The study addresses the issue of how to make the waste-to-energy supply chain safe and sustainable, a fundamental aspect for developing circular economy models. This supply chain is complex and relatively unexplored compared to other sectors, and improving it requires strategies capable of managing future risks and uncertainties. The research proposes a new decision support framework that combines several advanced assessment methods. Data collected from industry experts allows us to identify the main challenges and the most effective strategies. The analysis shows that the most critical dimension is the environmental one: in particular, the difficulty of preventing pollution throughout the entire waste-to-energy life cycle. Among the mitigation strategies, the most effective is to optimize energy production from waste while minimizing emissions. The model developed also shows that, while respecting budget and time constraints, it is possible to apply some of the identified strategies simultaneously, achieving a significant impact. The results offer useful guidance to policy makers and can also be applied to other industrial sectors, such as food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and textiles, to encourage the adoption of practices designed from the outset to be circular.
