This study evaluates the application of circular economy principles in the wine sector through a demonstrative case developed within the LIFE Climawin project. The initiative focuses on the local valorization of vineyard residues by producing biochar from vine pruning and using it to enrich compost derived from winemaking by-products and sheep manure. The combined application of these soil amendments aims to improve soil structure, enhance carbon sequestration, and reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers. A systemic evaluation was conducted using the Ecocanvas methodology—a conceptual framework for mapping circular business models across environmental, economic, and social dimensions. The analysis integrated a targeted literature review, examination of technical data, direct field observations of composting and biochar production, and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. Results indicate multiple benefits from localized residue valorization, including improved compost quality, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, potential contributions to long-term soil health, and enhanced resource efficiency. The analysis also highlights economic opportunities, such as reduced dependency on external inputs, and social value creation through local stakeholder engagement. Furthermore, the study identifies factors that enable or constrain the replication and scaling of this model. These findings contribute to frameworks for advancing circular, economically viable, and socially inclusive climate-resilient agricultural systems.

Sustainability certifications are increasingly embedded in the governance and competitiveness of the wine sector, yet their strategic role remains under‐theorised. This study conceptualises certifications as multidimensional strategic mechanisms and conducts a comparative analysis of 50 schemes used in the global wine industry. Drawing on information economics, the resource‐based view, dynamic capabilities and institutional theory, it develops a typology of five certification families and examines how they generate distinct forms of strategic value. The findings show that certification schemes prioritise different combinations of credibility, reputation, capabilities and legitimacy. These differences translate into distinct strategic roles, ranging from market signalling and competitive positioning to organisational development and institutional alignment, shaped by underlying trade‐offs across dimensions. By providing a structured typology and an integrated framework, the study offers a foundation for analysing certification systems as differentiated components of sustainability governance, with implications for managerial strategy and policy design.

This paper investigates how digitalisation and organisational innovation shape firms' routine environmental protection efforts in Spanish manufacturing. Using an unbalanced panel of 2348 firms and 7603 firm‐year observations from 2009–2023 drawn from the Survey on Business Strategies (ESEE), the study examines the determinants of current environmental protection expenditures as a recurrent form of operational green capability rather than radical eco‐innovation. The empirical analysis relies on panel‐data logit models that relate firm characteristics at time (2009–2022) to current environmental protection expenditures at time (2010–2023), with firm‐level controls and sector and period effects, and reports average marginal effects. The results show that digitalisation is strongly and consistently associated with routine environmental protection efforts. Firms that use robotics in production, invest in external ICT training and implement software‐based process innovations exhibit around 8–11 percentage points higher predicted probabilities of undertaking current environmental protection expenditures than otherwise similar firms. Organisational innovation, measured through the introduction of new work‐organisation practices, also displays a positive and significant association, with an average marginal effect of about 8–9 percentage points. Participation in EU research programmes is likewise positively associated with environmental protection expenditures, although this result applies to a relatively small share of firms and should be interpreted with caution, as it likely reflects the behaviour of a self‐selected subset of highly capable, outward‐oriented firms. The findings indicate that digital and organisational capabilities, together with cooperative engagements, act as key enablers of operational green practices, even though interaction terms provide only weak evidence of strong complementarities in this specific outcome. The paper contributes novel firm‐level evidence on how the twin green–digital transition materialises in ongoing environmental management within a manufacturing sector dominated by SMEs in Spain, shifting attention from one‐off eco‐innovations towards the stabilisation of everyday environmental routines and highlighting the role of capability bundles in supporting sustained environmental protection efforts.