“Circular economy: a programmed but complex implementation” – White paper

2024-08-29 07:15:47

The circular economy is an innovative concept, which sees the life cycle of a product unfold in the form of a loop. To summarize, the different stages inherent in the life of a product – extraction of the raw materials necessary for the manufacture of the product, design, production, consumption, end of life – must, in a circular economy, turn in a closed circle. With positive externalities in the current context: limit the need to extract new raw materials to manufacture products, in response to the scarcity of resources, and maximize the lifespan of products. Reuse, repair and reuse products as much as possible. And ultimately, recover end-of-life products that have become waste, either by recycling them or by exploiting them again in the form of raw materials.

So much for the theory. In practice, the current linear economy model involves the same production steps, without the concern of closing the loop. Historically, it is linked to the industrial revolution, which allowed man to start manufacturing products on an assembly line, which allowed the northern hemisphere, at the time, to improve its living conditions and to place technical progress at the level of societal ambition.

Following the industrial revolution, the entire planet developed industrial means of production, and little by little the negative externalities of these production practices became apparent. On two points mainly. First climatic, with an increase in pollution, having health effects on humans and multiple effects on the climate. The main one being global warming that is accelerating. Then, the problem of the scarcity of resources is becoming more and more pressing. This is the case for fossil energy resources, but also for certain metals, such as cobalt and many rare earths. In fact, the linear economy does not exclude the development of responsible practices in terms of resource management, the ecological impact of production or the fate of waste.

It is the fact of making all the steps related to the manufacture of products coherent and interdependent that allows us to achieve this circularity. Which would allow, ideally, to no longer have to extract raw materials to manufacture new products, since the materials from waste would be used to manufacture new ones. In reality, it is not that simple. Many products, first and foremost plastics, cannot be 100% recycled.

Also, and this is a real obstacle to the advent of efficient circular economy models, these models only work if all the players in the product value chain work in a coordinated manner and with the same efficiency. Which makes the circular economy bet risky. This also explains why many circular and virtuous models on paper have a lot of trouble seeing the light of day, and do not find support from investors who are more inclined to invest their money in more consensual industrial projects, but also with more certain profitability.

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