Drivers of Innovative Changes in the Recycling Industry: Regional Leadership, Society Involvement, and Professional Collaboration

Recent trends in the society environmental awareness include the growing popularity of “green” behavior, climate change concerns, and support for the transition to a circular economy. All these trends create a demand for relevant innovative changes in the recycling industry. Finding the right answer to the question of how to satisfy this demand becomes a priority in the different regions of the world. However, some regions are more successful in this, while others fail. The best examples of innovative changes in this industry can be found in the theoretical sources, but their effective implementation in practice is sometimes a challenge due to poor management or low level of staff and society involvement. The aim of this article is to analyse and evaluate the influence of leadership, collaboration, and society involvement on the innovative processes and advanced economic and environmental performance of recycling industry. The quadruple innovation helix framework model, primary and secondary data collection and analysis methods were used to provide the evidence for the research findings. The results show that motivated team with a professional leader, supported by strong society involvement can make a difference in the process of development and implementation of innovations allowing improving the efficiency of recycling industry. This difference include approach for setting up goals and using resources in the process of their achievement. Authors concluded that leadership, teambuilding and social responsibility should be a part of joint training for recycling industry staff and residents of the region due to their significant influence on the recycling program success.