Eco-Industrial Parks in the Palm Oil Industry: A Systematic Literature Review on Circular Economy and Sustainability Practices

As the world's largest palm oil producer, Indonesia has not only a significant economic opportunity but a huge environmental responsibility. Although the palm oil sector constitutes a major sector earning foreign income for the country and providing employment, it generates massive biomass waste. Incorporation of Circular Economy (CE) strategies, such as recover, reuse, recycle, and by-product valorization, provides a potential vehicle to help turn these wastes into renewable energy, organic manures, building materials, and biofuels, with both environmental conservation and long-term economic viability across the supply chain. This study utilizes a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach using PRISMA guidelines to synthesize 39 scientific articles from 2020-2025 discussing CE and Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) in the palm oil industry in Indonesia. A novelty is the combination of bibliometric mapping with thematic analysis to provide multidimensional synthesis, which discovers three dominant focus areas: (1) Biomass Utilization, (2) Circular Economy Applications, and (3) EIP Conceptualization. CE practices in these dimensions are broadly classified in Table 1 as energy recovery (e.g., biogas from POME), material reuse (e.g., composting EFB, application of POFA in construction), and process optimization (e.g., value chain integration and multi-stakeholder collaboration under EIPs). This study concludes that the structured adoption of CE principles through EIPs can significantly enhance environmental and economic outcomes in Indonesia�s palm oil industry. Future research should focus on quantitative CE indicators and the development of localized EIP models tailored to regional contexts.