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The Principles of Circular Economy
141 Plays11 months ago
Nearly 110 billion tons. This is the amount of material extracted from Earth in 2024 alone, according to the Global Resources Outlook by the United Nations Environment Program. The stark increase from approximately 30 billion tons in 1970 underlines the accelerating pace of global consumption.
A circular economy is vital for a sustainable future. It challenges the traditional, linear "take-make-waste" model, advocating for a system where resources are reused, repaired and recycled extensively. This method not only reduces waste but ensures that we maximise the utility of materials throughout their lifecycle.
Mathilde Legay, Circular Economy Strategist at LGI, is the guest of this episode’s Pardon My Planet podcast. She brings deep insights into how businesses and individuals can adopt circular practices, and shares innovative strategies that are making significant impacts that contribute to a more sustainable future.
More information on: lgi.earth/podcast
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Transcript
Introduction to Circular Economy
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pardon My Planet podcast. I'm Anshalot, your host, and today we will explore and try to understand better the notion of circular economy. 106 billion tons. That is the global material extraction from the planet Earth in 2024. It's a number from the Global Resources Outlook from the United Nations Environment Program.
00:00:32
Speaker
To compare, it was 30 billion in 1970, and the global consumption keeps accelerating. Circular economy is vital for a sustainable future. It's all about moving past the old way of doing things, where we just make, use and then throw away. Instead, it focuses on getting the absolute most of materials during the whole life cycle, cutting down on waste and making our resources go further.
00:00:59
Speaker
To talk about this fascinating subject, we welcome Matid Logis, Circular Economy Strategist at LGI.
Types and Challenges of Waste Management
00:01:05
Speaker
Hello Matilde. Hello Angela, it's really happy to be here. When we hear this gigantic number of 106 billion tons of materials, we can imagine that a huge part turns into waste. What type of waste are we talking about?
00:01:22
Speaker
So there are of course different types of waste depending on the countries we are in. I would say the most common waste that we think of is plastic. In 2019 we produced about 29.1 million tonnes in the world and right now
00:01:40
Speaker
only 9% of the plastic waste is recycled and 22% is mismanaged. Of course, we see also a lot of electronic waste. In 2019, it was estimated to have about 53.6 million tons of e-waste produced globally. This amount is going to increase as we have
00:02:03
Speaker
more and more electronics coming.
Core Principles of Circular Economy
00:02:06
Speaker
And we see, of course, that we do have lots of waste that are coming from the building industry, of course, from the textile industry as well, and from the food industry that are aluminum and paper.
00:02:20
Speaker
That is terrifying numbers to hear clearly, and so some end up in waste, but some of those materials that we extract end up in a circular economic system, which is good. But what are the core principles making us say, okay, this is circular economy?
00:02:38
Speaker
Circular economy means rethinking the entire value chain. It means moving away from the take, make, waste linear economy. Circular economy relies on three different principles. The first principle is to design a product taking into account that we can design out waste and pollution from the product or the process.
00:03:03
Speaker
Plus it can be valued to make clothes or to make insulation panels in the construction industry. And yes, it doesn't end up in waste and then it avoids the fact that we are producing materials out of
00:03:19
Speaker
finite resources. The second, I think, is the most important one. It's the fact that we need to keep products and materials in use as much as we can. And the last principle is
Innovative Projects and Examples
00:03:34
Speaker
on the regeneration of natural systems.
00:03:37
Speaker
It's a shift, meaning that we are moving from extraction to regeneration. So we are producing nest waste so we can let the natural thrive. And in that way, we are enabling the regeneration of ecosystems and protecting nature.
00:04:01
Speaker
So what about those who wish to take those principles and apply them to try to create a circular economy circuit? What should they take into account? That's a very good question. It starts in the design of the product and the choice of the material to put in it.
00:04:20
Speaker
If you are about to design a product, try as much as possible as having a product that lasts for a long time and that uses materials that are coming from another resource that can be a waste elsewhere. So let's start from the design phase.
00:04:42
Speaker
Thinking about the life cycle of the product, it's important to keep in mind that it could be good to have a product that can be reused. We can also talk about resource valorization. In terms of resource valorization, it means using a by-product or a side stream to do something else. So for example,
00:05:03
Speaker
As you may have heard in the first episode of Pardon My Planets, you do have an example that is a BL2F project, a black liquid to fuel project, that enables the fact that you can use a side stream of the paper, the perp and paper industry,
00:05:24
Speaker
to make advanced biofuels for aviation. So it has a huge decarbonization potential, about 90-80% compared to kerosene. Other examples of resources variation include different valorization of
00:05:44
Speaker
of residues. For example, in the BioRecover project, we see the variation of book site residues into rare elements. And you do have other types of examples in other projects. But basically, the bi-products are also equally important and sometimes can be valorized in other ways and bring more economic values than it is done right now.
00:06:15
Speaker
Recycling, I guess, is also a principle that you should not forget, right? Most people say, OK, circular economy is recycling. OK, that's why I bring it as the last point after talking about life cycle extension reuse and resource prioritization, because recycling is, of course, part of circular economy. But before you do have all those other principles,
00:06:40
Speaker
And in terms of recycling, of course, you can do it in different ways. I think we need to be smart about recycling. We need to take into account the trade-offs. It's a process. And so it takes energy. And of course, there are carbon emissions. It can have also impact on biodiversity, depending on chemicals that are released, either in water or in the soil, et cetera.
00:07:08
Speaker
So recycling is not a green option per se. And so it means also that you don't have to blindly apply those principles.
Designing Long-lasting Products
00:07:19
Speaker
You have to really think, as you said, as the whole design of the process as well, that you apply them for real, not just to say, I've done something circular.
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. We need to be smart about thinking that there are really easy loops that are okay too. For example, in the battery industry, we tend to think that we need to do the great big technological loop to recycle the components of the battery.
00:07:48
Speaker
But also what we need to think about is really what the consumer needs and to be really practical about if there are small loops that can benefit from the visualization of the
00:08:04
Speaker
of the materials. And when we think about circular economy, like you said, every time we think, oh, this is recycling and that's it. But the other aspect that we tend to overlook is the long lasting materials. Can you explain how do we make this happen? Sure. When we focus on long lasting materials, the first example that comes to my mind is, of course, fur phone.
00:08:31
Speaker
So, for a fund, they exchange all the work life of the product and make these five years warranty and trade fund guarantees to have updates of the software and everything related to safety up to 2031, which means that now we're on 2024, you have seven years and at the same time you will avoid
00:08:51
Speaker
environmental impacts that are behind the generation of the new phone. And while we are talking about long-lasting materials,
00:09:04
Speaker
One thing that is often not talked about is the fact that the user of the product also can do something that makes the product last longer. They recommend to always keep charge between 80% and 20%.
00:09:23
Speaker
using slow charge more often than quick charge. Low score is a good example because I think we've all been there. A lot of people know that there is an environmental impact but feel kind of powerless doing anything about it.
Challenges and Opportunities in Circular Economy
00:09:36
Speaker
And really the fact of having products that stay in longer use has a lot of power in circular economy.
00:09:45
Speaker
Again, if you think of having a phone that lasts for five years instead of three years, it's almost you're avoiding another phone. If you're having an EV battery that lasts for 15 years instead of eight years,
00:10:02
Speaker
It's almost double the life of the battery. But when we try to design maybe a project or we try to make a visualization of materials, I guess it can be quite challenging. So what type of challenges maybe do they usually face when they want to try to apply those principles?
00:10:22
Speaker
I think it's really a shift in mindset when we are producing, we are designing a product to think, okay, I'm going to design a product that lasts longer. Then we are not going to sell as much as we used to sell. If we are talking about, okay, having
00:10:45
Speaker
For example, clothes that last longer, it's a shift in mindset in thinking, okay, if I design as a company products that last longer, how do I generate revenues? And for recycling, I think another challenge is the benefits of recycling is really getting rid of the waste.
00:11:13
Speaker
The challenge behind that is for sure that sometimes we don't know what is in this waste. We don't know the product specificities and for that there is a need for more traceability of where the product is, but also what components are within the product. And I think there is a lot of effort being done on traceability at the moment that seems to be
00:11:41
Speaker
part of the solution too and yeah. So yeah it can be quite challenging but what are maybe the opportunities as well to make you want to make this shift in mindset? Is it on the business side for example? Is it a new way to interact with customers for example?
00:12:03
Speaker
You do have so many other types of business models that are on relying on the functionality. So the examples that come to my mind are, of course, the printer. Now you no longer need to pay for
00:12:20
Speaker
for the cartridge, but you pay for how much you print per month. You also have different types of service. You can, for example, rent your bike instead of buying your bike.
00:12:37
Speaker
for companies that are selling, for example, B2B products. They see an interest in having circular economy since they can either find a way to valorize resources that they had to pay for for the end of life. They can have collaboration with other companies. They can also have sandwiches between their decarbonization roadmap and circular economy sources.
00:13:06
Speaker
They see also an interest in this and also behind it also a way to have a good reputation behind that.
Conclusion and Further Resources
00:13:18
Speaker
Thank you very much Mathilde for taking the time to answer my questions. I'm sure the listeners as well will be very inspired by all the examples you gave on how to apply circular economy in their daily lives.
00:13:31
Speaker
by extending the life of products, reuse, recycle. If you want more information on the subject or if you want to discover innovations that use circular economy, you can visit the website lgi.earth. Thank you for listening. Until next time, bye-bye.