Think Circular
By: Estiem Lg Coimbra
Tags: Economy, Economics, Circulareconomy, Ecology, Sustainability

Earth climate had its changes throughout the history, with climate changes mainly related with variations on Earth’s orbit. But this time, this is not the case. NASA points out that the currently climate change has greater than 95% probability to be result of human activity since the 20th century.

Now, try to imagine a future where the human prosperity is not translated into sacrificing the sustainability of the next generations. Is it possible?

The human action and decisions are mainly based on how others have acted before, even if some of those methods failed. One of these logical beliefs is that going in a straight line is always the most effective path. The problem here is what is in the end of that straight line. Linear economy summarises the traditional commerce model (take, make, dispose).

A very known story of how linear economy works is the story of Osram, General Electric, Associated Electrical Industries and Philips. All together had a secret pact to manipulate the market. Light bulbs exceeded 2500 hours and improving was still advancing. But the companies were convinced that with the coming of an eternal bulb, it would spell disaster in the market. So, what did they agree? They promised that none of their light bulbs would ever exceed a lifespan of 1000 hours.

But what if we change it to a circular concept? The circular economy offers opportunities for a better growth through an economic model well distributed, diverse and inclusive. It is based on three principles: design waste and pollution, keep products and materials use and regenerate natural systems. When we recycle, we return that material to its raw state which means that it will be less useful that it would be if it was repaired, for example. The less we have to change a product, the better. Economically speaking, you are spending less energy, less material and labour. Therefore, we need to create cleaver business models and cleaver distribution and redistribution services to make sure that those components are kept as close as possible to the user.

To satisfy all global needs, we emitted 59.1 billion tons of Greenhouse Gases in 2019. 70% of GHG emissions are directly related to material handling and use, from the extractions and transportations to its processing and use. So, this means that by applying circular strategies, we can cut the excessive material consumption and reduce the tons of GHG emitted every year, unnecessarily. The emissions x-ray shows that, only by doubling circularity (from 8.6% to 17%) we could reduce global emissions by 29% by 2032, reduce total material footprint by 28% and ensure we steer below a 2ºC temperature rise. We are only talking about a branch of sustainability. Imagine this together with the penetration of renewables, for instance.

Despite some encouraging progress at the local level, the efforts to reduce waste and improve its management across the EU are still weak. EU is currently consuming more than its fair share of natural resources (three planets to support our consumptions). Circular economy rate is now around 11% in the EU, showing no significant improvement in the last half a decade. So, change must be done.

Exemplifying with a mobile phone: half of the periodic table is on your phone; the average use time of a mobile phone is 2,5 years and most of those phones end in a landfill (85%). So, there is a huge material loss with them not turning back into the system. So, what are the things you cando to reduce these losses? First, we have maintenance, which is much more beneficial that any other option, because you are keeping the material in the way they were designed. Secondly, reuse or redistribute, selling it. Thirdly, remanufacturing, you send back to the manufacture and it returns to the system as it was a brand new material. For obvious reasons, it requires more energy, labour and materials than it requires to repair. Lastly, recycle you lose quite a lot of the material, but much of the material that is not lost, ends up returning into the system as a virgin material.

In the EU, 85% of mobile phones were thrown away, 6% were reused and 9% recycled. That represents about $500M of material lost per year. If this average changed to 50% of phones thrown away, it would result in $1B manufacturing cost savings, $60M energy cost savings and 1.3M tonnes of CO2 emission savings. So, we can achieve a lot just by doing a few things differently, rethinking the economy.

You probably heard about the 4th industrial revolution, which is dedicated to automation, artificial intelligence…a new bust of technologies that help us to simplify the processes and that replace many human tasks by robots. Now, that we humans have time to learn and innovate more, it is important to develop new technologies that are important for a future civilization. It’s time for a 5 th revolution, a transition of our planet back to a sustainable future.

This new revolution is about transforming the value chain into a circular way of producing, transforming the thinking and behaviour of investors, leaders, organizations, markets and people. It is time for a new revolution where we design a positive impact for communities, nature, and society. We’ll protect species, we’ll create equality among humans, and we’ll protect the future of new generations.

The best way to change is now through circular economy. So, be the change and think circular