personal resources (ΔR² = 0.049–0.123). General organizational resources did not show the hypothesized buffering pattern, whereas health-oriented self-care was negatively associated with overload. The findings refine the self-leadership paradox by showing that a beneficial self-regulatory capability can coexist with an escalating internal burden without a corresponding direct curvilinear downturn in positive outcomes. The study contributes a theoretically bounded and empirically differentiated SLO construct and highlights workload boundaries, recovery, and health-oriented self-care as important conditions for sustainable self-leadership. Full article

Construction progress monitoring is essential for controlling schedule deviations and supporting efficient resource management. Conventional field inspections remain indispensable in construction management; however, BIM-integrated Augmented Reality (AR) can provide an additional visual verification layer by relating planned digital information to observable site conditions. This study evaluates a BIM–AR framework for periodic structural construction progress monitoring in a real hospital project. BIM-based AR visualization was used during field inspections, while approved schedule information, floor-level working-day records, monthly concrete production data, and labor payment records provided the quantitative basis for progress assessment. The results identified temporary structural schedule deviations during intermediate floor construction; for example, cumulative actual progress reached 125 working days against a planned 119 days at the second-floor stage, while subsequent records indicated schedule recovery following management interventions. Cost records also revealed differences between planned and actual labor payments; however, these differences were treated as economic implications of the observed progress conditions rather than direct monetary savings attributable to AR. The benefits in terms of communication and decision support were assessed through field observations. From a sustainability perspective, the framework can support more resource-efficient construction management by facilitating earlier recognition of deviations and more informed corrective actions, with the potential to limit avoidable rework, schedule disruption, and inefficient resource use. The findings position BIM–AR as a complementary visual verification and decision-support tool for periodic construction progress monitoring. Full article

Palm oil mill effluent (POME), the primary liquid residue from crude palm oil (CPO) extraction, has shifted from industrial wastewater to a valuable feedstock for renewable energy and resource recovery. This review synthesizes recent developments in sustainable POME management in Malaysia through a narrative review of peer-reviewed literature (Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar; 2013 onwards) and institutional reports, across four dimensions: anaerobic digestion technologies, environmental performance, techno-economic viability, and policy drivers. Characterized by a high organic load (COD 15,000–100,000 mg L⁻¹; BOD 10,250–43,750 mg L⁻¹), POME yields roughly 28–34 m³ of biogas per m³ of effluent with a 54–65% methane content, while its digestate offers nutrient recovery potential to replace synthetic fertilizers. Covered lagoons and continuous stirred-tank reactors (CSTRs) show the highest deployment potential, whereas upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) systems and anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBRs) remain technically and economically constrained. Capital intensity, infrastructure gaps, and operational demands limit wider adoption. At the same time, digital process control and regulatory drivers such as the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) certification and the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) are critical enablers. Re-envisioning POME management as an integrated resource-recovery platform can lower greenhouse gas emissions, close nutrient loops, and accelerate Malaysia’s circular bioeconomy. Full article

The sustainable management of olive pomace (OP) residues remains a major environmental challenge, requiring integrated strategies that enhance resource recovery while minimizing environmental impacts. This study evaluated the effects of OP-derived biochar (BC) produced at two pyrolysis temperatures (300 and 600 °C) and applied at two rates (5 and 10%, w/w) on composting performance and the physicochemical, biological, and nutrient characteristics of OP compost. Composting was initiated in a pilot-scale forced-aeration bioreactor to accelerate the decomposition of the composting mixture, after which the materials were transferred to indoor piles to complete the composting and maturation process. Two-way ANOVA showed that both BC pyrolysis temperature and application rate significantly affected several compost quality attributes, although their relative influence varied among the measured properties. The observed responses were consistent with differences in the physicochemical characteristics of the OP-derived BC resulting from the pyrolysis conditions. Compared with BC produced at 300 °C, BC produced at 600 °C significantly reduced moisture content (MC) from 17.81 to 11.44%, decreased bulk density (BD) from 0.69 to 0.52 g cm⁻³, increased organic matter (OM) from 70.61 to 82.78%, and raised compost pH from 7.67 to 8.43 (p < 0.001), and reduced microbial respiration from 2.00 to 1.60 CO₂ g⁻¹ OM day⁻¹ (p = 0.0270). Increasing the BC application rate from 5 to 10% significantly enhanced nitrogen (N) (1.64–1.79%), phosphorus (P) (0.57–0.67%), ammonium (NH₄⁺) (162–214 mg kg⁻¹), nitrate (NO₃⁻) (42.98–52.42 mg kg⁻¹), sulfur (S) (0.35–0.39%), and compost stability index (SI). Overall, the higher BC application rate, particularly when combined with BC produced at 600 °C, generally resulted in the most favourable compost characteristics, although several responses were statistically comparable with those obtained using BC produced at 300 °C and applied at 10%. Germination indices of 97.5–135.8% indicated that the final composts exhibited low phytotoxicity and generally mature. These findings indicate that integrating OP-derived BC into OP composting can improve the quality and stability of the resulting compost while providing an integrated strategy for the valorization of within circular bioeconomy approach. Full article

Background/Objectives: Contemporary health systems continue to face persistent challenges in financing, equity, and governance, particularly under conditions of limited resources, workforce shortages, and demographic pressures. While the World Health Organization calls for strengthening social participation to achieve universal health coverage, evidence suggests that such participation often remains largely symbolic. Existing global examples of social participation in health are limited either by their short duration of implementation or by their limited scope. In contrast, the experience of former Yugoslavia (1945–1991) represents a distinctive case. In the early post-war period, health reforms were directed towards the development of a decentralised, self-managed health system that emphasised universal coverage, participatory governance, social solidarity, and local autonomy. The trajectory of these reforms was further shaped by global economic and political pressures, including neoliberal trends, international debt, and the oil crises, which constrained resources and exposed systemic vulnerabilities. The so-called Yugoslav Experiment may offer an alternative to existing market-oriented and, at times, inefficient health systems. This review aims to synthesise evidence on the governance, financing, organisation, and outcomes of Yugoslavia’s self-managed health system and to evaluate its relevance to contemporary debates on health system resilience, decentralisation, participatory governance, equity, and sustainability. It examines power relations, stakeholder interests, and resource allocation, and assesses the lessons that the Yugoslav experience offers for contemporary debates on participatory governance and the sustainability of healthcare systems, while identifying areas of convergence, debate, and gaps in the existing scholarship. Methods: We conducted a systematic narrative review of peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, conference papers, and commentaries published in English or Bosnian–Croatian–Montenegrin–Serbian that covered the period 1945–1991. Scopus, PubMed, and EBSCOhost (including CINAHL Plus with full text, Medline and PsychInfo) were searched on 19 January 2026. Studies were included if they addressed health system reform, self-management, governance, financing, or institutional continuity. Contextual studies of selected services—primary care, mental health, reproductive health, and vaccination—were included only if they illuminated reform trajectories. Data synthesis focused on reform phases, institutional transformations, financing arrangements, governance mechanisms, and power relations, with particular attention to continuity, path dependence, and critical junctures. Given the heterogeneous and predominantly historical, analytical, and policy-oriented nature of the literature, we did not apply conventional study-design-specific risk-of-bias tools. Instead, we used an overarching framework to classify and contextualise the included evidence according to five dimensions: source type, nature of contribution, evidentiary role, temporal context, and health-system domain. The protocol was not registered. The study was financed by the Provincial Secretariat for Higher Education and Scientific Research, Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Republic of Serbia. Results: The database searches yielded 265 records, of which 193 were selected for title and abstract screening after removing 72 duplicates. At this stage, 133 publications were excluded because they did not meet the eligibility criteria and 60 publications were selected for full-text review. Application of the predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria resulted in 22 eligible publications. An additional 18 studies were identified through citation chaining and targeted Google Scholar searches. Twenty-two publications were coded as primary studies, directly examining health system reform, governance, or self-management, while 18 were classified as contextual studies addressing specialty areas. The analysis identified key reforms that followed the social participation, i.e., ‘self-management’, approach, which expanded primary care, preventive services, and local participation. It revealed institutional changes, as well as the role of power and health financing in health reforms aimed at strengthening social participation. Nonetheless, challenges—including bureaucratic and managerial elitism, unequal professional authority, resource scarcity, and tensions between market-oriented policies and social solidarity—were amplified by global economic forces and neoliberal trends, ultimately contributing to the system’s collapse by the late 1980s. This review was limited by its search strategy, the exclusion of grey literature, the potential omission or inaccessibility of relevant studies, and its focus on selected aspects of health reform, namely post-war recovery and self-management. Conclusions: The Yugoslav experience illustrates both the promise and the fragility of socially oriented, participatory health systems, demonstrating how international political alignments and global economic pressures can profoundly shape domestic health reform trajectories. Lessons from this case remain relevant to contemporary efforts to strengthen social participation for universal health coverage through designing sustainable, resilient, equitable, and socially accountable health systems under complex global conditions. Full article

The rapid expansion of aquaculture has led to a substantial increase in the generation of organic waste, nutrient-rich effluents, and residual biomass, creating significant environmental challenges while simultaneously providing opportunities for resource recovery within the circular bioeconomy. Environmental biotechnology offers a broad range of solutions for transforming these waste streams into valuable products, including renewable energy, fertilisers, biochar, microbial biomass, and other bio-based resources. However, the practical implementation of these technologies in floating aquaculture systems remains fragmented due to the lack of integrated engineering approaches. This review critically analyses the current state-of-the-art in environmental biotechnology pathways for aquaculture waste valorisation, covering biological, physicochemical, and thermochemical technologies applicable to floating production systems. The assessment covers anaerobic digestion, composting, insect bioconversion, microalgae cultivation, integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, nutrient recovery, hydrothermal carbonisation, and pyrolysis, together with their technological maturity, offshore applicability, and contribution to circular resource recovery. Beyond reviewing existing technologies, this paper proposes the “Circular Floating Aquaculture Systems Engineering Integration Framework” (CFAS-EIF), a systems engineering concept that integrates floating production infrastructure, waste collection, resource recovery technologies, digital management, and circular value chains into a unified architecture. The framework illustrates how environmental biotechnology can be implemented through coordinated engineering integration, enabling the transition from waste management to resource valorisation in offshore aquaculture. The proposed framework provides researchers, engineers, and industry stakeholders with a comprehensive reference for designing next-generation aquaculture platforms that support sustainable resource management, climate change mitigation, and a circular bioeconomy. Full article

In this study, an efficient and eco-friendly chitosan/Fe₃O₄/bentonite (Ch-Fe₃O₄-Bent) ternary hybrid adsorbent scaffold is developed for the efficient removal and recovery of Th(IV) from contaminated water, facilitating sustainable environmental remediation. The developed scaffold promotes circular economy principles through the recovery of valuable actinide resources while reducing secondary waste generation and mitigating the environmental impacts associated with radioactive wastewater. The crucial radioactive thorium has drawn a lot of attention, and many substances used in numerous industrial operations are thorium isotopes. This paper describes the synthesis of a chitosan hybrid scaffold for thorium adsorption purposes. Many characterization methods were performed on the fabricated scaffold. Removal of thorium (IV) from aqueous media using a Ch-Fe₃O₄-Bent ternary scaffold was comprehensively investigated through batch experiments under different operational parameters. Thorium adsorption was evaluated as a function of contact time, solution pH, initial thorium concentration, and temperature. The adsorption data were fitted to nonlinear Langmuir, Freundlich, and Temkin isotherm models to evaluate the material’s thorium removal capacity. Among the isotherm models tested, the Langmuir model provided the best fit for thorium adsorption (R² = 0.88039), while the kinetic data followed the pseudo-second-order model (R² = 0.99322, q_e = 199.61407 mg/g). Based on the nonlinear Langmuir isotherm, the chitosan scaffold composite exhibited a maximum removal capacity (q_max) of 204.80984 mg/g. The thermodynamic feasibility of the adsorption process was evaluated, and the results confirm that the chitosan scaffold serves as a highly effective sorbent for the recovery and adsorption of Th(IV) ions from aquatic environments. Furthermore, this chitosan scaffold can be used to remove radioactive Th(IV) from surface water, seawater, and wastewater generated by nuclear fuel production technologies, mining operations, and laboratories handling radioactive materials. Temperature-dependent studies showed that Th(IV) adsorption occurs spontaneously at room temperature and becomes more favorable at elevated temperatures, indicating an endothermic process. Additionally, the fast adsorption kinetics of Th(IV) onto the chitosan scaffold render it highly attractive for the scale-up of thorium extraction. Overall, the findings highlight the potential of the developed chitosan scaffold as an environmentally sustainable and cost-efficient adsorbent for radioactive wastewater treatment, contributing to cleaner production, efficient resource utilization, environmental conservation, and the advancement of sustainable nuclear technologies. Full article

Brewer’s spent grain (BSG) is the primary by-product of the brewing industry and a low-cost lignocellulosic resource rich in phenolics, proteins, and arabinoxylans (AXs). Conventional recovery methods using acids, alkalis, and organic solvents often involve energy-intensive processes, generate hazardous waste, and limit food-grade applications. This review critically examines the evolution of extraction methodologies for BSG bioactives, highlighting the potential of deep eutectic solvents (DES) as sustainable alternatives. Key factors such as solvent chemistry (polarity, pH, and water content) influence bioactives’ recovery and selectivity. Process intensification techniques such as ultrasound, microwave, and pressurised liquid extraction enhance efficiency by reducing extraction time and temperature. The review assesses how various processes modify the structure–function properties of BSG bioactives, including antioxidant activity, protein functionality, and rheological behaviour. A significant finding is that DES research has primarily focused on single compounds, while integrated DES biorefineries for comprehensive valorisation remain underexplored. Future research should therefore prioritise integrated process design that balances recovery, structural preservation, functionality, and sustainability to support scalable, near-zero-waste BSG valorisation for food and nutraceutical applications. Full article

The global polymer industry faces increasing pressure to diminish its environmental impact. However, traditional Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) frameworks evaluate sustainability incrementally rather than as an integrated system, and empirical evidence from rapidly industrializing Gulf economies remains limited. This study investigates the Sustainable Conceptual Model for Environmental Impact Assessment in Polymer Production (SCM-EIAPP), founded on the Resource-Based View, which correlates five operational practices—Choice of Feedstock, Process Optimization, Energy Efficiency, Waste Management, and Recycling Options—with perceived EIA outcomes. Data obtained from a survey of 207 professionals within the polymer industry in the United Arab Emirates were analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis, ordinary least squares regression, partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), and mediation analysis. The measurement model exhibited acceptable fit and reliability. Collectively, the five practices explained approximately 39.6% of the variance in perceived EIA outcomes (PLS-SEM R² = 0.396), with the OLS estimate closely aligned at R² = 0.376. Among these, Recycling Options was the strongest predictor (β = 0.303), followed by Waste Management (β = 0.261), Process Optimization (β = 0.170), and Energy Efficiency (β = 0.168). Choice of Feedstock showed a marginal, method-dependent association (PLS-SEM β = 0.103; OLS p = 0.086). Two mediation pathways were analyzed. The hypothesized mediation of the Waste Management–EIA link via Process Optimization was not statistically significant. Conversely, Process Optimization exhibits a significant indirect effect in the Energy Efficiency–EIA relationship, with approximately 24% of Energy Efficiency’s total association operating through the process capability pathway—aligning with Resource-Based View capability spillover theory. Practices that are internally controllable—particularly Energy Efficiency—appear to be reliable levers, while material recovery practices (Recycling and Waste Management) showed the strongest overall associations for environmental improvement within resource-constrained Gulf contexts. These insights offer industry leaders and policymakers a data-driven basis for prioritizing investments in sustainability and advancing circular economy initiatives. Full article