Circular Economy

"The WCED (1987) report Our Common Future, better known as "the Brundtland report", set out the values and principles that still frame the sustainable development debate. It was a positive response to the grave concerns raised in the 1960–70s by authors such as Meadows et al. (1972) for the Club of Rome, stating that “Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” Cited in Venenturf, 2021

The circular economy replaces the concept of a consumer with a user. This calls for a new contract between businesses and their customers based on product performance. (World Economic Forum)

A circular economy aims to design out waste. Waste does not exist: products are designed and optimized for a cycle of disassembly and reuse. These component and product cycles define the circular economy and set it apart from disposal and even recycling, where large amounts of embedded energy and labour are lost.

Circularity introduces a differentiation between consumable and durable components of a product. Consumables in the circular economy are made of biological ingredients or ‘nutrients’ that are non-toxic and may be beneficial, and can safely be returned to the biosphere, either directly or in a cascade of consecutive uses. Durables such as engines or computers, are made of technical nutrients unsuitable for the biosphere, such as metals and most plastics. These are designed from the start for reuse, and products subject to rapid technological advance are designed for upgrade

The energy required to fuel this cycle should be renewable by nature, again to decrease resource dependence and increase systems resilience.

In the circular economy growth and prosperity are decoupled from natural resource consumption and ecosystem degradation. By not from throwing away used products, components and materials, instead re-routing them into the right value chains, we can create a society with a healthy economy, inspired on and in balance with nature.

Ellen McArthur Foundation Value Creation

Eco-efficiency (traditional) begins with the assumption of a one-way, linear flow of materials through industrial systems: raw materials are extracted from the environment, transformed into products, and eventually disposed of. In this system, eco-efficient techniques seek only to minimise the volume, velocity, and toxicity of the material flow system, but are incapable of altering its linear progression. Some materials are recycled, but often as an end-of-pipe solution, since these materials are not designed to be recycled. Instead of true recycling, this process is actually downcycling, a downgrade in material quality, which limits usability and maintains the linear, cradle-to-grave dynamic of the material flow system.

Eco-effectiveness (transformative) proposes the transformation of products and their associated material flows such that they form a supportive relationship with ecological systems and future economic growth. The goal is not to minimise the cradle-to-grave flow of materials, but to generate cyclical, cradle-to-cradle ‘metabolisms’ that enable materials to maintain their status as resources and accumulate intelligence over time (upcycling).

4 sources of value creation

The power of circling longer refers to maximizing the number of consecutive cycles (be it repair, reuse, or full remanufacturing) and/or the time in each cycle. Each prolonged cycle avoids the material, energy and labour of creating a new product or component.

The power of pure inputs, finally, lies in the fact that uncontaminated material streams increase collection and redistribution efficiency while maintaining quality, particularly of technical materials, which in turn extends product longevity and thus increases material productivity.

The power of cascaded use refers to diversifying reuse across the value chain, as when cotton clothing is reused first as second-hand apparel, then crosses to the furniture industry as fibre-fill in upholstery, and the fibre-fill is later reused in stone wool insulation for construction—substituting for an inflow of virgin materials into the economy in each case—before the cotton fibres are safely returned to the biosphere.

Power of pure, non-toxic, or at least easier-to-separate inputs and designs: The power of this fourth major lever is a further enhancement to the above-mentioned value creation potential and offers an additional host of benefits. To generate maximum value, each of the above levers requires a certain purity of material and quality of products and components. Currently, many post-consumption material streams become available as mixtures of materials, either because of the way these materials were selected and combined in a previous single product or because they are collected and handled without segmentation and without regard for preserving purity and qualit

TED.com

The doughnot

A Circular Economy should be designed to thrive not grow!

Drivers and concepts

"Cradle to Cradle" design perceives the safe and productive processes of nature’s ‘biological metabolism’ as a model for developing a ‘technical metabolism’ flow of industrial materials. Product components can be designed for continuous recovery and reutilisation as biological and technical nutrients within these metabolisms.

“Industrial ecology" is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems”. Focusing on connections between operators within the ‘industrial ecosystem’, this approach aims at creating closed-loop processes in which waste serves as an input, thus eliminating the notion of an undesirable by-product. Industrial ecology adopts a systemic point of view, designing production processes in accordance with local ecological constraints whilst looking at their global impact from the outset, and attempting to shape them so they perform as close to living systems as possible.

Stahl's extenstion to cradle to grave proposes a "closed loop” approach to production processes with four goals: product-life extension, long-life goods, reconditioning activities, and waste prevention. .

It proposed selling services rather than products, an idea referred to as the ‘functional service economy’, now more widely subsumed into the notion of ‘performance economy’. Stahel argues that the circular economy should be considered a framework: as a generic notion, the circular economy draws on several more specific approaches that gravitate around a set of basic principles

Janine Benyus, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, defines her approach as ‘a new discipline that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems’. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example. She thinks of it as ‘innovation inspired by nature’. Biomimicry relies on three key principles:

Nature as model: Study nature’s models and emulate these forms, process, systems, and strategies to solve human problems.

Nature as measure: Use an ecological standard to judge the sustainability of our innovations.

Nature as mentor: View and value nature not based on what we can extract from the natural world, but what we can learn from it.

“Natural capital" refers to the world’s stocks of natural assets including soil, air, water and all living things. In their book “Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution”, Hawken et al describe a global economy in which business and environmental interests overlap, recognising the interdependencies that exist between the production and use of human-made capital and flows of natural capital.

John T. Lyle started developing ideas on regenerative design that could be applied to all systems, i.e., beyond agriculture, for which the concept of regeneration had already been formulated earlier. Arguably, he laid the foundations of the circular economy framework,

Complex System Theory van Der Leeuw

Humans cannot share energy and matter but are able to harness it by transforming the organization of their environment. By transforming the environment, there is a need to innovate new ideas to adapt into a new environment thus broadening humans’ availability to information by sharing and evolving new ideas together.

Energy and matter cannot be shared but are necessary for survival.

Information can be shared and shaped to evolve new ideas.

Problem solving increases information processing capacity.

In order to move into a more sustainable economic system, a recently more frequently discussed approach for overcoming the current linearity of product lifecycles is the concept of circular economy (CE). CE suggests keeping materials available instead of disposing them, and thus closing the loop of materials within the product lifecycle, in order to reduce resource usage and energy demand. Ritzén, 2017

Similar to sustainable development, circular economy is a fluid concept that is still evolving. Both literatures are rooted in the systems ecology literature of the 1960–70s and herein it will be argued that their shared history has led to their interrelation being assumed rather than made explicit. Velenturf, 2021

“The transition is “a disruptive nature, requiring new Solutions where current ways of working need to change.” They define “Innovation as a collective process of creating and realizing new values for customers; it is people who recognize opportunities and who develop and implement new ideas by engaging in transactions with others.” And they suggest “The organizational perspective on circular economy is not well explored, which is why a qualitative research method is found most suitable.” Ritzen, 2017

The power of the inner circle refers to minimizing comparative materials use vis-à-vis the linear production system. The tighter the circle, i.e. the less a product has to be changed in reuse, refurbishment and remanufacturing and the faster it returns to use, the higher the potential savings on the shares of material, labour, energy and capital still embedded in the product, and the associated externalities (such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water and toxicity).

The economic growth in an economy with a circular logic is no longer achieved by producing more products, but by keeping them available for a longer time, for example by maintaining instead of replacing them Ami, 2017

Geissdoerfer et al.2017 define the Circular Economy as a “regenerative system in which resource input and waste, emission, and energy leakage are minimised by slowing, closing, and narrowing material and energy loops. This can be achieved through long-lasting design, maintenance, repair, reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing, and recycling”.

Bocken et al. (2016: 309) categorise the characteristics of the Circular Economy by defining it as “design and business model strategies [that are] slowing, closing, and narrowing resource loops”.

Winans, 2017, the CE concept is interwoven with various other concepts, some of which predate it. This includes, Industrial symbiosis, Eco-city and Industrial ecology and systems theory.

Wood and paper waste management eg industrial symbiosis with a power plant, a water purification plant, waste water treatment plant, and a landfill.

Plastics -Lee et al. material flows of phthalates (chemicals used to make plastics) to address “upcycling” or maintained quality, “downcycling” or decreased quality, and “risk cycling” for presence of contaminants in waste streams.
Phorosous and Chemicals

Metals circularity of steel and iron and related industrial symbiosis networks including excess waste material and management in secondary vs. primary production steel that changes its quality or grade.

Agricultural waste animal-husbandry includes pharmaceutical, fertilizer, and agricultural industry in material reuse and recycling to reduce and manage waste streams and increase annual income

Water eycling within a closed-loop system if the materials added to the water throughout its use (and reuse) consider the long-term potential applications and quality of the water.

Scottish Edge

Businesses with innovative circular economy business ideas could be in the running for up to £100k support from Scottish EDGE thanks to a new funding award supported by Zero Waste Scotland. Circular Economy EDGE is a special award category introduced with Zero Waste Scotland funding to encourage and back entrepreneurs who are exploring circular ways of doing business.

Dow Jones Sustainability Indices

Seeks to measure "Corporate Sustainability"

Sustainable investement creates long-term shareholder value in an resource-constrained world

Design for disassembly and re-use;

Refurb offers an online marketplace where high-quality refurbished products from smartphones to computer monitors can be sold on, as brand new, reducing the amount of new products that need to be manufactured.

Green Valley Awards

Develop new technologies and business models that can advance modularisation;

Ecoplasteam uses their solution ‘EcoAllene’ to overcome the difficulty of separating material mixes, such as waste products like sweet wrappers, which consist of a metal and a plastic layer. This patented production process creates a versatile new ecological plastic material which can be used in clothing, paving stones or household items.

Prolong asset life;

Superseven, which has designed a 100 per cent biodegradable type of packaging made from cellulose. This prize includes a one-day workshop with the Seedmatch team, teaching the start-up how to create their own crowd campaign, whilst also offering a crowdfunding campaign on Seedmatch or Econeer (its sister platform).

Consider alternative materials and material reuse;

Aeropower - the world's first thermal packaging material made from surplus feathers.

Repag is the only plastic free printed film packaging throughout Europe which is verifiably 100% biodegradable.

Biomicracy

Biomimicry is the practice of looking to nature for inspiration to solve design problems in a regenerative way.

example portfolio

Circular fashion

Circular food

Regenerative Agriculture

Regenerative agriculture is an alternative means of producing food that, its advocates claim, may have lower—or even net positive—environmental and/or social impacts. Regenerative agriculture has recently received significant attention from producers, retailers, researchers, and consumers, as well as politicians and the mainstream media. Despite widespread interest in regenerative agriculture, no legal or regulatory definition of the term “regenerative agriculture” exists nor has a widely accepted definition emerged in common usage. Newton (2020)

Rhodes (2017) “regenerative agriculture has at its core the intention to improve the health of soil or to restore highly degraded soil, which symbiotically enhances the quality of water, vegetation and land-productivity.”

Building on conservation agriculture with additional practices, regenerative annual cropping can include compost application, green manure, and organic production. It reduces emissions, increases soil organic matter, and sequesters carbon.

Example: Project Drawdown claims that “regenerative agriculture enhances and sustains the health of the soil by restoring its carbon content, which in turn improves productivity—just the opposite of conventional agriculture,” and estimates that regenerative annual cropping could reduce or sequester 14.5–22 gigatons of CO2 by 2050 (Project Drawdown, 2020)

Building on conservation agriculture with additional practices, regenerative annual cropping can include compost application, green manure, and organic production. It reduces emissions, increases soil organic matter, and sequesters carbon.

Will the World Run out of Food?

Low Carbon Farming

Examples using waste treatment and greenhouses.

carbon sequestration, biomass, heat pumps, energy storage, hydrogen, biofuels

Conservation?

Digital Agriculture

Smart Tourist Destinations

Zero Waste

Community Pods

Greening

Additive Manufacturing^

Digital Twins

Distributed Energy schemes

Examples include startups like Vandebron in the Netherlands and Brooklyn-based Transactive Grid

Intelligent Assets

Asset Management

Maximising product lifetime and minimising new purchase through tracking an organisation’s assets, planning what can be re-used, repaired or redeployed at a different site.

Example Predictive modelling and maintenance

digital library of materials is sourced from connected buildings, which also provide information that allows predictive maintenance and effective sharing and utilization of space and energy consumption

Examples from Built 34 IOT Companies including cloud based comuting, location trackers, real time promotion and point of sales, mass alert systems.

Smart City Technololoes

Forbes 20 IOT Start-ups

consumer connected networks

Supply Chain Sustainability

example accelerator 100+

Smart mobility

Volvo On Call app

enables you, the vehicle owner, to share your vehicle with family members, friends and acquaintances without having to meet up to hand over the vehicle and keys

Ismagilova, 2019,Smart cities: Advances in research—An information systems perspective, Table One

Smartcitiesshould focus on how technology can act as an enabler to improvethe life of citizens rather than expecting technology by itself to en-gender change. Solutions that empower people via the use of IS basedtechnologies are likely to provide the greatest benefits ( Schaffers et al.,)

Most scenarios are forward looking; they extrapolate from the present towards the future. Three classes of scenarios or futures can be distinguished, [6,31,32], answering to the questions: what will happen (trend extrapolations; business as usual scenarios); what could happen (forecasting; foresighting; strategic scenarios) and what should happen (normative scenarios like those used in backcasting). Normative scenarios are also called desirable futures, visions, or future visions.

It facilitates letting go of past experiences and moving beyond the path dependencies of the present and turn towards the future “ with a clean sheet of paper” . This being a participatory exercise, participants could freely frame their topics and as it turned out they opted to search for an image of their industry that serves ecological and social goals. This was accompanied by an in-depth reflection on how they perceive their own roles in current society. The surprising nature of these results led us to the question whether it is the methodological framework of backcasting that in itself drives the emergence of a more radical, responsible and sustainable future vision of an industry.

"Whilst Asia remains ahead of the curve, legacy cities in the West, are feeling the pressure to upgrade ageing infrastructure. The COVID-19 pandemic, mounting sustainability commitments, resource constraints and continued urban growth are making a new case for investment." Barclays

Enabling technologies expedited shift to work from home is driving the need for reliable and secure high-speed connectivity.

Buildings and construction to mitigate climate change through automation.

Energy management and deployment of smart grids, microgrids and gamification apps to lower energy use.

Smart Water Management using just in time waste water collection, circular waste management and waste to energy system.

Smart cities use an IS centric approach to the intelligent use of ICT within an interactive infrastructure to provide advanced and innovative services to its citizens, impacting quality of life and sustainable management of natural resources. Ismagilova, 2019

A "regenerative City is powered by renewable energy and defined by a restorative and mutually beneficial relationship between cities and their hinterland. (Worlfuturecouncil 2016)

Urban-based economic activities account for 55% of Gross National Product (GNP) in the least developed countries, 73% in middle income countries and 85% in industrialised countries. (UN)

Regenerative cities mimic nature’s circular metabolism by operating in a closed-loop system that transforms waste outputs into inputs of value.

This will mean creating cities that not only deplete resources and damage ecosystems but that actively contribute to the regeneration of the natural resources they consume and the ecosystem services they rely on.

Circular economy linked to industrial symbiosis and automation.

Urban Design for Smart Cities

LIVABILITY

Equity

Ecology

Nutrition

Access

Waste

According to United Nations 2019, the urban share of the world population has increased from less than 30 percent in 1950 to 55 percent in 2018. The share is higher in more developed regions: for example, 74 and 82 percent in Europe and North America. Major cities typically form at some naturally advantageous locations, such as the locations of natural ports. However, such cities often continue to prosper even after the original advantage of the location disappeared. That is, the agglomeration is locked in at its initial location due to the second nature advantage accruing from positive agglomeration externalities. Bleakley and Lin 2012, Michaels and Rauch 2018, and Redding, et al. 2011 show evidence for such “lock-in” effects in the United States, France, and Germany, respectively. Mori, 2020 Agglomination

Extract Time Magazine Oct 2022

eZee

In India, home to 21 of the world's most polluted cities, many air pollutants come from the millions of auto-rickshaws that navigate congested streets. So power Global created the eZee subscription battery service for drivers who use cleaner electric rickshaws. Drivers receive a battery module with they can swap when depleted for charged one at a network of kiosks for roughly 2 to 3 hours a day that are saving of at least 30% per day compared with diesel or petrol costs.

Vicarious Surgical

Vicarious Surgical’s mission is to make surgery safer. The company created a robotic system featuring a camera and a 360-degree view. Surgeons wear a VR headset while controlling the robot’s two arms, each with 28 sensors for extreme precision. The starting point? A 1 .5 cm incision through which the robot enters the patient's body.

Esper Bionics

Capitalizing on advances in artificial intelligence and digital signal processing, Esper Bionics’ prosthetic hand is the first AI-powered, cloud-based robotic prosthetic that gets smarter over time. The lightweight device has up to 24 wearable sensors that detect and process muscle activity and brain impulses; machine learning from Esper’s platform enables the hand to act more “intuitively” over time. Esper Bionics CEO and co-founder Dima Gazda, a medical doctor and engineer, sees the prosthetic market as ripe for disruption—and setting the stage for a bionic future.

Gradient Windows

As the planet warms, more people need air conditioners—but traditional ACs use a lot of energy and exacerbate global warming. The Gradient ($1,999, pre-order for 2023 delivery) aims to break this doom cycle with style. The system uses an electric heat pump for warming and an environmentally-friendlier refrigerant for cooling. This reduces heating- and cooling-related carbon emissions by 50% to 80%, says Gradient CEO Vince Romanin. Sleek and silent, Gradient sits below window sills, improving on loud, light-blocking window ACs without requiring any retrofitting. Users control temperature settings via a companion app.

Streetbond Reflective Coating

n Pacoima, one of the hottest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, there are 10 square blocks where the pavement reflects sunlight instead of absorbing it. That asphalt—on streets, playgrounds, basketball courts, and parking lots—is covered with StreetBond. It’s part of a new urban heat island mitigation research project involving community groups and GAF, the roofing company that makes StreetBond. The water-based acrylic coating for asphalt contains a unique solar reflective additive that keeps pavement covered with the substance about 10 to 12 degrees cooler than uncoated surfaces, says Eliot Wall, StreetBond’s director of innovation. The nontoxic coating comes in 59 colors, extends the life of asphalt, and can be recycled. By the end of 2022, about 20 million square feet of pavement in the U.S. will be coated with solar reflective StreetBond.

Epic Water Cleantec.

Epic Cleantec provides real estate developers and building owners with turnkey onsite greywater and blackwater reuse systems that recycle up to 95% of a building's wastewater for non-potable applications, reducing utility costs and showcasing sustainability efforts.
Our technology produces three sustainable outputs:
Recycled water for non-potable applications Recovered waste heat energy Repurposed organic solids

Wealthy economies should abandon growth of gross domestic product (GDP) as a goal, scale down destructive and unnecessary forms of production to reduce energy and material use, and focus economic activity around securing human needs and well-being.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) suggest that degrowth policies should be considered in the fight against climate breakdown and biodiversity loss, respectively.

Introduce a green jobs guarantee. This would train and mobilize labour around urgent social and ecological objectives, such as installing renewables, insulating buildings, regenerating ecosystems and improving social care. A programme of this type would end unemployment and ensure a just transition out of jobs for workers in declining industries or ‘sunset sectors’, such as those contingent on fossil fuels. It could be paired with a universal income policy

Reduce less-necessary production. This means scaling down destructive sectors such as fossil fuels, mass-produced meat and dairy, fast fashion, advertising, cars and aviation, including private jets. At the same time, there is a need to end the planned obsolescence of products, lengthen their lifespans and reduce the purchasing power of the rich.

Improve public services. It is necessary to ensure universal access to high-quality health care, education, housing, transportation, Internet, renewable energy and nutritious food. Universal public services can deliver strong social outcomes without high levels of resource use.

Reduce working time. This could be achieved by lowering the retirement age, encouraging part-time working or adopting a four-day working week. These measures would lower carbon emissions and free people to engage in care and other welfare-improving activities. They would also stabilize employment as less-necessary production declines.

Enable sustainable development. This requires cancelling unfair and unpayable debts of low- and middle-income countries, curbing unequal exchange in international trade and creating conditions for productive capacity to be reoriented towards achieving social objectives.