 Hello, and welcome to the Circular Metabolism Podcast. This podcast is hosted by the Chair of Circular Economy and Urban Metabolism held by Aristide de Tannassiades and Stefan Kanpermann at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In this podcast, we talk with researchers, policymakers and different practitioners to unravel the complex aspects of what makes urban metabolism and economies more circular. In the ninth episode of the Circular Metabolism Podcast, we have had a short tour by Saint-Etienne to discuss with Denis Co-consellé on the use of digital platforms to accelerate our economy. We are now going to talk a little bit about the use of digital platforms to help the economy to grow. In this episode, we talk with the researchers, administration and practitioners to unravel the complex aspects of what makes urban metabolism and economies more circular. Denis Co-concellé, of the use of digital platforms to accelerate the transition to a more circular economy. Denis is the director of CIRID, where the International Resource Center and Innovation Center for sustainable development. CIRID has a great experience in the development and animation of digital platforms for the circular economy, since it has already developed eight shared platforms in three countries. Before the circular economy, CIRID already had the experience of working on this type of platform, but this time on the theme of sustainable development. Based on their solid expertise in this field, I wanted to discuss with Denis to better understand the subtleties of the use of digital to activate the circular economy and also to understand what learning of sustainable development could be transposed to the circular economy. We started our discussion by retracing the story of MediATER, a media platform launched in 2002 that senses all the information and updates on sustainable development. To sum up this platform in a few figures, it is users coming from 140 countries with 28 million pages per year and 11,000 subscribers. This platform covers a maximum of subjects with 29 geographical or thematic portals that offer other input ports to find the information to look for. These informative platforms add collaborative platforms that allow sharing good practices but also to contact with the actors behind this in order to become as operational as possible. Denis says that with the transition of habits on the internet, it was important that these platforms are as close to users' habits without imposing on them. More precisely, to reach a professional and technical audience, it is important to characterize, collect and filter the information in order to make it tangible but also to build a network between professionals. For this target audience, it was necessary to go from a simple community of sharing to a capitalization of knowledge but also to a real working community. After all these years, can we however know if all these documented initiatives have made our society more sustainable? The series does not intend to declare good or bad voices. On the contrary, it is important to share and make experiences alive in order to make the transition to sustainable development possible. Taking into account all these information, I wanted to know if all these aspects were also true for the circular economy. The first logical question asked Denis was to know if there was a difference between sustainable development and circular economy. For Sirid, there were two major stages in 20 years. A first one until the 2008 crisis where Sirid wanted to sensitize and train around sustainable development. From 2010, Sirid did a strategy work to reduce sustainability in the practices and daily activities of companies, associations, collectivities, and to make the jobs evolve, to make the nurses evolve. So, from 2010, after reviewing the different existing models to make this paradigm change, going from bio-mimeticism to circular economy to bio-economy, to the economy of functionality, they tested several. Since 2004, they have made the choice of circular economy. For Denis, the choice of circular economy is not in opposition to sustainable development, but in opposition to an operational model or a transition path towards this one. Sirid has not changed neither the name nor the objective. To return to the digital platform, after having developed several on circular economy, it is clear that some elements and sounds come out. First, we need to create networks so that people know each other, trust each other, share solutions, build value chains, from the industrial area to a whole network. For this, and since 2015, in partnership with the National Institute of Circular Economy, Sirid has created networks in the territories that support local partners, animators who know the economic, institutional and cultural ecosystem, on a digital platform. These partners are often network heads, such as corporate networks, competent fields, commercial rooms, so that their leaders welcome circular economy. And secondly, we need to create a collaborative platform, a media or a vehicle that allows both to collect information, feed it, but also to return this information to the involved actors. But the actors must find themselves in their habits, in their network, on a more local dimension. Thus, the network of shared information must also be connected with the field. There are scales of territory that are relevant to certain subjects. In France, these are the regions that have been given the circular economy skills by law. It is through these economic skills, management, business planting, mobility, etc. that the regions set up the circular economy. After the development of several platforms, it is clear that the circular economy is above all a local economy. Although the circular economy can have national and international issues, it is closely linked with the animation and the territorial economic development. In a simple way, professionals will do business only because they have learned to know. Finally, the last question asked concerning how can we link existing information to different places and scales, but also how to link the different initiatives between them. Denis says that in the heart of all regional platforms, there is an agricultural platform, economycircular.org, which collects the right practices, more than 700 since 2015, with more than 5,000 accounts created. This platform goes back to the different territories in French and English. Thanks to this, it can go back to the local platforms, in order to dig into the details to get as close to the information and the initiative as possible. In conclusion, the idea is to create links by going back and redescending the information, rather than saying that an initiative is better than another, as well as an initiative that can make consensus for all cultures and all contexts. Take advantage of this episode and don't forget to go to our website www.circularmetabolism.com for the rest of our production. To help us improve our podcast and take advantage of the next episodes, subscribe to your favorite app like YouTube, iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher. And don't hesitate to leave us a comment. Thank you Denis, thank you for the meeting. See you next year, after this view to Montreal. It's a bit different, it's a bit more Greek than this summer. So you are director of CIRID, the International Resource Center for sustainable development and you are doing a lot of things around circular economy platforms. It's not a coincidence, you have already done a lot of other platforms in the early stages of sustainable development. So I would like to retrace this story of your work on CIRID. And then what did you learn from these sustainable development platforms and how they can teach us about things in circular economy platforms? So maybe Denis, remember, I looked at some statistics here. MediaTair is the platform for all Francophonie sustainable development and there were about 10,000 visitors per day and 2 million views per month. It's still quite huge. What was the purpose of this platform at the time? Well, MediaTair, first of all, our panel is not quite as big as the numbers. Yes, it was 2008 or something like that. Yes, 10 years ago. MediaTair was launched in 2002 in an international summit in Johannesburg. It's an initiative recognized by the United Nations. The purpose was to create a media that feels the whole information and the activity on sustainable development in 2002 in the French language. It was a sign of sharing knowledge and information on sustainable development in French. And today, a few media figures. It's a lectora that is present in more than 140 countries. It's 28 million views per year. And it's 11,000 subscribers. It's 11,000 people who have a account on MediaTair and who benefit from all the news. What do we find as news? Because the development of the web we will also see it with the circular economy. It's quite large. We can put a lot of things in it. But what will the lector find in the lectora? So, on MediaTair, we are on an international approach where we try to cover all the subjects. There are 29 themes or geographical portals. The idea was to create a generalist mass media. We go from the biodiversity to the question of water, the question of deforestation, the question of the commitment of companies in the social responsibility. Today, we have an extremely large media that could be thought of in 2002. And over the years, we have thematized. We have created up to today 29 points of entry. 29 different points of entry where each person will be able to find answers on their own. But suddenly, I imagine it still exists today, but I've seen it not too long ago. I try to find information. It's like a newspaper, if you want, on the internet about sustainable development. Do you have any action tracks? Because today, citizens are often... First, we want to learn, but what do I do in my daily life to improve things? I imagine initiatives. It also goes into the news. So, that's where we understand how the web has evolved and how media has been evolving in fact. The media is the portal for global information in French language on sustainable development, generalists, and with thematic entries, or geographical ones. Geographic countries or... Here, countries, climate zones, parts of Africa, for example, that don't have the same cultures, the same modes of development, for example. When we look at North America, Quebec, and when we look at the activities of sustainable development, in Europe, we don't have the same cultures, we don't have the same ways to do it, for example. Not the same issues, certainly. Not the same climatic issues, especially when we're in southern countries. So, I'm going to make a little one. So, it's still the will to maintain a generalist portal of information with geographical or thematic entries to cover the whole of the news. It will probably evolve this media in the eyes of the ODD, sustainable development objectives, always under the leadership of the United Nations in an international dimension, in order to find this reading that we have today at an international level. And then, next to this media, we have developed rather themed portals, collaborative portals, social networks in the end, where the good practice dimension comes back from experience, and more in advance. And we will find on other collaborative portals, developed by the CID series for many years, this dimension, finally, what is the good practice at such a place, on what subject, what is the lever that has been activated, how, the success points, the difficulty points, by who, by which type of actor profile, and we will go back into the technique. And I will be able, through this collaborative portal, to get in touch with the structure that is carrying this project, to connect with this person, to see around me what are the actors who are also involved in these topics, and we will be able to go into collaboration modes, operational work modes. This is also the evolution of the web 2.0. Yes, exactly. We have to collect information, cover the news, and we have to work on it. That's it. And so we have developed, at CID, a certain number of other collaborative portals, always at the international level, to be closer to work, and network, of the leading parties, at the level of their mode of action, their influence sphere. I imagine that it has evolved a lot, and as you said, I mean, the Internet in 2002, well, to access an Internet site, it was already the victory. But suddenly, you're talking about, maybe, going from the simple pigist who takes information from everywhere on the internet and who groups them on the media, to a forum, or then there is collaboration, etc., etc. When you talk about social networks, it's also something that the web has allowed to change the operating mode, our way of thinking. But suddenly, I also wonder, when you say, the objectives of sustainable development, it's a new grid of sustainable development lectures, certainly there will be one in the future, and another and another. So, let's say that your themes will perhaps be restructured in the future. But what interests me a lot is how we talk about the web 1.0, web 2.0, how do you think it will evolve these platforms in general? So, what we observe is that the Internet has its own habits. It seems to be obvious, but it's this one. Today, when we say that we have 11,000 subscribers on the media, we have all the time on the media account of Twitter, on the media account of Facebook, for example. So, the idea is to deliver information where the internet is, and not to impose them to come and create an account on a platform. So, we have a media information engine, and then we have social networks, affiliations, partners with other media that allow us to decimate, to spread this information, and the closest to the person has his own habits. So, there is a media app, for example, for two or three years. And we have today consultations that are on other sites, other media. The idea is to bring the information closer to the habit of consumption, of this information. So, that's the natural evolution. And it's a reading, it's a posture to say to yourself, we're not going to impose people to come here, because they're going to come, they may not be interested, we're not going to close this information there, so we're going to give this information available in a logic of opening, of opening up innovation, opening up data to release this information and make it as accessible as possible. However, when we enter concrete and operational, we have to gather knowledge according to certain challenges. The synergetic performance of buildings, the sustainable city, the urban infrastructures. We say that there is a subject to talk to a certain public, certain agents in institutions, in local communities, to industrial profiles in the field of buildings, urban housing or urban infrastructures, work management, artisan, work management. And so, this information to characterize it, to collect it, to model it and make it tangible for implementation. We say that we create an international network on this subject and we create construction 21. In 2012, with the support of the European Commission, a certain number of partners in Europe, we say that there is an initiative to launch at an international level on construction, the sustainable city and the urban infrastructures. And so, with a certain number of partners, we create construction 21. I'm going to build construction 21, it's an international collaborative portal, so we are well on this collaborative dimension around case study, good practice and social network. We have, I think, 22,000 professionals today on construction 21 who have a account. And we create an international network for each one, each professional, then in his own language, access to information, publish information. And so here, we have a real collaborative dimension since we have working communities, sharing communities, case study in French, in Chinese, since the last time, in English, of course, and we have a dozen languages. And so it's not what we're talking about in a profession, we're talking about a branch from the builder to the installer and the decision-maker to the office. And although we have this information available in the social networks today, we still have to capitalize, gather on this thematic and geographical space the knowledge. So I think we have 1,500 cases, crowned by international awards with a price return to each COP. So we have created a whole device to build in promotion, to build an arrangement of these good practices until the COP, so the next one will be in Poland. We launched this COP initiative in Paris, Marrakech, Bonn, Poland, and the next one we'll see. So in a way, we created a digital media of capitalization and a network. And for example, we work well on these two scales, it's also a professional network that has been brought to meet in countries to talk, to share good practices. So here you have, for example, for the media, it would be rather the average citizen and for the thematic, it's rather the professional. Or the audience, I imagine, that depending on each of these platforms also declines a little bit. That's it, that's it. It's all there. And how do you capitalize on this knowledge? Because you said it, maybe by putting in advance good practices but also by creating this award or this price. But how can we be able to put in advance the information to what we've learned for 20 years? Because it's also very difficult, it's a job in itself, to think more critically about everything that has been said and let's go in the right direction, etc, etc. So? We don't know if you can do it. Yeah, it's a fact, we don't pretend to read, to have knowledge. And choose the right ways. There's the good and the bad. No, in the transition towards sustainable development, there are experiences to live, teaching to produce. So, for a few years, let's say for the years 2010, 2012, we say that these international networks must be very clearly connected to the field. So, we're involved in a logic of saying that there are scale of territories that are relevant to subjects. If I take the circular economy, the circular economy is the economy that is territorialized, which is deployed to the closest resources, production modes and consumption modes in a search for efficiency. That's it. In terms of ecosystem growth, finally, circular economy. And in France, these are the regions that have been equipped with this circular economy, by law. And so, it's at the scale of these regions that have first economic skills, teaching skills, through local collectivities that have management skills, business implementation, synergy, mobility, consumption modes and production modes, that this circular economy is played out. So, obviously, we have challenges around certain resources at the global level. Plastic, energy, energy, choice, energy ethics are treated at a national or international level. Nevertheless, this circular economy, for the most close to the actors, we had to deploy two things. Networks, that is, people know each other, make acquaintance, create trust, find solutions together, build value chains, it goes from the industrial area to the local chain of treatment, recycling, treatment, a chain around the grid, food supply chain, a chain around textile, up to re-employment. That is at the local scale. So, how do we put people together? How do we create trust, knowledge to make them work together? Well, to do it, so that they invite themselves to work together. At the regional scale. So, for that, we created local partners with network heads, business networks, specific skills, local lines, to bring them to engage in circular economy and to make them adhere to, to bring them out, to make them into technical days, into discussion forums, into regional days, annual days, into exhibitions, they exhibit together in knowing how to do it, which share their experience, their difficulties at the same time. So, that is, at the regional scale, we create these network of knowledge so that people know each other, it takes together their walk. And then, the second tool, is to create a collaborative platform. We create, in the end, a media, a vehicle, which allows people to collect information, feed it, and then to go back to its information to these actors. So, in the end, it is the media in which they find themselves, in a virtual point. And it is on the basis of these two ways of doing it, that this circular economy, we think it can be put into action. That is to say, to meet, physically, and gather, collect, on social networks, companies, around this circular economy theme. So, how do you... Well, there are some people who prefer to talk about circular economy today, and there is no longer sustainable development, there are people who talk about resilience, others who talk about... Well, there is a lot of theme. How... Is sustainable development a thing of the past, or is it from now on that we only talk about circular economy? And what is the addition, in addition to the circular economy, in this theme that has existed for 20 years, of sustainable development? I imagine that... Well, it's a question of the bottom, and then we say that we do not hold the truth, already, at the beginning. The series has had two important stages in 20 years, a first, I would say, until the crisis of 2008-2009, where we were told that we were rather guarant of sustainable development, a form like that, of pride, to say we will be in the sensation, we will bring the right word, we will sensitize, we will train in schools, train in companies, and then the eco of sustainable development in 2008-2009 was still less strong, of course, bringing actors to change in the postures of crisis, so it's not necessarily in the crisis that changes are made, but the task was not simple. And we, in 2010-2011, in Syria, we said we will do a strategy work, to say how do we translate, keep this polar star, keep this vision of sustainability, of strong sustainability, but how do we translate in the practices of companies, in the practices of the subsidiaries, in the practices of the collectivities, in the practices of associations, how do we translate that in gestures, in changes, in depth of practices, of skills, how do we evolve the jobs, how do we evolve the economic models, how do we evolve the strategies of these actors? So we made the choice, in a way, of models. We made a review of existing models, of biomemetism, of the circular economy, of the bioeconomy today, of the functionality economy, and we made choices. And in 2011, we made the choice, we made the choice of the functionality economy, to rest this transition of the actors towards sustainable development through this model, the functionality economy, which is a model extremely performant, because performance is extremely complex. And then in 2014, we made the choice of the circular economy. And so we adopted our activities, we deployed tools, experiences, accompaniments, through models, to say, preserve this vision of sustainable development, preserve Syrida has not changed its name, it remains a center of resources and innovation for sustainable development, with investors, but we do rest this vision on models. Transition models, because we are on the path, and these models that we have chosen. We have, in Saint-Etienne, the Pôle Eco-Conception, Life Cycle thought, which shares this vision of sustainability and which accompanies, for its part, the companies, the economic actors, in the eco-conception of product and service. So it's rather a non-relationship. It does not depend on the voices of this transition towards an ecological and solidarity economy. And it's choices, because we had to make our proposals, our practices, on models. And that's where I find that we find eco, and that we have analysis of the tools that appear, that develop, that deploy, offices that do not, and the market that is engaged. Yes, it was one of the critics of sustainable development, it's to stay a little too vague or a little too difficult to be implemented, or to be privileged, to be, well, we really put our hands together in the field and we change something. I think that many people see in this circular economy as a means of action, rather than a means of reflection, very short. But let's talk about it, you have talked about circular economy platforms in France, there are regions that do not. So there is the Eclera, there is Recita, there is the Great Paris, there is, well, that you have already collaborated. You are also in Switzerland with the Génie platform and in Quebec soon. So what do we learn from all this? Well, and it will continue, it's not, well, I think it's just the beginning. So what did you learn from the training of these platforms? What are the lessons that we can already take? Well, it's only a few years, but what did we learn during these little years? So in fact, since 2015, with the National Institute of Circular Economy, we have started to create networks in the territory, which, I repeat, both rely on local partners, animators who know the ecosystem well, economic, institutional, cultural, and resource stakes, and who support themselves on a digital platform, a web 2.0 network. And we are in this activity of mesh, of development and mesh of these ecosystems, both of actors and of knowledge. Eclera, on Van Ronalp, 700 professionals today, Génie, on the Canton-de-Geneve, they are 600, there is Normandy too, through Resonécis. Resonécis, there is Recitas on Nouvelle-Aquitaine, 600 members, Grand Paré Circulaire, which was launched at the beginning of October 2018, there, a month ago. So it's developing. I think there are 200 members in a month. Already, yes. Yes, already, yes. In a month, Quebec Circulaire soon, and then another region that is launching, we will be pleased, in the first semester of 2019, to launch another region, and to create this ecosystem. It's more than 5,000 professional accounts. So what do we learn from it? What do we learn from it? First of all, it's an economy that is local. And that we create apartments, finally, to create this team-up of the circular economy, this international team-up in French and English. But first, the actors find themselves in their habits, in their networks, on rather territorial dimensions, of course, but rather on the scale of a region. And although some regions, as I mentioned, are already very, very large, these animations, we try to target them even closer, closer to a metropolis or a field. Clearly, on New Aquitaine this year, we have created technical days, because we also had to look at this, at the stakes, the BTP, the resources, the scale, the organic waste, the plastic, because the actors, the professionals, they also gain, they are certainly given time, they need to find the result. So it remains the animation and the territorial economic development, around a game that is this one, it remains human and I would not say that we have learned that, but it is essential, it is key, it is that it remains human, it remains people who must connect, to get to know each other, through a small age to start, through a evening, and we begin to do business, to connect, to connect, to put ourselves in synergy, first because people must know each other. For me, the collaboration platform, it remains a vehicle, it is a vehicle of capitalization, it is a vehicle of social service, it remains a media of good practice, on OVN RONAL, through the Eclera network, I think we have 130 good practices, food, industrial synergy, of the network, it remains knowledge, it is where we access the data, where we can feed ourselves, it is where it has the information, and it is obvious, we must create days like the regional days of the circular economy, like technical days, like meetings in industrial areas, in metropoles, because that's where the activities are done. We may be able to end up asking a question about how we relate all these networks, because here it is the initiative of the regions, but also the countries that try to get ahead of each other, how do we relate these different scales together to make this circular economy of 0.0 to 3.0 at an interscalar scale, finally. So, we made the choice to link these regions between them, and to give international visibility to these local practices. So, above or at the heart of these territorial platforms, we have an aggregator called 3WEconomyCircular.org, which collects data and information, the 700 good practices that we have published, and that the network has been publishing since 2015, there are 700 good practices, there is an international map on the circular economy which collects and collects this data, and at the same time, it goes back into the territories, in French and English. So, on the circular economy, if we click on the initiative that has been published and which is in Normandy, we will immediately go and see in Normandy what is going on, with whom, how, by which lever, by which way, and we have arrived at the closest of the terrain where this initiative was put into action, in an exploitation phase, studies, it may have been abandoned, but we will see where it is. And then, at the international level, today, we say that indeed, we have other countries that are involved, especially in Europe, through a European route, around the circular economy, with an international map of the leading parties. And so, we are connecting to them, because there are other languages and other cultures, and what is happening in Novan-Ronalp, it is different from what is happening in some German regions, or in Italy or elsewhere. The idea is rather to create the links, rather than pretending to go and see what is happening and to produce it, because it is treated locally. When we create a portai in China on construction in the sustainable city, through construction 21, we are not necessarily talking about organizations that are on site. That's it, because there are questions of habit, and then the question of resources, the engagement of sustainable development, we do not talk about the same thing, that we are in a country or in another country, we do not activate the same levers, there are institutional contexts, legislative, regulatory, and especially in sustainable construction, we are not on the same regulations, and we do not pretend to say that there is one better than the other, or that we are going to make consensus of all that. It would be illusory to say to ourselves, we are going to an international regulation on the termination of buildings, and we see that our Swiss neighbors are different and take other ways than that of France, for example. The idea is rather to create the link and the ways to allow professionals to access to these different good practices, whether it is in Malaga-Ascar, in Geneva, in Paris, or in Quebec. As you said, I think there are some principles that remain quite generic and quite fundamental, such as the local, such as network implementation, etc. And then, of course, it adds to all of that a layer of context, a layer of difficulty, danger, etc. Thank you. I do not know where we will find you next time. Maybe in Australia, maybe in Malaga-Ascar. Great time. Thank you.