 things started here. I think just a very brief welcome on behalf of the World Economic Forum. We're very happy to have this session here today. The circular economy concept is something that we hold very much kind of to heart in terms of really driving the objective of supporting a sustainable transition. I think we all know that we have an incredible natural resource challenge in front of us in terms of the scale of natural resource demand, but we also see that there's quite a lot of interesting innovations that are emerging. I think one case in point is just outside this room. We have Francis Solano a social entrepreneur with us at the forum from the Philippines who is creating trash and sort of art out of waste materials. The question for us here today is really how do we scale these kinds of solutions and how do we really drive this agenda at a very global level and that's really what we're here to discuss and I'll pass it over to Sharon who will lead us through the conversation. Thank you very much. Thank you Antonio and Antonio always sets one of the most ambitious sessions so we're really going to be held to task on this one. But those of you who were there in January at Davos know that this was a very exciting session and indeed this platform for accelerating the circular economy. I don't think could have come at a better time because if we don't create a circular economy alongside our challenge for a net zero future then we're not going to make the challenge of saving a planet for future generation so or at least saving it for human beings so we did challenge you in January the 100-day challenge we said okay if everyone's serious how far can we get in a hundred days well guess what for those of you who are there you're back and we're going to do some accounting on that question but we'll also use this session to further advance progress helping to actually bring to bring to the forefront collaborative projects that we can take forward and focus on the priority issues. So having launched it in January the Phillips CEO who's with us today actually Fran stepped up and said Phillips will lead this and of course we have the head of the global environment facility with Naoki here and with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Accenture Strategy in the World Economic Forum they've formed a team but for those of you who are new think about this problem in Western economies all all about three quarters of everything we buy becomes waste within just one year three quarters of everything we purchase and then of course we know that resource consumption is becoming less efficient people thought technology would move us away but in fact you've seen a recoupling and we're now consuming more resources per unit of GDP than you could have imagined in fact if it continues the estimate is that we'll consume three times more resources annually by 2050 you know that's unsustainable it's unsustainable now that's just a horror movie and we've got to turn it around the circular economy provides us with an opportunity not just to deal with an imperative but actually to decouple economic progress from resource natural resources and resource consumption and indeed I see Bill in the room and he's always talking about resource productivity and I tell union leaders that that's the bargaining chip of the future so if we can make this happen we drive new businesses we actually drive new jobs but indeed we get a sustainable planet so I don't have to tell you that it's it'll help achieve the objectives of the SDGs particularly goal 12 and and indeed we've already touched on some of the opportunities and you'll do a bit more about that so without any further ado I'm gonna make you work in a minute but first of all I want to actually ask the panel a few questions so we can refocus on why we need this platform for accelerating the circular economy France. Franz Van Houten is the CEO of Royal Phillips he's taken an incredible responsibility as a leader in this area with the WEF and other partners why is this a priority for Phillips what are the priorities of the platform that you think bring participants not just to be gathered in this room but indeed the focus that you want to drive business towards. Well I believe that all companies need to take responsibility to to take part in creating a sustainable future if I look at our own journey then we started 15-20 years ago in basically becoming aware of our own footprint and then we started to deal with that and now we can say that by 2020 we will be carbon neutral but for us that's not enough right because you still have the raw material consumption and you still create waste and we said that we need to push the transition from linear to circular and not see it as a chore but rather see it as an opportunity to further our own business so I don't see this as a kind of a negative that you need to take on the agenda and be seen as a good corporate social responsible company actually I'd like to use the opportunity to inspire companies to say you can make this part of your business model and you will be a better company you can grow faster you can appeal to more people and you can actually completely reconcile it with the goal of share all the value creation and in the Netherlands there are several companies who help each other with best practice sharing and we call it the Dutch Sustainable Growth Coalition and it is interesting because if you share best practices you can actually learn a lot and you can go a lot faster with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and where we had the plastics initiative and actually we were able together to achieve something and then it gets momentum and then it can drive itself but in the beginning it needed you know a push and a little bit of hand holding and I think it's the same with the circular economy thinking so the reason why we step up as a company is because first of all we believe that in this global environment and climate change we really now need to step up and we cannot progress procrastinate anymore but secondly I fundamentally believe that sharing the best practices on what we call the pace platform the platform for accelerating the circular economy is a great opportunity that will all make us richer I will all make us wiser the goals of the platform are as follows you know we want to foster the adoption of circular economy but specifically we also believe there are some system changes required to help make this progress for example blended finance models for circular economy projects that allow more widespread adoption and replication if you look at the way especially governments buy then they look at the initial price but not maybe a total cost of ownership right so we need to start making people aware that these things need to be changed and take down these so-called systemic barriers for adoption and then finally we think that by bringing private and public sectors into collaboration we can scale impact faster and it is not an easy journey I'm glad that you are all here because we need you to stand up to be part of it and spread the word today we will talk about best practices and learn from each other because we think that the example will be critical to scale this moreover we had great examples where we could help each other and we have solved problems and thereby we've got success so for me if we achieve that this afternoon to have a few more projects where we collaborate we will gain altitude and we'll go faster so well there's the motivation for success and I'm reminded of a young entrepreneur who you may recall I can't remember his name I'm embarrassed to say but was in the room in this in January and he looked at his old peers around the table and he said I don't understand the issues he said if you can't reuse it or recycle it don't deploy it in the first place such sense from such a young brain and a leader in a manufacturing startup that I have got no doubt will grow with that kind of courage but the blended finance issue that Franz raised Naoki this is your area of course and you've been trying to think through these partnerships particularly for scaling up efforts in developing countries so you know what what do funding organisations like the GF need to do to help accelerate investment that will support this transition thank you the GF is actually the co-partner with and the CEO of this pace platform initiative to accelerate the circular economy and we were super excited for two reasons and because the circular economy is an fundamental solution to this global commons challenge without system change we can't really keep the global commons kept the global commons into safe operating space but second point that we can't really do it without actually partnership or without platform because all systems are so complex we really need to work together under the shared platform that's the second reason why the GF is here and very much interested in working together with you then in terms of that question that what exactly I think we that the GF kind of institution can do actually in the past there are a kind of project in this domain for instance we actually partnership with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in terms of the marine plastic and we work with some agency to work with the cities to how to stop or reduce the plastic going to the ocean we worked with some African countries about waste management but we really need to bring this kind of small initiative everywhere in the world to scale and that's why we need to work together so going forward that we are actually that now have an opportunity for next four years GF and investment cycles if seven we put the circular economy as one of the funding proposal and we are basically waiting for us together to create a much stronger pipeline and there I think there are two things two opportunities are concrete opportunities I am looking for one is that then it's not the before blended finance we need to work with the government working in the industry or association to create a better standard by creating the better standard for industries we create more economic opportunity the market opportunities we were doing this for instance that the building we are doing with the lighting we were doing that the air conditioner so how we could create a better regulation better policy framework and that the GF is very much interested in working with the government and industrial association to create a kind of you know set standard setting standard that's a number one thing but the second thing is actually the blended finance we were kind of a risk lover and we can really take the maybe biggest risk along this and the ladder and here that then you can use us as a equity or guarantee to take the risks that the feature maybe private sector are not really willing to take so create a kind of project or the program to think about how you private sector can do but how you can use as the risk lover to take what the risk you are a project and program that's a second entry point for us to be useful to this and to this platform and actually with co-chair with chair we agree that we need to strengthen or build up the pipeline for us to move forward and create the more results on the ground so I likewise I really hope that the today's session can give us that there are some better way going forward with very very tangible results so thank you so much. Thank you Naoki so there's the kind of you know capacity to drive the resource base that's necessary well Minister McCann and you come at it from a different perspective but your government the government of Finland of course has been a leader not just in thinking through this in the context of your country but indeed driving it internationally so what are your priorities and what do you think this platform can help with that as priority priorities to solve the problem of those of associated challenges. Yeah well thank you and obviously we are not the only government trying to solve these issues but probably in certain segments quite much core of the edge actor and I would put it by introducing three main drivers and putting also also a policy measure for each of them. First of all if starting with an example of Neste which is a leading oil refinery in Finland with a revenue above 10 billion euros. 10 years ago everything came from refining Russian oil now 80% of their operating profit comes already from biofuels they started with palm oil but now already more than 80% of the resources come actually from waste and residues and why Neste has been one of the first companies if comparing to Shell or others I think that it's actually the driver is empowering by lack of resources and that's been a part of the Finland's circular economy success story that we don't have fossil resources so if you don't have you are not sitting on your own oil feeds then you start to develop something else and traditionally of course being a forest industry country will we have forests but that's a renewable source then you always have to think that okay if I cut these trees I need new trees next year we have to grow them again and that's been backbone of the old-school circular thinking in the Finland and that's also the backbone of the chemical industry which now can be seen for example in the history's largest investment to pulp factory in Finland above 1 billion euro ticket by Metzagroup which is a new pulp factory which actually is net positive in its energy usage it adds about 2 percentage points to the share of renewable energy in Finnish energy mix though it's one of the largest users at the same time but it produces more than than consumes so empowering by lack of resource is very important part but then of course another like necessary thing is that we have reliable institutions and there is the problem for Nestek currently the largest problem is how to get reliable sourcing partners for wastes and residues especially in developing countries and as we all know when thinking about especially waste processing and landfill projects the problem is that in most part of the world that business is very gray even in hands of mafia and that's actually one bottleneck for all circular economy that the material flows when something is called waste then it's usually managed with something not so normal business ethics and and that's actually something that that is necessary to break especially in let's say 50 largest cities in the world otherwise we won't get those materials back then another driver is that I think as an economist that the core must always lie in relative prices that the price of wasting materials is way too cheap still in most cases and we must use regulation was it taxing or was it other kinds for example one thing that we are still missing too much in Finland as well that we waste animal feces animal manure in agriculture so that it goes to reverse and see and our Baltic Sea gets out of electrification too heavily and there we must for example hopefully within EU regulation put the blending obligation for organic fertilizers and that would immediately create a market for animal manure to be processed to get the biogas and make energy to get the processed part of the organic fertilizer and use that in in industrial way and this is a way to influence the price relative prices when the farmer thinks what to do with animal feces for example but the third thing is of course an innovation river circular economy and that's why we are probably here that we also need investment especially in new kind of innovation to share the risk of making something new and here of course also we are having for example true Fin fund which we are now accelerating by investing about half a billion of euros to our Fin fund in investment type developing support and it for example in Vietnam we have a project where waste processing plant and a biogas plant is financed by Fin fund and we hope that that will be a showcase for that region that this technology works and then it will be multiplied in other cities already without public finance with with commercial finance so that's definitely something which is important and I think that the positive thing is that now the mobile networks make many things easier than before we don't need so many vehicles if we manage to get mobility as a service working in cities we wouldn't have any traffic problems here in New York if people would not own cars but just use them when they are really needed and that's something that 10 years 15 years ago was a totally stupid idea but nowadays true like mobile operators one can share things as we see from Airbnb and such things it's already working or some taxi operator type mobile things as well and I think that this will shape quite much in a new way all the service industry and the service industry will need much less materials and physical resources to serve people in the old way and this is probably something where we hopefully are innovative enough in our legislation not hindering the development but fostering it it forward thanks well there you go necessities the mother of invention so this has driven Finland to be a leader amongst others but there's two things there one is of course the challenge of what do we do with waste if we're not going to if we're going to eliminate landfill critical huge challenge but secondly how do you make sure it's not just in Finland but the partnerships are there that Naoki was talking about that actually make it possible for everybody to work to share in the benefits and therefore all of us in terms of sustainability so thank you were for both leadership at the leadership minister but also for the challenge of what the platform can do to accelerate these ideas and proven technologies by way of partnership well of course for Sundo Garret and you also are a member of Congress in Argentina so but you have a particular history because you were an entrepreneur where you probably still are an entrepreneur but now you're in government and indeed you know that a lot of the innovations come from small social entrepreneurs and we're not seeing the scale that we need to make these not just the viable businesses that will see greater employment and greater but greater sustainability in the sense that they will become part and parcel of our economic landscape and not just a novelty so what do we have to do to get that scale that's a good point I mean in Latin America we have a long way to go talking about circular economy we are working at three different levels the first one as an entrepreneur I got involved with an NGO that is called Sistema B B system and with Sistema B we are promoting a different kind of business model in Latin America so with Sistema B we were being helping different countries and talking with the different Parliament and Congress around Latin America to promote this kind of a new business model thinking rethinking the operating system you know and with Sistema B we have been promoting laws in the different Congress so but also it's not about the promoting a new kind of business model also it's about to promote to generate this kind of entrepreneurs so five or six years ago we started with a social lab that is a platform that is developing this kind of entrepreneur and helping this kind of entrepreneurs that are focusing in in different kind of business model but they are double or triple impact entrepreneurs and they are doing a great job there in Latin America they are in around six countries they invested in around 70 companies in Latin America because in Latin America we have a great entrepreneurs but the problem is that they are focusing for for profit just for profit and they don't think about new kind of business model so with social lab we have been helping to promote that so we have a lot of entrepreneurs now that they are trying to solve the big problem of the world and thinking about this circular economy and not about just for profit so but it's not just about that we have to scale up this as you mentioned those entrepreneurs that are focusing in Argentina or in Chile or Colombia to have something big we have to change the system and in the Congress we have been working a lot about that and we are creating a new kind of organization new kind of company with a new law for example in Argentina this year we will have this law that's called a big that it's we are creating a new kind of companies it's something similar than the big corpse here in the States but in some ways different because they are thinking about the object of the of the society it's about circular economy so we are promoting this kind of bills around the different Parliament in Latin America and that's great because it's the only way to have this context to scale up all these kind of ventures also in the Congress a few weeks ago we passed a bill about creating an observatory about the SDG so I think that we have to put all these concepts in the big perspective and the only way to do that is using those kind of institutions like the Congress Parliament executive power but from that we we are now in the 21st century using tools institutions that are from the 19th century like the Congress and we are using tools from this 15th century like the print the system so we have to start to think about a new kind of model and maybe I don't know if you top down or from the bottom to top so there's the challenge how to you know drive through five centuries of tools to actually get to where we need to be but I thought the notion of harnessing the energy of the entrepreneurs to solve the big problems of the world and in the context providing the scaffolding from government for scale up I mean if you can get those two challenges in sync then you are going to drive a different level of thinking if the circular economy is at the centre of that that set of demands so the panellists give them a big hand they're pretty inspirational I think when you've got people like this stepping up and saying the circular economy is the economy imperative and we've got to figure out how to make it happen then the rest of you need to support them so now it's your turn what we're actually going to do is ask you to in a minute to move to the back of the room but with two objectives the first is that we've got a series of people who'll introduce themselves as the kind of project or thought leaders around a project they're engaged in and they're going to take just a few minutes to tell you about that but then instead of discussing that with them we want to capture your responses what are your ideas for the policy measures that need collaborative thought and indeed whether you're working on them or you just think they're important get them on a post-it note get your name and your organisation and your contact details on it and then we're going to put them up and cluster them before we try to talk about some of those other things because we actually want to capture the thoughts of everybody in the room so that we can help to assess those in terms of the the the platform going forward but is there anything I missed is somebody sitting there with a burning thought in their brain a little bit because we should not fall into a complaining session therefore these breakouts should not be what other people need to do but rather what we can do and what you can do and maybe with the help of other people here that is also how as a platform we have been solving challenges already and I think that is what is going to be setting the example for the rest of the world so that we actually put our action where our mouth is I think that's right friends and in fact you should be the moderator really because that's the challenge not to say it's someone else's problem but to say what what projects do I think are critical what am I working on or what do I want to work on and how can this platform assist so let's take a seat imagine there are tables but sit in the chairs at the back and can I ask the discussion leaders those engaged in a project already to introduce yourself and kick it off as quickly as possible don't let them stand around and talk just let's get at it