 Hi everyone, I'm Aristide from Metabolism of Cities and in this video I wanted to cover a topic that one of you watchers asked for. Roving Waves asked, a video on the basics of circular economy and or its history would be useful. So thank you Roving Waves for this question and I think a number of you who might be professionals, students, researchers or policy makers focusing on the environmental sectors have heard this expression of circular economy. Since 2012-2015 it has taken the policy word by storm. Every major policy and action plan at a city, country or international level is now mentioning some types of a circular economy. But how did it get there and where did this concept originated from? In this video I wanted to share a brief history of the circular economy and provide you with some more nuance of what circular economy means and also where are some divergent points of view today on this sometimes controversial topic. To discuss about all of these points let me just pull out some slides that will be helpful to illustrate. So let's start with kind of a brief definition of what circular economy is. If we had to summarize this, well we have to start with what the linear economy is. The linear economy is this process of taking materials from the natural environment, using them for a very short period of time and then discarding them, creating different types of environmental impacts. Throughout this linear process from extraction, manufacturing, distribution, use and discarding or waste generation there are many associated environmental impacts as well. From CO2 emissions, energy consumption, toxicity and many other elements. So the circular economy says why don't we take off the box of waste creation and instead re-inject the number of flows exiting our system because either we don't have any use of them or because there is just one component that does not work and start repairing them, reusing them, remanufacturing them or even recycling them. So the idea is that we can maintain as much as possible materials in their original technical and economic value, maintain them by expanding their lifespan as much as possible in the given system so it can be a city, a country or a company and by that also reducing the associated environmental impacts. However, this is a general overview of a definition of circular economy. When we look in policy documents but also in academia, there is a plethora of circular economy definitions. Over here a paper that was published already five years ago identified 114 definitions and the authors themselves also produced another synthetic definition out of it. So you see that not all of us define circular economy in the same way. In this video what I want to show you is that there are some common elements and some divergent elements when it comes to circular economy. So let me break it down into two things. I'll take, first of all, what are the common roots of circular economy, some things that most of researchers, policy makers, practitioners agree on the circular economy and then we'll dive deeper on what are the divergent pathways that the stakeholders take when it comes to circular economy. So let's start with the common roots. First of all, anyone agrees that the current linear system as I showed you going from extraction to manufacturing to use to discarding waste is unsustainable today. So we can see that from Malthus saying that we have an exponential growth of population but the linear growth of resource supply, that might lead to a collapse or something like that, to Kenneth Baldwin saying that anyone that believes exponential growth that can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist and dubbed this as the open cowboy economy where we just take as much as we want and then discard it afterwards to the limits of growth, limits to growth report that's highlighted how our linear economy is unsustainable, which might result into some sort of collapse in the future. So we see that numerous researchers coming from different fields all agree that today's linearity is unsustainable. That is one fundament of the circular economy. The second one is the ideal of a circularity. What I mean by that is that a number of researchers coming from ecology, coming from economy, coming from biology all agree that circular or closed loops is something ideal. Ecologists, for instance, say that there is no waste in nature. They say that in nature all material or resource cycles are closed. The water cycle, the carbon cycle, many of these cycles are balanced and are interconnected and make these systems, let's say, more sustainable. So we all kind of agree that in nature waste, first of all, does not exist and also nature makes everything closed loops. The second element is that even in industrial systems, there is this industrial ecology discipline that says that maybe we should think of industrial systems as natural systems and instead of having waste from each of these industrial systems, we should somehow find interlickages between the waste of one company and the resource needs of another one and if we can match them together, that's what we call an industrial symbiosis, well we could have the waste from one industrial process that could serve as the raw material for another, thereby reducing the impact of industry on the environment. This is the subtitle of the article that we have here below from Froschen Galopoulos from 1989 that were one of the two persons that were two of the main persons behind industrial symbiosis and also of industrial ecology. So we see these two pieces that put forward that circularity is something to aspire for. Now let's have a look at what circular economy was in the early days and how it has transformed over time. So while we can find really a point in time where circular economy was coined or that it kind of initiated this excitement within the policy word, we can certainly find some hints and places around the world that have used the term since the 1990s. For instance in Germany circular economy and waste were already put together since the 1990s into a circular economy and waste law and this was specifically put together for the waste industry and the the grid operators or the public utilities from waste collection and treatment. In Japan it was also in the early 90s where they discussed about circular economy in order to have an effective use of recyclables, the promotion of efficient resource use and also some laws of recycling. Again once again it was for waste regulation. Within China at the early 2000s circular economy was one pillar for the new sustainable development model of China and circular economy was promoted in terms of numerous laws. Over there once again in China circular economy was seen as a resource management tool or a resource management model including the 3R framework so reduce reuse recycle. So after these let's say a few examples around the world where there was a first attempt of using circular economy for a waste regulation model. There was a big excitement in terms of companies, in terms of policies and in terms of a bit research as well. It was in the 2010s where we saw a numerous amount of reports coming from big international think tanks such as the Elon MacArthur Foundation the World Economic Forum or even the European Environmental Agency where they start talking about what is circular economy, how circular economy is a great way to create more value or maintain value. So we see that in the 2010s there was a lot of movement not only from policymakers so the World Economic Forum, the European Commission or the European Union, there were national plans of circular economy and still are. At the same time big multinationals such as Renault, Phillips and many others backed up circular economy and said that they need to adapt their business models to become more circular in order to reduce their environmental footprint but also their waste generation. A number of consulting firms all put out reports of circular economy from McKinsey, Accenture or Deloitte. They all have reports of between 2010 and 2015 kind of defining what circular economy is and also mentioning where the economic benefits of a circular economy, how many billions or trillions of dollars it could produce. And then also in that period there was the formation or creation of a number of networks and of think tanks around circular economy. So you have the Elon MacArthur Foundation, you have circular economy, you have the circular economy club, also in France you have the Institut National de l'Economie Circulaire and many many others. So after the 2010s CE policies kind of flourished and blossomed into many different directions while beforehand as we saw Germany and Japan used circular economy for public and waste regulations. China as we said before used circular economy as a new model for sustainable economic development. In the EU that was a bit different because it was put forward as a way to ensure geopolitical interests, foster competitiveness against other, let's say, word powers. And in the consulting firms circular economy policies were about developing business strategies and business models turning waste into new jobs and to new economic opportunities. So if we have to summarize how things changed over time circular economy policies first started dealing with waste between the 70s and the 90s. From the end of 19s to the 2010 we had starting to link the outputs with the inputs, so reusing them in terms of industrial symbiosis or as secondary resources. And then when the Ellen MacArthur Foundation kind of appeared and many other initiatives as well we started thinking that circular economy policies should think about maximum value in the retention, so economic value, technical value and many other values by creating jobs as well, by creating economic benefits. So over here we start seeing that even if all definitions of circular economy have common roots there seems to be a divergent understanding of what circular economy is good for, what it can help us achieve and also what is the automotive, right, because at the end of the day we don't want circular economy as the angle we want it as a means to an end. So what is this end that different people seek for circular economy to do? The first branch of circular economy as we have previously hinted is that circularity can be used as an economic opportunity. So it's another way to develop economic growth if you want. Use waste, use whatever goes out of our system as a new way to create profit within companies but also within political systems. So for instance you see here the word economic forum saying how we can transform something which is an environmental challenge into a business model that offers competitive advantage. You can see also here in the diagrams down below in the same article of the word economic forum saying that we need to move from a linear economy not to a recycling economy, sorry, but to a circular one that would transform our current throw away economy, that will tackle climate change, that separates the ability to achieve economic growth from consumption of natural resources, that will create jobs, that will create resilience and that also has a business case that can make our economies more competitive and more sustainable. So you see here that circular economy can be seen as a way to have a more sustainable development, a way to create new business models like cradle to cradle, product of the service and many other ones and it's kind of a win-win. We can have economic development and we can have a reduction of environmental footprints at the same time. Another branch of circular economy, of diverging branch, and we saw that with Germany and Japan, is that circularity can be used as a principle for waste and resource regulation. So this is more a technological solution to better link the outputs of a system with the inputs of a system. Over there there are also many different documents or policies that are behind this. Here, for instance, one from the UN talking about the ways how waste management and circular economy are connected together. Over there you'll typically see solutions from the industrial ecology realm. You'll often see the Lansing hierarchy first going to refuse and then reuse and then recycle and all of that. And you also see how over the years in these policies we went from some waste directives going for treatment and permits and control to landfill and reducing landfill but also having hazardous waste directives to new legislations going towards the environmental protection and using waste as a resource. From 2015 we have circular economy there etc etc. So we see really how there has been a shift into waste management towards a circular economy. And then we have a third diverging branch that says circularity is part of a constrained word of entropy and this sits within more the steady states ecological economics and de-growth communities. What do they say is that well entropy laws excludes the possibility for a completely circular economic system. In other words you cannot recycle or reuse energy once it's used it's done forever. At the same time as soon as you combine metals together then it's often very hard to separate them back or in case of electronics they're welded together or they're in such tiny proportions that it's very difficult to reuse them. And even if you do so while recycling always kind of omits or dissipates some parts of the material. So for them entropy kind of excludes the possibility of this ideal circular economy and kind of reduces the upbeat promises of circular economy. It also says that we should not focus on increasing the share of recyclables through circular economy business models but we should reduce the large portion of non-recyclables. So it's a matter of priority in their case of course reusing materials is a must but we first need to close the tap or reduce our consumption first and especially of non-recyclables and only then apply circular economy models or principles. So you see here that there is these two routes and three branches. Now let's have a brief example of circular economy policies in cities and see how the current policies or actions fit within these three branches. So these are three case studies of Brussels on the left Paris in the middle and London on the right. These date a bit because the one on the left was from 2016 to 2020 the one in the middle from 2017 to 2020 and the one on the right I think was also 2016 or 2017 or so. Along with a colleague of mine we went and read all of these documents and classified their actions so in the Brussels case they proposed 111 policies or measures of circular economy in the case of Paris they were 15 for 2017 and another 15 that were forcing for later on and in the case of London there were 15 and we tried to classify them in these three main branches of circular economy. So what we can see here is that a third let's say of these measures fit in the circularities and economic opportunities so it's going to bring more either profits or growth economic growth and develop new business models. Another third of these policies fit in the circularity as a principle for waste and resource regulation so we need to to link waste and resources and mainly through technical or technological solutions and we see that none of them fit within circularity as a as a constraint in the word of entropy meaning that well first we need to reduce and then only talk about reducing the the non-recyclables and increasing the the recyclable ones and of course there are some that can that we're not we were not able to classify because it included measures such as you know stakeholder engagement governance training but also monitoring and stuff like that and there you can see them below. So what does that tell us is that circular economy has let's say some common roots we all kind of agree what are the the roots of circular economy that linearity is bad and circularity is good but we also see that they're diverging interpretation of circular economy and of course that has a very profound effect in terms of policymaking and in terms of what is a circular economy in terms of a company of a city or a nation. So what are your thoughts what do you think is the best branch for circular economy and what is the one that you think is the most present today in circular economy policies. If you want please put your thoughts in the comments below and we'll continue the discussion over there until then if you like the videos that we make please remember to subscribe to our channel and add suggestions for next videos in the comments. Thanks and see you in the next one. Cheers.