 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this world's economic forum discussion on the circular economy and how innovation can help us through this moment of an economic reset after COVID-19. Now, I'm Stephen Carroll. First of all, I'm a journalist at France24. I'm speaking to you today from Paris and we're looking forward to hearing in this session from both the public and private sector about the innovation and what's going on in this space around the circular economy, learning to reduce and reuse waste from objects all around us is not only, of course, a major issue in addressing the climate emergency, but also a huge economic opportunity. It's estimated that the circular economy could create 700,000 net jobs and generate savings of $200 billion by 2040. And that's, of course, on top of the environmental benefits, that increasing use of the circular economy would bring to us. We're discussing the opportunities here in this particular context of the COVID-19 pandemic and how companies and governments can move towards greater circularity in the economy. We'll be speaking to our panel in just a moment. There will be an opportunity for you to join us with your questions via the Zoom chat. We'll get to those a little bit later on. But first, to start off our discussion, we have a short video from the World Economic Forum, which will set us up for those key themes in this area around leadership, value chain transformation, and, of course, innovation. Well, that sets us up nicely for what we're going to be talking about over the next half hour. Let's get to our panel. Panels joining us from around the world today. We have from Xiaomi, show Z2, the President of International at Xiaomi. Xiaomi, of course, the world's third biggest smartphone maker. It'd be great to hear about what your company is doing in terms of e-waste, which we know is globally a really big problem in this area. Fifty million tons a year globally of e-waste. It'll be interesting to hear what Xiaomi is doing about that. From the Netherlands, we have Environment Minister Steensjef van Beltoven joining us. The Netherlands is setting ambitious targets in this area, including to halve the use of primary resources by 2030. We're looking forward to hearing from you about that. Turning next to Paris, we have Bertrand Camus, who's the Chief Executive of Suez. Suez is a major player in water and waste management around the world, buying drinking water to over 90 million people. The company also has a big business in plastics recycling, so we'll be interested to hear more about that and what innovation is coming towards in that area in particular. And from Nigeria, we have Billicus Adibi Abiola, who's the co-founder of WeCyclers, which is a platform that allows people to get their recyclables picked up and then collect points for it, which they can later redeem for cash. So a great example of entrepreneurship in this area of the circular economy as well. Welcome to you all and thank you for being with us today. Let's go first to show Z2 from Xiaomi joining us today from Beijing. You're of course a huge player in the electronics area. This is an area where there is huge potential for circularity. Let's start with the idea of how a company like yours in the electronics sector, are you addressing the issue of e-waste and how can you set the scene for us in terms of innovation in this area? Okay, thank you very much Stephen and thank you very much to everybody for giving us the forum to speak today. Just for some context setting, Xiaomi as Stephen mentioned just now is the third largest smartphone maker in the world today and the leading consumer IoT company with about 250 million devices connected on our IoT platform already. We are operational in 90 countries around the world and significant in Western Europe in particular. For example, we're the largest smartphone company in Spain, the second largest in Italy and the third largest in France today. As a truly global company, we want to be a very good local citizen in all the countries that we're operating. We want to make sure that first of all we are very focused and dedicated to the push to strengthen our circular economy capabilities and also to be a better corporate citizen. I think the first thing I would like to share is this is not something that sort of being done as a project within the company. It's actually set at the very top and our last board meeting sometime at the end of last year, we actually set a particular board resolution to make sure that we strengthen our CSR core capability. So this is something that we're taking very seriously and all the way at the very top of the company. In terms of what we have done so far, I think the first thing I would like to say is as a company that's involved in the manufacturing space, we won't be able to do this alone. So the first thing we have done since 2018 has been to encourage and push our core suppliers. There are about 200 of them. We do this via a few different ways, increasing the requirements that we ask of them and also in many, many forums that we organize with them. We keep repeating that this is something that this is a direction that we want to move towards. In terms of the results, there are a lot of points. I'm just going to pick a few. For example, for our latest flagship that we launched in Europe, we have reduced plastic packaging by 60%. And this year our target is to reduce by 80%. In terms of, we have introduced something called green packaging. So the box that you get your device in, we are calling it the one paper box, which saves up to about 40% of packaging material. In fact, just as a small fun tidbit, when China was making this big push on garbage classification, we even implemented this little feature in our AI voice UI so that you can more easily find out what kind of garbage classification the garbage that you have should be sitting in. So that's the direction that we're pushing in. The other area that we have worked very hard on is to increase after sales maintenance efficiency, in particular of the user resources there. This is an area that, because it's not always at the front line of the business, frequently it doesn't get the attention of the top executives. And as a result, this is an area of a lot of wastage. So for every device that you buy, there is usually a provision of a lot of replacement parts. So we're putting significant efforts to make sure that that kind of replacement parts are used in a much more efficient way so that we can reduce a lot of wastage over there. So I'm sorry to interrupt you, but what sort of financial commitment does that involve from a company like yours to put these systems in place? And what sort of leadership is necessary in that area to improve that? We believe that in the short term, there's going to obviously be some costs associated in terms of building the systems to, for example, for the after sales efficiency measure, we have to put in some investments out front to upgrade our IT systems. But the net works out so that such that in the long term, the efficiency gains are going to outweigh the upfront investments. So from this point of view, we believe that we're not only helping the planet, this is actually good for our business. And of course, our consumers are demanding this. So from a demand side, there's a strong push for us to invest more to be a better corporate citizen as well. And how important are government targets in this area? Can governments help you to do more or is there something that you feel the private sector can lead in as well? At the end of the day, these decisions have to be an economic decision for private companies as well, for companies as well. But it really does help when the government is pushing in that direction. But I think for this to be truly sustainable, it has to be something that's more organic on the part of companies, rather than depending on big subsidies to push. Okay, so Z2 from Xiaomi, thank you. Let's turn next to the Netherlands to environment minister, Steente van Veldhoven. Tell us what about what your government's doing in this area? You've set very ambitious targets. How are you moving towards particularly in the context of COVID-19? How are you accelerating move towards those targets? Well, we said ambitious targets indeed. We want to halve our primary use of resources by 2030. And we want to be fully circular by 2050. And I think the first element that was already mentioned here is circular economy is about much more than recycling. It is also about repair. It is about designing. It is about longer use. It's about avoiding waste. And if you ask us how are we dealing in this context of COVID, it only stresses the need to push further for this, because waste is a cost and literally a waste of money. And now if we are thinking about how to rebuild our economy, we have an opportunity to build our economy in a circular way. We need to recognize the value of the resources that we are using. And we have to think about how to keep them in this chain for a longer period. So there's two elements which are really very important and which we work on in the Netherlands, that is cross sectoral collaboration. As Chiu just said, no one company can do this alone. But one company or one sector can have a great impact on the entire chain. If he says, I'm going to change my packaging, he will change an entire supply chain. And so those sectors that are changing are having a spillover effect on other sectors. And the second part is, I think, from the side of governments, we need to become much more aware of how crucial the circular economy is for combating climate change. And we should be willing to, in our way to making the circular economy just the regular economy, I think that's what Chiu also said, and I fully concur, there needs to be an economic reality, an economic logic in being circular. But we can influence that economic reality through subsidies in the beginning, but you want to go to a real, let's say a self-sustaining economy, and thereby also by giving the right price and by setting norms in regulation. And in the Netherlands, we are working on all of these issues across the entire government, investing in education, investing in different business models, bringing partners together and setting norms and standards. And what has been the feedback from industry when you've been discussing with them, setting these targets, and also them meeting these targets? What sort of response have you got? Well, actually, we have, we've gotten very positive feedback, because industry largely recognizes this as a very important strategic agenda. And what we've tried to do is to bring all of the front runners together, because those who are already willing to step ahead because of their strategic insight are even more willing to push forward jointly with other partners that do the same. So we've set up a national plastic packs, reducing the use of plastics, increasing the use of secondary materials, et cetera, et cetera. We've enlarged this national plastic pack with France, for example, and with Denmark and a lot of other European countries to a European plastic pack, thereby jointly creating a market for the industry to change for. There is a business opportunity, because all of these governments are pushing in that same direction. And then when it comes to regulation, there, we really need the cooperation with the European Union that is going to put forward this year a mandatory amount of secondary materials in new plastic products. And of course, for business, if the same rules go for everybody, then they do not object. Now, there even are firm supporters in getting this mandatory requirement of the ground, because then we have a level playing field, which is of strategic importance for all of those companies. Okay, I think I'm glad you touched on the issue of international cooperation on that as well, which I think is very key to this conversation. Let's go next to Bertrand Camus, who's the chief executive of Suez. Bertrand, you have set big targets in terms of increasing investment and research 50% by 2023. What sort of impact will you have in terms of the circular economy with that sort of investment? What we see is a complete revolution, the way we will manage waste in the future and also water, which are two core businesses. If we want to answer the needs that have been very well set out by the minister and achieve a real impact in terms of being able to recycle and reuse secondary raw material. And therefore, this needs a solution. And this is what we are. I would say that's our role to bring solutions to help that happen. And it's all around innovation and partnering with the clients. And just to give you an example to illustrate, when we look at plastic waste management, I think that we have to work at the source to eliminate waste, definitely. This means working with the users of plastics as a container. Very interestingly, I will not name a large company that is delivering you products at any time of the day and night, but they bring you more waste than product, usually. They have a CO2 footprint that is quite large because they are answering your needs. So all of that needs to be fixed. And at the end, it's about innovation. How can you help a customer to be more efficient in the way they reduce their waste production? And also, how can we facilitate their life to sort better than the waste? Then we have to invest in plastic recycling. If you have the opportunity to visit one day, plastic recycling facility, as the one we just opened in Thailand, it's full of optical recognition, laser sorting, and so on. It's very high-tech type of technologies. And of course, as plastics are changing in terms of components to recycling, it impacts also the way we can then recycle it within the plant. And at the end, you need to have users, usually large corporations, who are going to use those plastics in their own processes. And this is more around the partnering. So you see that we have a lot of movements at the same time on the various steps of the plastic waste chain. And all of that is requesting innovation and partnering with the various sectors, being the customer or citizen, the specialist of recycling, and the users at the end. All of that in a framework of regulation and price incentive, so that at the end, those businesses can make a living. And I could do exactly the same type of description of what are the challenges with water and wastewater reuse. We will have to better treat the wastewater so that we can protect the environment. I have the same river behind me, if you cannot see it, because of the fog. In summer time, in 20 years' time, there will be half of the water in summer time. And therefore, if you don't treat better the wastewater, you are going to damage the environment. And therefore, you need to treat it to a point that it can be reused. And all of that is creating opportunities to go more towards circular economy. But as a CEO, you also, of course, have to answer to shareholders. So I'm interested in how quickly do you feel there need to be results from this innovation for you to also be able to make the case to those other stakeholders? I think that when you look at the large corporations or even the large municipalities we are dealing with, today we cannot be only a good producer of drinking water or a good waste collector. We need to be a partner to accelerate their own transition. When you have large corporations like Unilever, Proctor, we are part of an alliance to end the plastic waste. They are all committed with very strict and stringent targets in terms of improving their environmental impact, especially, for example, incorporation of secondary raw material, which is new. It was not the case a couple of years ago. And therefore, they need to have access to these products. And therefore, they are ready to partner and to share, I would say, not only the cost but the investment to make it happen. So I think that things are really changing, changing fast. And if a business like ours wants to be a leader as we are today in 10 years' time, we need to be able to bring the solutions that are not only going to improve the reliability of those processes but bring the cost down a little bit like what happened with renewable energies and also answer to the final client's expectations. Because at the end, by taxes or by purchase, they are the one at the end who are paying the total cost of that. And being able to reduce it and making it easy for them is one of our goals. And therefore, it's clearly something that is part of our strategic plan. And our investors who are more and more committed to ESG type of approach and stock are definitely understanding the necessity to invest a lot in terms of innovation. Okay, Bertrand, thank you. Let's go now to Nigeria, Tobelicus, Adibi, Abiola from WeCyclers. You are an example of your whole business as an innovation in this area of the circular economy. Tell us a bit about getting that started and the consumer response I'm interested in in two WeCyclers since you've set it up. Thank you. So WeCyclers started eight years ago as a class project while I was a student at MIT Sloan. I'm really focused on helping people that live at the base of the pyramid. People earning less than two dollars a day earn value from their waste. It's a social enterprise and it was created to work around the issues like the lack of infrastructure. So you see that in many cities in the developing world, we don't really have good navigable roads. So it's really hard for trucks to go in and collect this waste. And so we built an innovative software-powered system that also worked with bicycles, low-cost cargo bicycles to go around to local communities and encourage them to sort their plastics, their papers, metals in exchange for points which they would redeem for money. And in eight years, we've been able to create 200 jobs. We've also built 10 franchise businesses and we've been able to show that people can be engaged and be empowered in cleaning up their communities. Initially, it was really challenging to convince people to because there was a really low awareness, low public awareness on why people need to recycle, why they need to dispose of their waste properly. But over time, when people began to see that they could actually earn money from collecting this waste, they could empower themselves with waste, we saw that people really warmed up to it. We have stories of mostly women. We have a woman that before she started recycling recyclers, she was earning about $10 to $15 every month. And after working in recyclers, she was able to earn about 10, 20 times that in a few months. So these are real stories of real people that can turn their lives around just by being engaged in recycling. So we've seen that there's so many challenges that we face as an innovative business. It's a new business in a developing economy and one of the big issues that we faced is funding. It's difficult to raise money. Even philanthropic investors, social impact investors, they have a very high bar. So over time, we've had to bootstrap our way into building this business. So that's one big issue that we have is finding the funding. Another big issue is absence of clear policy environment where people will be mandated to recycle. So it wouldn't be just by choice, it wouldn't be recyclers having to go to each and every home to tell them what to do. It will be a concerted effort pushed by the government to educate and mandate people to recycle. So I think if we can do that, that would be a really big solution to this problem. That's interesting because I think the issue of scale off was very key to this discussion as well. Are those as you see them funding and regulation? Are those the two things that will help scale up in this area? Those are just two or many. I think another big one is for the companies that make this packaging to be more thoughtful, to be more thoughtful about what kind of packaging they are pumping out into the world. As we cycle as we collect all kinds of packaging, and there are some packaging that we collect that cannot be recycled. So there are many companies that are going for, because of costs, because they're trying to penetrate this money, there's people that have lower disposable income. So they have to put more thought into the kind of packaging that they are producing. They have to think about how is this packaging going to be collected? So their responsibility should not end at the supermarket shelf. It should be a circular chain where they will be responsible for ensuring that the waste that they send out is brought back. Because this waste, even if they don't realize it, is a problem for everyone. The coronavirus pandemic has shown us that the world is connected. So even if, you know, Lagos, for instance, is one of the top 10 polluters of the ocean, so if you don't try to solve this problem, it's going to be everybody's problem. Okay, Belikas, thank you. Let's go to some of the great questions we've been getting from our audience today. Minister von Belthofen, I'd like to ask you one of the questions that come in about how to generate global standards of processes in the area of the circular economy and how to promote more listed companies into adopting that model. What do you think are the key steps that need to be taken in that area? The key step is to come together and join forces. There is a great platform, the platform for the acceleration of the circular economy pace that is working already with over 100 organizations across sectors to build four action agendas in the areas of plastics, electronics, textiles and food. We'll be launching those action agendas next week. And I think they highlight the key elements that we only need to work on and how we can collaborate on this to make this transition a reality. If we join forces, we can not only go further, but we can also go faster. And if you look at the challenge that we have, going faster is one of, should be one of our goals. So for all those companies that are looking for ways to how to make that change, how to get to those standards, join forces, for example, within the pace action agendas. And let's make sure that we don't wait for the world governments to set all of our standards. But let's join forces between those governments that are willing to push forward, but also between companies that are willing to make that change, that see that strategic agenda. And let's jointly make sure that we make it easier by combining our forces and aligning our efforts. Thank you. Show a question I'm going to put to you, it was a question to all of the panel, but this idea of carbon transparency. Do you have any plans to introduce carbon transparency for good? Is that something that you would see that would be workable, for example, through the example given by our questioner is through a digital product passport to help encourage the circular economy? Is that something that you think that could be done? I think it's a very interesting idea. And it definitely, we, by the way, saw the note inviting more companies to make net zero commitments by November this year, I believe. And this is something that we have had internal discussions for quite some time now. The key to becoming a net zero is to first figure out exactly how much carbon is involved. So I think that having some sort of standards, particularly by perhaps the auditors, just like the general accounting principles could be something that's very useful, because then we are talking about the same thing. So for us as companies, I think we are very welcoming of this. Clearly it's going to be a very significant endeavor by anyone who takes up this mantle, but very welcoming and I think is a great idea. Okay. Bill, I guess the question I'm going to put to you about partners in developing and emerging economies who don't see circular recycling as their strategic agenda yet. Do you think that they'll be pushed back from organizations or countries in that area that haven't really realized the potential of the circular economy? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's happening now. People are waking up to see that it's important, circular economy is important. And so they are asking and requiring companies to be more responsible. I think I'm encouraged by initiatives that are coming up. I just heard that the World Economic Forum is announcing one today in Nigeria on the Global Plastic Action Partnership. So I think that kind of initiatives will ensure that it will provide a platform for companies because I think one of the major issues is that there is no accountability. And also, many of these companies may not have the resources or the knowledge to do what is required of them. So I think having this kind of platform where they know and they have steps, easy steps that they can follow is great. We've also launched an NGO called the Fair Plastic Alliance that is focused on strengthening the value chain and making it more circular. So I think those kinds of initiatives will definitely help. Okay, Bill, thank you. Beth Funk, I have a quick question for you if you don't mind. This is from the idea of a new company on the issue of supply chain. Are there early steps that new companies can take to make sure they're doing the most in terms of the circular economy? Definitely. I think that too. And it's very often the case with complex systems. It's much more difficult to restructure and reset or re-engineer processes than starting right from the beginning. And for that, companies like ours are used to partner with corporations to work with them from the beginning with the right setup, at least with the technologies we master today. Hopefully it will change in the future. But to start with the latest technologies, the latest way of engineering processes so that they can be ready to have that included in the way they operate. For example, we have a partnership with car manufacturers worldwide also Airbus to work with them on how they produce the planes and how can we facilitate dismantling and recycling. So I think that the sooner it is put in place in the setup of a company, the better it is definitely. Okay, that's all. Thank you for that. That brings us to the end of part one.