**5. Discussion and Conclusions**

The study found that the pandemic has left a positive impact on feed-stock producers, raw material producers, and packaging manufacturers due to an increase in online shopping that requires additional packaging, while product manufacturers felt no major impact. However, a negative impact has been left on retailers that experience increasing sales over online sales channels that correlate with a shipment of goods with courier delivery requiring additional packaging in comparison to the traditional in-store consumption.

Those companies that had previously taken the approach of the gradual transition toward the sustainability principles and the use of biodegradable materials are now continuing this process at an even faster pace and are generally a step further. That means that other value chain members will have to adjust respective internal processes and change, as this will be determined by the requirements of international regulations. For companies that have already started this sustainability shift and developed a sustainable strategy for the company several years ahead, the transition will be easier.

The use of the biocomposite materials within the sustainable value chain has mostly been related to the choices to adapt and introduce sustainable packaging. Based on previous efforts of researchers [98,100] and professional organizations in defining the criteria of the sustainable packaging, the following matrix (see Table 4) has been proposed by this study, which integrates the functional, technologically feasible, environmental, and economic dimensions with the criteria of the sustainable packaging [97] and the sustainable supply chain [33]. For the successful promotion of the sustainable value chain and thus, in general, cleaner production, it is important to balance all four dimensions [141].

The analyses (Table 4) show which of the four dimensions are more explicitly influenced by each of the sustainable consumption criteria, thus indicating the dominant areas for managerial decisions to evaluate packaging options and opportunities for more sustainable supply chains. These dimensions highlight four directions of the implications and contributions to be addressed to managers and owners of businesses, practitioners

or experts, policymakers, and other stakeholders. The environmental dimension is explicitly dominant and is strongly followed by the economic dimension. Pournader with co-authors [33] argue that the economic issues are the major drivers impacting managerial decisions, but environmental and sustainability issues are becoming important and bringing larger opportunities within the sustainable supply chain. Meanwhile, the functionality and technological feasibility plays a lesser role in the industrial consumption within the supply chain. The current technological advancement allows to reduce the importance of these issues in the strategic decision-making of managers, but these issues still are relevant for individual consumers and product end-users in the B2C consumption.


**Table 4.** Matrix of criteria and dimensions of the sustainable packaging.

It is essential for the development of a sustainable value chain to identify and map various stakeholders to acknowledge those who can positively contribute to the development of sustainability principles within the industrial consumption as well as identify those stakeholders who will be positively or negatively affected [83]. This will allow for a more comprehensive planning and design of sustainable business activities to meet the interests and needs of various stakeholders and the involvement of the most engaged stakeholders within balancing economic and environmental values, and developing the sustainable value chain.

Dangelico et al. [142] believe that with the growing number of green products in the market or green branding strategies, companies far more than ever before should acknowledge the concept of sustainable industrial consumption, sustainable packaging and, in general, the green behavior of consumers.

The Europe Commission released key data on the behavior of consumers in 2020. Some of the main findings were that 56% of consumers said environmental concerns influenced their purchasing decisions and 67% said that they bought products that were better for the environment, even if such products were more expensive. From this, we can conclude that these could be one of the main signals influencing industrial consumption trends [10].

The growing demand for the use of natural resources in the manufacture of biocomposites reflects the need for the circular economy for biocomposites while allowing them to be recycled and reused. It is noted that the development of biocomposite materials must be integrated into a circular economy model to ensure environmentally friendly and sustainable production. Such a conclusion supports the findings of the current research and the value chain member aims to achieve sustainable manufacturing processes [114].

The interest of industries in using biopolymers is also fueled by the sharp rise in the price of fossil-based raw materials (PP, HDPE, etc.) in recent months, as shown in Figure 8.

**Figure 8.** Global price increase in polypropylene (PP) from January 2020 to March 2021 (source: the authors based on [143]).

During the pathway toward sustainable materials use within industrial consumption, it is essential to recognize and address existing barriers and challenges. Researchers [144,145] have identified the main groups of barriers that currently hinder the development of sustainable value chains: among them, the insufficient critical mass of the production of sustainable plastics, relatively low demand for sustainable materials, lack of the economic justification and the technological feasibility for the development of recycling in this area, the comparatively high production costs, as well as a lack of proper technical and functional features, such as thermal instability as well as high oxygen and water vapor permeability. These are further issues relevant for both the academic society in planning future research directions with, for instance, the action research and experimentation methods aiming at the demonstration of practices and proving the feasibility and viability of the use of biocomposite materials. In addition, the desirability of industries to adopt new practices in using the biocomposite materials is essential and needs to be promoted, which is highly dependent on the technological possibilities and the economic interests of stakeholders. Researchers [144] have proposed various solutions that should help in this transition, including the following: (1) changing the general business mindset from the "firm-centric" or solo-preneurship practice to collaboration; (2) competing not with the price of products but the value proposition of the sustainability benefits and the general green nature of products; (3) reorganizing material flows and smart material solutions; and (4) companies sharing assets and developing common infrastructure instead of solely developing their own technologies.

The conceptual model developed above will require cross-functional coordination and collaboration. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly strengthened the digital capacity of different sectors [146]. These lessons learned and newly obtained digital capacities should be used for the adoption of digital technologies throughout the value chain encouraging innovations as well as more efficient and smart use of materials.

The COVID-19 pandemic has reduced various business activities and general consumption, leading to decrease in emissions; however, this progress is more due to the slowdown in economic growth [147]. The COVID-19 pandemic has created or exacerbated a number of consumption trends that business representatives should acknowledge and escalate in the future, including health, sustainability, the circular economy [145]. The adoption of these trends are outstanding issue within the packaging and in the supply chain as a whole.

Climate-neutral packaging and the product as a whole are expected to receive increasing attention in the near future not only for marketing purposes but also to improve their competitiveness and reduce the cost of the natural resource tax. It is important to

pay attention to the promotion of innovative industrial processes and the development of new technologies as soon as possible in order to stimulate the wider adoption and use of biocomposite materials [148].

The likely implications on business and policy and consumer trends are related to the need for the higher transparency and traceability of each process including the value chain of the sustainable consumption of renewable and biodegradable composite materials. For example, this could manifest as growing expectations between B2B suppliers and customers for the traceability of the material and product origin, increasing the public discussion of end customers in social networks and online media by retail customers regarding the use of specific materials and their origin. This is also likely to be the subject of research in the near future. In this context, the discussion on different aspects related to greenwashing should take place more often.

It is important for both smaller and larger companies now to think a step forward, implement a sustainability strategy, plan LCA in the development of new products, and thereby improve their competitiveness in the future.

The companies willing to move toward the sustainable industrial chain will have to incorporate economic, environmental, social, stakeholder, volunteer, resilience, and long-term directions within their strategies. The importance of all these issues and the necessity to adopt them is crucial in any organization belonging to the sustainable value chain [83,89].

Within such grand challenges as the COVID-19 pandemic, social issues related to general resilience first become crucial, which affects also industrial consumption. Yet, this study and the interviews of experts confirm the need to pay more attention to environmental issues in order to ensure the well-being of the earth and natural capital. Otherwise, the progress achieved within sustainable development will regress backwards with negative effects. Positively, those actors acknowledging the sustainable values and implementing the sustainability principles into their logistics, purchases, supplies, and other processes need to continue and even reinforce this path during such grand challenges as the COVID-19 pandemic. In turn, this is a signal to policymakers to strengthen the financial and nonfinancial support for the identification and implementation of sustainability principles in the supply chain of industrial customers and the total value chain of the B2B segment.

This research contributes to the theory and practice regarding the enablers and challenges for the use of biocomposites in the further transformation toward more sustainable consumption. This study highlights the research gaps that still need to be investigated regarding the impact of COVID-19 on the sustainable consumption of end consumers and their changing behaviors that confront the traditional less sustainable practices of industrial consumers.

In the coming years, the topic will not only be about how to rebuild the economy after the impact of COVID-19 but also how to make it more sustainable. At present, cross-sectoral cooperation and a willingness to help industrial companies understand environmental, social responsibility, and governance standards are particularly important.

The development of the sustainable value chain is largely linked to investments in ecoinnovations and the environmentally friendly technologies that are especially important in industrial regions neglecting sustainability challenges [149]. In this regard, government support at national, regional, and local levels is essential to strengthen the values of sustainable consumption and environmentally friendly production by creating a greater critical mass of the sustainable value chains within the industrial consumption and economic relationships.

Possible future research directions and current gaps identified after implementation of the research include but are not limited to the following:


**Author Contributions:** D.R.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Analyses, Investigation, Data curation, Visualization, Writing—original draft. A.S.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Visualization, Writing—original draft. I.U.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Analyses, Investigation, Visualization, Data Curation, Validation, Writing—original draft and editing, Supervision. J.B.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Validation, Writing—original draft, review and editing. D.A.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal Analyses, Validation, Writing—original draft, review and editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Resources. I.M.: Writing—review and editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Resources. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Latvian Council of Science, the project "The Impact of COVID-19 on Sustainable Consumption Behaviors and Circular Economy (Funding/Grant No. lzp-2020/2-0317)".

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Data available upon request.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.
