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Abstract

Türkiye's 2053 net-zero emissions target and the critical role of the manufacturing sector in this process necessitate an urgent examination of the financial impacts of circular economy (CE) practices. This study provides an exploratory analysis of the relationship between environmental burden and financial performance using 2023 data from 26 manufacturing companies in Borsa Istanbul. Given the difficulty of measuring holistic circularity at the company level, this study operationalizes the environmental dimension of circular economy performance using selected environmental burden indicators, including energy and water consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste generation. The study uses the alternative ranking order method accounting for two-step normalization (AROMAN) multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method to rank companies based on environmental metrics and a set of financial performance ratios. A subsequent Spearman correlation coefficient (SCC=-0.098) reveals an inverse relationship, whereby companies with lower environmental burden tend to exhibit weaker financial performance within this sample, which is not a statistically significant. This study contributes one of the first applications of the AROMAN multi-criteria decision-making method to benchmark environmental burden against financial performance in an emerging-market manufacturing context, offering a replicable analytical framework for future CE–finance research. Given the limited sample size (n=26) and single-year cross-sectional design, these findings should be interpreted as preliminary rather than generalizable. This paradox, in which lower environmental burden correlates with weaker short-term financial results, provides a critical hypothesis for future longitudinal research.

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