Transforming Business through Circularity

Most people really probably associate the circular economy with recycling.

Now, you argue that this is far too narrow.

What are we missing?

Well, it's no surprise that the two are closely linked or associated.

Recycling and circularity are indeed very much connected.

But recycling is just an economic activity.

It has a financial benefit, an environmental benefit, hopefully both and at the same time.

But circularity, on the other hand, is part of a wider system.

Let's take a look at those two words in turn.

Starting with recycling, it's possible to recover or to recycle a material.

And at the same time, we can destroy the material's useful value.

We can lose the material's purity.

We can damage the material's performance.

And we have even seen cases in industry where processes increase their recycled content.

while at the same time they are increasing in absolute terms their consumption of primary or virgin resources even more.

An example of that will be, for instance, growth industries like what we've seen with lithium batteries and lithium battery recycling.

They incorporate more recycled material, but at the same time the consumption, the absolute consumption of resources increase.

So where do these observations sit within the circular sphere? I often say to businesses that they need to be asking deeper questions.

Not just questions like, can this thing be recycled? Is this material actually getting recycled? We should be considering or asking, what should this material become next? Will that genuinely leave us better off? These deeper questions are part of the circular system.

So no, circularity is not just better recycling.

Circularity ultimately helps us satisfy a human need by preserving the productive capacity of both industry and nature.

much broader than recycling.

Recycling contributes to that.

It's necessary, but the recycling percentage alone could never tell us whether we have been successful, and especially whether we're being successful in the circular system's ability to preserve the value of the materials we're working with.

Could you tell me something about, like, I'm a former director of environment of a French city, and, you know, here in France where I live, we have different bins, and Is there, for example, from food waste, I hear that, you know, they can create compost or from the plastics, they create clothes.