Ellen MacArthur Foundation

In a circular economy model, production aims to have as little impact as possible on the environment by leaving less of a footprint and you stop waste being produced at all.

As the Ellen MacArthur Foundation explains it, you start off by designing the products out of three circular principles.

Eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials and regenerate nature.

So one of the fundamental aspects we need to understand is what impact the materials have on our environment.

Recycling is supposed to be the circle of last resort.

And most days, I wish the Ellen MacArthur Foundation did never put it on the butterfly diagram.

I wish it left it off.

It plays an important role in circulating materials, but the recycling economy has had almost 60 years to prove that it works.

Yes.

And one of the most prominent frameworks the paper looks at is the RESOLVE framework, originally developed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

RESOLVE.

That's an acronym.

ECOS, Environmental Coalition of Standards 2001.

Ellen MacArthur Foundation, nine years later in 2010, sort of, again, of Dame Ellen MacArthur, which is sort of widely considered to be like the... predominant but very specifically circular economy-focused NGO that's really pushing this.

Then we get into Circle Economy.

Then we get into Circular Economy Club, CEC, in 2012.

And what we did there was to try to do three things.

One was to pair circular with regeneration because within the definition of circular economy that we were using from really important, um, field builders like the Ellen MacArthur foundation, like regeneration is kind of is, is part of that similar with Kate Raworth and the donut economics.

Um, you know, she talks about regenerative and distributive economy.

So we wanted to pair regeneration with circularity in order to really pick up on there is something interesting here because regeneration is also about actively fixing the problems, not just restoring things and bringing them back to the way that they have been.

And there I was always interested in the sort of the interaction between, you know, natural resources, the economy, sustainability.

And I spent a day actually with Ellen MacArthur, you know, the round the world sailor, founder of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

And she was going around the World Economic Forum sort of pitching circular economy to various stakeholders.

So I heard her pitch for circular economy about 10 times in the day and we had lunch together and it was a real masterclass in it and it really got me interested, right? And so since then I've been hooked and I've always believed in that sustainability circular economy is really about finding that crossover between something which where we can have a really positive environmental and sustainability impact, but at the same time also have a positive business impact.

Believe it or not.

Doesn't sound terribly exciting, does it? But according to a recent analysis by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, China's new circular economy strategy reveals another important piece of a massive and complicated policy jigsaw because China is now explicitly linking the circular economy with national resource security.

Which makes quite a lot of sense when you think about it.

As we all know only too well, China spent the last decade or so manufacturing enormous quantities of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles and electricity infrastructure.

And then maybe from the store or online, you buy that and it comes to your hand.

So as you can see, let's say if you now decide to actually replace the new one so that actually not only the end of life conversation that we are having but also the all the process that it has been taken because circular economy and zeros started from the resource extraction and design how can we prevent resources so it is actually more broader than the end of and there's a facts around it it's not like i'm just claiming it ellen macarthur foundation the philanthropic organization working circular economy around the world so one of their study actually showed that if you now consider the whole life cycle product of material uh the land requirement and food and others all of those actually combinedly accounted for 45 percent of greenhouse gas emissions Now, 45% is a big number when you talk about climate change.

And this is why my understanding is like now Zero Waste and circular economy is a theme day for COP conference because it has a significant importance.

And I think I'm right in saying that one of the reasons why that theme was chosen also as a key issue to be addressed in COP31 was because the president of Turk Air's wife has established the Zero Waste Foundation.

And there's a lot of research to prove that, a lot of work from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation at the moment.

We can see tens of trillions of flexible plastic packaging items being produced each year, around 850 billion plastic sachets, which is that format which you've mentioned.

And about 0% of those are recyclable.

The Paperflex Consortium was announced.

This organization seeks to challenge this concept by going further and faster together.

Convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and powered by Reset, this voluntary consortium currently includes Colgate-Palmola, Mars, Nestle, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever as founding members.

This very exciting news shows how important pre-competition collaboration is to the future of sustainable packaging.

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors, presented by Atlantic Packaging.