Reducing packaging waste is a critical challenge that requires organizations to collaborate within circular ecosystems, considering social, economic, and technical variables like decision-making behavior, material prices, and available technologies. Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) offers a valuable methodology for understanding these complex dynamics. In our research, we have developed an ABM to explore circular ecosystems’ potential in reducing packaging waste, using a case study of the Dutch food packaging ecosystem. The model incorporates three types of agents—beverage producers, packaging producers, and waste treaters—who can form closed-loop recycling systems.

Beverage Producer Agents: These agents represent the beverage company divided into five types based on packaging formats: cans, PET bottles, glass bottles, cartons, and bag-in-boxes. Each producer has specific packaging demands based on product volume, type, weight, and reuse potential. They select packaging suppliers annually, guided by deterministic decision styles: bargaining (seeking the lowest price) or problem-solving (prioritizing high recycled content).

Packaging Producer Agents: These agents are responsible for creating packaging using either recycled or virgin materials. The model assumes a mix of monopolistic and competitive market situations, with agents calculating annual material needs. Decision styles influence their choices: bargaining agents compare recycled and virgin material costs, while problem-solving agents prioritize maximum recycled content. They calculate recycled content in packaging and set prices accordingly, ensuring all produced packaging is sold within or outside the model.

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The purpose of this model is to enhance a basic ABM through a simple set of rules identified using the activity-driven models in order to produce more realistic patterns of pedestrian movement.

In Western countries, the distribution of relative incomes within marriages tends to be skewed in a remarkable way. Husbands usually do not only earn more than their female partners, but there also is a striking discontinuity in their relative contributions to the household income at the 50/50 point: many wives contribute just a bit less than or as much as their husbands, but few contribute more. Our model makes it possible to study a social mechanism that might create this ‘cliff’: women and men differ in their incomes (even outside marriage) and this may differentially affect their abilities to find similar- or higher-income partners. This may ultimately contribute to inequalities within the households that form. The model and associated files make it possible to assess the merit of this mechanism in 27 European countries.

The purpose of the model is to examine the strength of network connections in a ceremonial exchange network in a non-hierarchical society.

Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity has many strategic and operational objectives. One operational objective is to develop common and efficient information systems that maybe the source of creating

This is a first preliminary simulation model to model segregation in the city of Salzburg, Austria.

This model is a more comprehensive version of the original model; descriptions and expanations are added

In this model agents meet, evaluate one another, decide whether or not to date, if and when to become sexual partners, and when to break up.

This model implements a Spatial Prisoner’s Dilemma with the option to change whether agents interact deterministically or stochastically.

A simulation model on planned recycling agent behavior (PRB_1.0) which creates a virtual district with different agent types, waste generation and collection processes.