These were the words of Frans Timmermans, First Vice President of the European Commission, as he addressed an assembly of more than 700 delegates in Brussels at last week’s conference on ‘Circular Economy: boosting business, reducing waste’. Things have certainly moved on since I last wrote on this issue. The mood is cautiously optimistic. The opportunities of circularity, it seems, have spread beyond DG Environment and been recognised by the arbiters of Growth and Jobs themselves (you can read the joint communication here which also outlines the chronic loss of value endemic in our current material economy).

The messages coming from Timmermans and Vella at the conference were clear: the circular economy is no longer a niche agenda, it is a mainstream path for change which is being embraced by enterprises across the world. It necessitates a move from low cost production to service provision, a longer term view of business, and a ‘holistic approach’ for which we must summon up our ‘collective imagination’ (Timmermans).

This focus on the far reaching benefits and enormous societal challenges of a circular economy was a welcome message coming as it did from the heart of the Commission. Trash may be turned into cash and new businesses grown as a result, but the circular economy is about so much more than redirecting our waste streams. It is about that over-used phrase, a paradigm shift, in the way in which we understand and participate in our daily lives. Timmermans was onto something when he suggested that profit should not be based on competing wage costs and competing quality of life. Competition at the individual level is necessary for progression, but at the societal level our diverse ecosystems must interact and succeed together, or not at all.

In its new report, released at the conference, The Ellen MacArthur Foundation likewise has shifted its attention from a dogged emphasis on financial gains for businesses towards a story of so-called ‘structural waste’. As Ellen put it in her rousing speech, this is a ‘bottom-up’ approach that looks at basic human needs through the lens of housing, food and mobility and finds gaping failures in efficiency. If all circular economy levers were fully engaged, we could free up €3,000 per household, achieve higher GDP and growth, all the while reducing our CO2 emissions and material use. And the levers? Regenerate, share, optimise, loop, visualise, exchange. Simple. All enabled by the technology revolution that is happening anyway.

And yet. And yet. If it were all that obvious, wouldn’t we be achieving it already? The danger of course, as highlighted by McKinsey’s Martin Stuchtey, one of the authors of the report, is that product innovation happens faster than systems innovation. That we create the perfect car for an imperfect transportation system; an eco-laptop that has no facility for eco-disposal; the most efficient plastic packaging for a system in which the very presence of plastic is questionable.

As well as product and business model redesign, we need a new way of redirecting the behaviours and cultures that underpin these habits of production and consumption. If we are to avoid short-term tweaks and recidivist heuristics, we must attend to the human barriers that are such a factor in our economic activities. Francesco Tramontin of Mondelez International and the EU brands association AIM alluded to this in his presentation as part of the afternoon session on the consumption phase. Consumer behaviour is not often rational, but brands (and the marketeers behind them) tend to have a special connection with their consumers. In redesigning our systems towards a more circular model, we need to consider redesigning these communications between brand and consumer – from selling stuff to selling value, from focusing on immediate cost to introducing the longer term benefit. In the same session Keith James, an economics expert responsible for some of the valuable number crunching and research coming out of WRAP, suggested that the debate on circular economy has to be not just rational but intuitive. It must make sense in policy and business terms, but must also appeal to a more personal, engaging side of the equation.

Over the last three years, the Great Recovery has come to be known for its engaging and design-focused work on circularity. We have heard from numerous sources that the project’s appeal is in its ease of access, its human scale and its effective communication. We have even been told that we are the ones making the circular economy sexy! This kind of communications-based, intuitive work is not easy to measure: the impact we have is often qualitative and difficult to trace. Nevertheless, the impact made by an impression or conversation, something that strikes the eye or ear and connects with a values system or emotion rather than a spreadsheet, is often longer lasting and further reaching in its nature. As Gerrit Bruggeman, a Chairmain of Dutch Design Week and CEO who took his own company on the journey towards Cradle to Cradle said to me the other week, the ‘hearts and minds’ part is the primary factor in any effort towards sustainability.

Ultimately, businesses, governments and economies are created for the service of citizens, and not vice versa. We all find ourselves acting as small cogs within much larger wheels, but when those wheels start to take on a life and a mandate beyond the requirements of a healthy and well balanced society, we need to think critically and to question the efficacy of their design. Despite the positive rhetoric in evidence at the Brussels conference, there is of course the risk that the short term and vested interests of those who shout the loudest will be heeded first and foremost. Timmermans, Vella, Katainen et al would do well to keep in mind their own commitment to take ‘concrete steps’ towards a circular economy – for the sake of jobs and growth, and for the future of our grandchildren.

The last word to Sirpa Pietikainen MEP, who spoke passionately and with humanity about the need for circularity. ‘It is not optional’, she said, and, just as ‘voluntary taxation does not work’, so the journey towards a circular economy must needs be a regulated one. But we have a fight on our hands: ‘if we do not speak out, then this is not going to happen’. The RSA Great Recovery will continue to speak out, to and through the design industry, and to empower the creation of our new economy.

The new package of measures on a circular economy in Europe will be release towards the end of this year. I would encourage everyone who has an interest in creating these more circular systems (that is, everyone) to respond to the current public consultation.

The UK Environmental Law Association has been asked by Defra (The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) to help them understand the legal impediments that hinder organisations becoming more ‘circular’ in their activities. To this end we are seeking businesses, NGOs, councils or any other organisations to contact us with problems they are experiencing or concerns they have that are preventing them from taking up the circular economy. This could be worries over liability or prosecution if they did act –  such as being anti-competitive or breaching duty of care – through to real barriers preventing action – such as international waste regulations. We would like to analyse these real-life situations to identify what can be done to overcome the problems now and suggest to Defra the alterations in statutory guidance and regulation needed to remove the obstacles altogether.

If you have a problem or concern that you think UKELA could help with, however confidential you wish it to remain, then please contact Angus Middleton at angus.middleton@landmark.co.uk

About UKELA

The UK Environmental Law Association is the UK forum which aims to make the law work for a better environment and to improve understanding and awareness of environmental law.  It is a registered charity (299498) and a limited company (2133283). Its charitable objects include promoting, for the benefit of the public generally, the enhancement and conservation of the environment in the UK and advancing the education of the public in all matters relating to the development, teaching, application and practice of law relating to the environment. This work includes encouraging collaboration between those interested in environmental law, collecting and disseminating information and identifying, advising and commenting on relevant issues.

UKELA Remit

We aim to accelerate the change of the UK economy to an efficient, circular model where resources are reused rather than thrown away. We are working with other organisations researching this area, so that our complimentary knowledge and skills can affect greater change than would our individual efforts. Guided by our partners, we will seek to reduce legal and regulatory impediments to a circular economy, both real and imagined, whilst promoting those aspects that foster circularity.

We were also able to hand him the recommendations from our recent roundtable on policy and legislation for circular economy, and we very much hope that these will be considered by manifesto writers and policymakers over the next few months!

Rogerson said:

“This government is committed to ensuring we use our resources more carefully and the UK is now producing less waste than ever before. We all have a responsibility to tackle waste and I congratulate Fab Lab and The RSA Great Recovery on its innovative workshops which can help businesses develop the skills they need to create new products out of existing materials. There are massive opportunities for businesses to make money from repairing, re-using and remanufacturing equipment to extend the life of products. Using our resources more carefully is not only good for the environment, it’s also vital to build a stronger economy and fairer society.”

It looks increasingly likely that the leadership we have come to expect from Europe in launching our fledgling circular economy is being scuppered by the new masters of Brussels and a contingent of business lobbyists. Just before Christmas, President Jean-Claude Juncker and his deputy Frans Timmermans decided what would be in and what would be out of the Commission’s Work Programme for 2015. And the circular economy, they decided, is out.

Last summer, a whole package of circular economy measures were announced by outgoing Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik. These included phasing out landfill, increasing household recycling to 70% by 2030 and streamlining a raft of legal requirements, definitions and targets. The measures were welcomed at the time by cities, green groups and some businesses – though several in the zero waste and circular economy communities also warned that they didn’t go far enough, and focused too much on ‘end of pipe’ rather than systemic or design-based solutions.

Now, however, it seems that the entire circular economy package has bitten the dust along with the outgoing Commissioners. In November, business lobbying group BusinessEurope (represented in Britain by the CBI) sent a paper to new Vice-President Timmermans arguing that, along with proposals for a financial transaction tax, increased maternity leave, gender balance on boards and stricter regulation of air pollution, the proposed legislation should be withdrawn. On 16^th December BusinessEurope, arbiter of growth and guardian of the free market, got their way, and the package was resigned to the dustbin of history.

This would be all well and good if the circular economy was, as some indeed view it, a mere passing fad, a yachtswoman’s fantasy. But it has been latched onto and is being pursued with intent by some of the most powerful corporates in the world (Apple, Unilever, IKEA and Cisco to name a few). Moreover, though BusinessEurope called for the intended circular economy package to be scrapped, without addressing the specific bills proposed, they did assert in mitigation that the legislation should be re-drawn ‘as an economic piece of legislation rather than from a purely environmental perspective’. In their words:

‘The circular economy dossier should take account of issues of wider economic interest (including manufacturing and product design, consumer affairs, research & innovation, security of supply and raw materials) as well as markets beside the environmental dimension which includes recycling, reuse or land-filling.’

This invites an interesting predicament. On the one hand, the initial dossier should certainly have taken a more detailed and definite approach in addressing the front end of resource use – i.e. design and manufacturing – and indeed the former Danish Environment Minister optimistically hopes that this suspension of the legislation will lead to its expansion. On the other hand, it is now recognised amongst manufacturing and waste companies and member states alike that the circular economy has significant potential for jobs and sustainable development, and that the Commission’s leadership in this area ‘is essential to create the right market dynamics to turn the circular economy into reality’. As Potocnik said when he announced the original measures in the summer,

“There will be a lot of people and businesses saying ‘not now, not yet, wait until we have more data’. But I have listened to those calls for many years and it just comes down to, either you start or you don’t start – but if we don’t start, we will constantly use excuses.’

The fear of many is that, despite reassurances to the contrary, this delay on circular economy legislation represents an attempt by the Commission to stall any progress in an area that can be seen as too complex and challenging to guarantee success. It is an area in which success will ultimately come from collaboration, communication and cooperation rather than competition, and for the business-as-usual gang that is a concept which is hard to understand. When in doubt, they fall backwards onto the model that went before, even though that model has been proved time and again to be flawed.

If it is ever to lead the fight in decoupling economic progress from environmental and social catastrophes, the circular economy needs the support of legislation from strong governments across Europe and beyond. And the voice of the UK Government on this issue has been deafeningly silent. Certain businesses will undoubtedly continue, as they are, to pioneer new methods and business models for resource efficiency, but they are crying out for leadership from their legislators. The proposals that had been tabled may not have represented the ideal ‘systems shift’ that we would wish for. But they were a starting point from which progress could be made, an indicator of how we meant to go on, and most importantly an attempt to bring together the battling interests of businesses, environments and people, in the short and long term. It is in all of our interests to support that. And the new leadership in Brussels would do well to take heed.

This latest report is packed full of positive and motivational insights that view re-manufacturing not just as a necessary business model but one with social, economic and environmental benefits.

Lib Dem MP Dan Rogerson began the launch by stating that global demand will triple by 2050. Our world lacks the resources to cope with this demand, and one of the problems lies in the definition of waste. The implication of waste is that it’s a lost cause, with which nothing can be done to reuse or salvage it. This attitude is itself a huge barrier to the potential of a circular economy and is one of the reasons that re-manufacturing is not more widely considered. In fact, the report revealed that

’54.4% of manufacturers are unaware of, or have not considered remanufacturing.’ (EEF unpublished data)

However, the report also says that there is motivation across the board to tackle this problem. Chris Holmes, managing director for waste and bio-energy at the Green Investment Bank, spoke about ‘circular finance’ and the view that we need a diverse range of investors for the diverse set of problems that we are facing, to provide increased incentives to businesses.

Shahin Rahimiford, Professor of Sustainable Practices at Loughborough and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Manufacturing and Recycling Technologies proposed that automated manufacturing practices need to be translated to automated re–manufacturing through, amongst other things, a decision report system, shared knowledge and better inspection. This way, the process is more viable and attractive to investors.

So what did the report have to say about the role of design in re-manufacture? Recommendation 21 states –

‘…government should encourage the development of sustainable design and sustainable engineering models and courses at university ’.

From my experience as a design graduate, the use of sustainable materials were encouraged as a preferable aspect of a design at my university, along with cost effectiveness and designing for mass manufacture, but students are not encouraged to think about the ‘end of life’ for a product? What might our consumer do with our design when it’s no longer needed or it’s broken? However this isn’t to say that designers do not jump to take up this challenge, as often the more boundaries there are, the more innovative their results.

David Fitzsimons of Oakdene Hollins says in the report –

‘Product designers are willing and able to respond to the challenges of remanufacture. The task for the government is to create the economic framework in which they compete to do so.’

The report goes on to point out the restrictions to design for remanufacture that come from two main sources. The first is the top-down systems within organisations who don’t include remanufacture as a necessity within a design commission. The second source is the training and education systems involved in engineering for remanufacture, that don’t place enough emphasis on material sustainability.

So isn’t this the answer? Before businesses can consider remanufacture, the option must be afforded to them by original designers and manufacturers that destine a product to be re-manufacturable – or not.. And as with all innovation, we need investment both to trigger the revolution and oil the wheels along the way.

It is good to see support for design as a part of the remanufacturing process, but in this 106-page report – as elsewhere – it is only given a peripheral mention.  We need to see more!

Download the report here

Over the two days, we heard from a spectrum of businesses, regional authorities and citizen groups who are tackling problems of waste in urban areas. Some of the most unexpected were also the most inspiring!

Goths rock out on waste

In Gothenburg, Sweden, Pal Martensson coordinates a waste ‘amusement park’ (his words) of 30,000 square metres which includes a restaurant, shops and community information centre. People bringing their rubbish to the tip are met by site workers who inform them that, in most case it’s not actually rubbish but valuable material, which can be sold in the shop or donated to local charities. Last year, the park held a ‘waste concert’ and an art exhibition, in which it auctioned off ‘rubbish’ paintings and raised money for local causes.

With a yearly turnover of £1.2m, not only is the park providing local jobs and contributing to the economy, it’s also changing the community’s attitude to its waste. By making waste disposal simple and fun, the city is generating new streams of social and economic value whilst also averting environmental damage.

One of the greatest joys, according to Martensson, is the delight shown on the faces of locals who discover that their old carpet, TV or fridge has a value and can be donated or sold for a good cause rather than joining the obsolescent hordes heading for landfill. This ‘feel good’ factor must not be underestimated, and Gothenburg demonstrates the importance of ingenuity and creative thinking in designing systems to deal with and divert waste streams.

Citizens, Smelting and Symbiosis

Another city pioneering new approaches to waste and resources is Amsterdam, with its 2014-18 ‘De Circulaire Metropool’ programme, and public-private partnerships spanning the harbour, water, energy and waste sectors that have started to lead the way on industrial symbiosis.

The seminal example of industrial symbiosis was given by a representative from Kalundborg, the 40-year-old Danish cluster of industries that evolved processes to share and benefit from each other’s waste streams. Not only do the companies share their wastes, but they also collaborate on funding for mutual innovation and test centres, and it is this system built on trust and communication between a diverse network of players – backed up of course by commercial agreements – that makes Kalundborg so special.

On the second day, we heard from the German VDI Centre of Resource Efficiency, which brings together the might of Germany’s main engineering association to provide resource efficiency tools and systems level processes for SMEs. We listened as Christian Hageluken, a director of Belgian firm Umicore which owns the largest smelter in the world, described the company’s journey from being merely a mining and smelting outfit to recovering 500,000 tonnes of precious metals from waste every year. He highlighted the need not only for innovation in technology, but also for new business models and stakeholder cooperation in ensuring a ‘systems approach’ to the logistics of materials processing.

Presentations from the Repair Café in the Netherlands and the Repair and Service Centre (R.U.S.Z.) in Vienna shone a light on the growing movement of citizen repairers who are raising awareness of planned obsolescence and enabling communities to realise new value from their broken appliances. Finally, Veronica Kuchinow, founder of ZICLA, told her remarkable story of revolutionising cycling in Barcelona through the design of the Zebra traffic separator from recycled waste.

A Messe ending

The Forum was rounded off by a visit to the vast Hannover Messe, where we saw examples of urban agriculture that combined office space with aquaponics. We were suitably impressed by the latest innovations in German industrial sewage systems, where gas from the sludge is used in a combined heat and power (CHP) plant to generate electricity and heat for nearby swimming pools and public buildings, as well as being processed into biogas and hydrogen to fuel vehicles.

When it comes to eliminating waste and pursuing a circular economy, the emphasis of the conference itself highlighted once again the need for new business and partnership models, and above all pointed to the critical stage of design as a catalyst for innovation.

You can download the report here.

http://linoit.com/users/ESKTN_John_Henderson/canvases/Networking%20the%20Great%20Recovery

Knowledge Transfer Networks drive the flow of knowledge within, in and out of specific communities. KTNs are funded by the Technology Strategy Board to bring together diverse organisations and provide activities and initiatives that promote the exchange of knowledge and the stimulation of innovation in these communities. The Environmental Sustainability KTN performs this role in the Key Application Area of Environmental Sustainability.

You can find the Environmental Sustainability resource page here:

https://connect.innovateuk.org/web/sustainabilityktn/document-library?p_p_id=20&p_p_lifecycle=0&p_p_state=normal&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=column-1&p_p_col_count=1&ns_20_struts_action=%2Fdocument_library%2Fview&ns_20_folderId=97795