by Lisa DiCaprio, Conservation Chair, Sierra Club NYC Group
(Author's Note: The circular economy is expanding and now involves virtually all sectors of the global economy. In Part II of this article, which will appear in a future issue of the Sierra Atlantic, I will discuss examples of the circular economy relating to plastics and packaging, textiles and clothing, food and materials.)
The circular economy is a form of biomimcry — innovation inspired by nature. [1] Currently, the global economy is based on a linear model of production, consumption and waste. By contrast, the circular economy imitates the circularity of nature, in which everything that dies and decomposes becomes a nutrient for new life.
In 2010, Ellen MacArthur formed the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to promote the circular economy. In her 2015 TED Talk, “The surprising thing I learned sailing solo around the world,” MacArthur discusses how her experiences as a champion sailboat racer inspired her appreciation for finite planetary resources and commitment to transforming the “operating system” of the global economy: “. . . Your boat is your entire world. And what you take with you when you leave is all you have . . . No experience in my life could have given me a better understanding of the definition of the word finite. What we have out there is all we have. There is no more. And never in my life had I ever translated that definition of finite that I'd felt on board to anything outside of sailing until I stepped off the boat at the finish line . . . Suddenly, I connected the dots. Our global economy is no different. It’s entirely dependent on finite materials that we only have once in the history of humanity.”
As the Ellen MacArthur Foundation website, “What is the Circular Economy?,” explains: “A circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems.” The first principle is the most important because a product’s design, which includes the selection of raw materials, such as the fibers chosen for clothing [2], determines its durability and potential for circularity: repair, reuse, remanufacture and recycling. In a diagram of the circular economy, recycling is represented as the outer circle, as it is an energy-intensive process that typically downgrades materials. [3]
The concept of a circular economy incorporates several historical and contemporary theories about nature and the economy. According to the foundation’s schools of thought website, “They include the functional service economy (performance economy) of Walter Stahel; the Cradle to Cradle design philosophy of William McDonough and Michael Braungart; biomimicry as articulated by Janine Benyus; the industrial ecology of Reid Lifset and Thomas Graedel; natural capitalism by Amory and Hunter Lovins and Paul Hawken; and the blue economy systems approach described by Gunter Pauli.”
Today, companies, cities, governments, non-profits and nongovernmental organizations throughout the world are demonstrating the feasibility of a circular economy that protects plant and animal species, ecosystem services and natural resources. In her article, “Doughnut Economics,” Kate Raworth, the author of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017), emphasizes: “The focus on GDP growth is clearly long past its due date. The global crisis of environmental degradation and extreme human deprivation urgently demands a better starting point for economy theory and policymaking.”
Factors facilitating the circular economy include:
Technical innovations in circular product design.
Circular economy commitments by companies and governments.
Multidisciplinary collaboration within and across industry sectors.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which may be mandatory or voluntary, in which the producer assumes responsibility for financing the costs of recycling a product or its end-of-use disposal.
Political and economic support by local governments for establishing and maintaining recycling facilities in the US. [4]
Municipal or county government initiatives that promote and, optimally, mandate organic waste recycling. [5]
The product-as-service model that replaces the purchase and ownership of a product by a consumer with a pay-per-use leasing contract between the user and the manufacturer responsible for the product’s maintenance and disposal. This model creates an incentive for companies to design durable products that can be repaired.
Expanding opportunities for the repair and/or resale of used products. [6]
Shared economy initiatives based on borrowing rather than owning products.
Government procurement programs that require the purchase of products with recycled content.
Initiatives to reduce plastic pollution, such as bans on single-use plastic bags and bottles.
Green certifications of products that facilitate consumer choices based on sustainability.
Cost/benefit analyses, such as the social cost of carbon. [7]
Circulytics, a new form of metrics to measure circularity. [8]
Global circular economy forums and initiatives, such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Circular Economy in Cities, the World Economic Forum Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy, the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, and the World Circular Economy Forum 2019
NOTES
1. See my article, “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature — Educational Resources,” in the Fall 2019/Winter 2020 Sierra Atlantic.
2. Clothing used to be made from natural fibers, such as cotton, hemp, wool and flax, while synthetic fibers are a relatively recent invention. As Tatiana Schlossberg explains, “Whether it’s polyester, fleece, spandex, elastane, nylon or acrylic, our clothing is made, more and more, of crude oil that is turned into polymers (chains of identical molecules linked together), which are then whirled into fibers and knitted together to make fabric and sewn into the shapes that we wear all the time. More than 60 percent of all of our textile fibers are now man-made synthetics, derived from oil, a dramatic change over the last few decades. It was only around 2007 that synthetic fibers, mostly polyester, surpassed cotton to make up the majority of the fabrics we wear.” See, Inconspicous Consumption: the environmental impact you don’t know you have (Grand Central Publishing, 2019), 140.
3. For example, reusing glass bottles only requires collecting, sanitizing and redistributing the bottles. Several products, such as wine, are sold in identically shaped bottles that do not have to be returned to a specific company. By contrast, recycling glass bottles is an energy-intensive process that requires these steps: transporting the bottles to a recycling center and then to a glass processing company, where the bottles are crushed, washed and sorted by color; mixing the cuttle (the industry term for furnace-ready glass) with sand, soda ash and limestone; and melting all of these raw materials at a high heat in a furnace that is typically fueled with natural gas. See, Glass manufacturing is an energy-intensive process mainly fueled by natural gas,” US Energy Information Administration (EIA), August 21, 2013.
4. See Sims Municipal Recycling, the Lower East Side Ecology Center and Cooper Recycling (for construction and demolition debris) in NYC.
5. The recycling of organic waste, which comprises about one-third of NYC’s residential waste stream, is currently voluntary, but could become mandatory. See Anne Barnard, “Mandatory Composting in New York? It Could Happen,” The New York Times, March 13, 2020.
6. In March 2020, the European Union (EU) introduced a Green Deal policy package that expands the “right to repair” obligation, previously imposed on manufacturers of large appliances, to the manufacturers of electronic products. The “right to repair” is a key aspect of the EU Circular Economy Action Plan. See, Elian Peltier, “Europe Wants a ‘Right to Repair’ Smartphones and Gadgets,” The New York Times, March 13, 2020. The article quotes Virginijus Sinkevicius, the EU’s environment commissioner: “The linear growth model of ‘take-make-use-discard’ has reached its limits . . . We want to make sure that products placed on the EU market are designed to last longer, to be easier to repair and upgrade, easier to recycle and easier to reuse.”
7. See my article, “The Social Cost of Carbon & Why It Matters,” in the summer 2018 Sierra Atlantic.
8. See the Ellen MacArthur Foundation website Circulytics — measuring circularity
KEY RESOURCES: Videos, Websites and Books
Ellen MacArthur, TED Talk, March 2015, “The surprising thing I learned sailing solo around the world.”
Kate Raworth, TED Talk, May 14, 2018, “A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not to grow.”
Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, “Big Question: What is Nature Worth?” November 22, 2010.
Janine Benyus, TreeTV, “Biomimicry,” September 11, 2015.
Ellen MacArthur Foundation, “Completing the Picture: How the Circular Economy Tackles Climate Change” (2019)
World Economic Forum Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy
Annie Leonard, The Story of Stuff
Walter R. Stahel, The Circular Economy: A User’s Guide (Routledge, 2019).
Tom Szaky, The Future of Packaging: From Linear to Circular (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2019).
Hunter Lovins, Ellen Franconi, Ken Webster, A New Dynamic 2 – Effective systems in a Circular Econony (Ellen MacArthur Foundation Trading LTD, 2016).
Stefano Della Torre, Sara Cattanco, Camilla Lenzi, Allessandro Zarelli, Editors, Regeneration of the Built Environment from a Circular Economy Perspective (Springer International Publishing, 2019).
Peter Lacy, Jessing Long, Wesley Spindler, The Circular Economy Handbook: Realizing the Circular Advantage (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
For my previous Sierra Atlantic articles on topics relating to this column, see
“High-rise Passive House in NYC”
“Initiatives to Reduce Plastic Pollution”
“Ecological Footprints and One Planet Living — Educational Resources”
“The Social Cost of Carbon & Why It Matters”
“The Drawdown Project to Reverse Global Warming”
“Carbon Footprints and Life-cycle Assessments — Educational Resources”
"Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature — Educational Resources"
Return to Spring 2020 Sierra Atlantic