A circular economy – the challenge to technology education

James Pitt,

Honorary Visiting Fellow at the University of York, Department of Education[1],

The University of York, York, UK

Линейная и циклическая экономики. Необходимость повторного использования сырья, материалов. Принципы циклической экономики.

It is a mathematical certainty that if resources are taken from a finite source and not replaced then sooner or later they will run out. This is true of oil, coal and gas. It is true of copper and indium, and of indigenous forests.

Yet most of the major economies in the world operate as though there are unlimited resources. At the same time we – humans that is – generate a huge amount of waste. We operate a system that can be described as ‘Take – make – dispose’. This is a linear system that is both hugely inefficient and also which creates problems of pollution, climate change and shortages (цв. вкл. 1. рис. 1.1). It cannot go on forever. You do not have to be a professor of mathematics to realise that even if 99.9% of some material is recycled it will ultimately run out. As it is essential minerals (for example copper and indium) have already become scarce and expensive – and at the same time people discard products such as cars and cell phones that contain them, and nothing like 100% of these materials is recovered.

Curiously, we are the only species that generates waste that is not absorbed back into the ecosystem. In a complex system such as a forest ‘waste’ from any species becomes the feedstock for some other process. A dead animal or leaf rots down or is eaten by something else, which in turn rots down. Bacteria ensure that all matter is cycled round and round and round – forever. This is powered by the sun. It is essentially a circular system in which waste = food, diversity brings resilience and which relies on current (rather than stored) solar income.

So why do humans not live in the same way as all other species? Partly it is because of the artificially low price of fossil fuels. The price of a barrel of oil is calculated on the cost of extraction, transport and processing and not on the cost of replacing it. A barrel of oil provides the same energy output as one person working for ten years – so it is ‘cheaper’ in the short run to use the oil. But in the long run it is not sustainable.

An alternative paradigm is to think in terms of a circular economy (цв. вкл. 1. рис. 1.2). This is based on three principles.

1. ‘Waste’ needs to be designed out of the system. The so-called waste products or by-products of any process needs to become the raw materials of another product or process. This is summarised in the aphorism ‘waste = food’.

2. We need to learn from nature. This includes biomimicry as a design philosophy and the celebration of diversity with all its resultant benefits of resilience and the possibilities of change.

3. We need to live within current solar income.

In order to achieve this it is necessary to think in terms of biological and technical nutrients. A ‘biological nutrient’ is one that can decompose and be reinserted safely into the ecosystem (no long-lasting toxins) with the result that in enhances the fertility of the soil and the ability of all species to thrive. A ‘technical nutrient’ is a man-made material such as refined copper or aluminium, or a polymer such as polypropylene or nylon-6, that cannot go back into the ecosystem but which can be used again and again without deterioration. If all this is powered by current solar income then it can go on forever (subject of course to the laws of thermodynamics – and even the sun has a finite life). But it is a vision of a future that works. And we know that the currently operating paradigm cannot work long-term.

We call this the ‘circular economy’. In it goods are designed so that they can be disassembled into their different components or materials at the end of their useful life. The technical nutrients are then recycled back into the technosphere where they can be used again (not necessarily in the same product) and the biological nutrients go back into improving the soil. At present in the linear economy this does not happen and valuable technical nutrients end up as ‘waste’.

A number of conditions need to be in place for a circular economy to work successfully. The materials used have to be such that they can be recycled without loss of quality – there are great opportunities here for chemists and other material scientists and already there are chemists around the world developing ‘cradle-to-cradle’ materials. There needs to be an infrastructure for collection and disassembly. Some governments – China and the Netherlands in particular – are moving in this direction as a matter of policy and using their purchasing power to encourage this. The move towards a circular economy requires a change in the ‘operating system’. It will involve new business models that are geared towards leasing of products, designing for long life and ease of repair or easy maintenance, and the easy recovery of valuable materials. At present it is in a company’s interests to sell more and more product; so they do not want to make them too good. In a circular economy they will want to retain ownership of their (for example) copper or polymer molecules and therefore lease rather than sell their products, designing for quality and easy maintenance.

Already many companies are doing this. Rolls Royce does not sell aero engines – they sell so thrust (x hours at y newtons); InterfaceFlor[2] leases out carpets and recovers the materials. Their chemical engineers have developed both materials and processes so that 100% of the materials can be recovered and used again. Consider a fridge – when we buy we one is it because we want to own a fridge, or is it because we want cold food? Could we not be leasing fridges?

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation exists to investigate the potential of a circular economy. We work with business – large international companies – all of which see the circular economy as a new paradigm; they are developing radically different business models. Equally we work with education in getting circular economy thinking into the curriculum in schools and universities. To enter more deeply into this thinking it is worth visiting Braungart and McDonnough (2002)[3]. They lay out a vision where materials are endlessly cycled through the biological or technical nutrient cycles. Yong (2007)[4] describes how the Chinese government has adopted this way of thinking at three levels –enterprises, regions and industrial parks. Webster and Johnson (2008)[5] take this thinking and apply it to education. There are websites that are exploring and elaborating the concepts - see for example http://www.community.blueeconomy.de/, http://www.mbdc.com/ and http://www.c2ccertified.org/. In particular the website of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is devoted to this thinking and there is already a wide range of articles and videos. Learning materials for use in schools will start to appear in Spring of 2012 – see www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org . A particularly useful video is a short animation Rethinking Progress[6]. This is also available in Russian.