In this episode, we discuss the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s latest publication, The circular economy: A 'triple play' solution for achieving China's climate objectives. We’ll explore how adopting a comprehensive circular economy framework can play a pivotal role in achieving both China’s climate and economic goals.
In this episode, we discuss the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s latest publication, The circular economy: A 'triple play' solution for achieving China's climate objectives. We’ll explore how adopting a comprehensive circular economy framework can play a pivotal role in achieving both China’s climate and economic goals.
Lei Chen and Seb Egerton-Read highlight the triple play benefits of applying the circular economy in China. These include reducing greenhouse gas emissions in line with the country’s climate goals, securing the supply of critical raw materials for the renewable energy transition and transition to electric vehicles, and the increased resilience of China’s economy.
Head over to our website to read the full report mentioned in this episode.
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Seb Egerton-Read 00:00
Welcome to the circular economy show. I'm Seb. Often on this podcast, we talk about the circular economy in the context of the European Union or maybe North America. But is there an elephant in the room in terms of the shape of the global economy? Is the circular economy relevant for China? That's exactly what we're going to be talking about in today's episode, I'll be joined by Lei from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's China office, who focuses on climate projects, and he'll be sharing with me a bit about where is the circular economy in China, and some of the key insights from our latest publication that links the circular economy with China's climate goals. Lei, thank you for joining us on the Circular Economy Show podcast. Many of our listeners will be familiar with the state of play of the circular economy in contexts like the European Union, perhaps many even in North America. A lot less of them will know what's happening in China with the topic. So I thought I'd start this podcast by asking for you to characterize where is the topic of circular economy in China right now?
Lei Chen 01:12
Absolutely, Seb. Thank you for having me for this session. I would be happy to delve into this topic. You know, circular economy in China actually has deep historical roots. One of the earliest examples is the traditional agriculture system, which is called Mulberry Dike Fish Pond System. So it's actually originated more than 220-500 years ago, and you can still see them in some part of southern China. So in simple terms, the farmers group mulberry trace to feed the silk worms for silk production, and the leftovers, leaves and silkworm waste then used for to feed the fish in ponds, and then the fish waste fertilize the mulberry tree. So you can see it's actually created a natural cycles where everything reduced and nothing went to East West. So entering modern days, it was not until the mid 2000s that China began to adopt only the circular economy principles, focusing on the 3r strategy, which is reduce, reuse and recycle. They are. They were inspired by the waste management legislation in Germany and Japan, and the initial focus was very much heavily geared towards pollution control and waste management. And then, because at that moment, you know, China has went through a rapid industrialization and urbanization and you and the milestone movements for this stage was the introduction of the circular economy promotion law since 2028 so one of the key strategies at this period was the development of eco industry parks. You say, those are the zones that the business collaborates together the waste of back products from one company become the raw materials for another. And along the side, China also started to build up a vast recycling network. This system are designed to handle both domestic and industrial waste, recovering valuable material that could otherwise end up in landfills or incineration. So more recently, China's started to shift the focus on more on the consumption side. You know, as people know that China is manufacturing hub in the world, but actually we have such a big population, and people are now the government now starting to look okay if we, if we can shift to the consumption model employing a circular principle. So this is a new kind of a new feature. And then even today, the second column is increasingly linked to climate goals in China, where the ambitions targets of achievement carbon neutrality by 2060 and secular practice are seen as a vital tool for reducing emissions and promotes climate release resilience across different sectors. So yeah, circular economy really is, is a fascinating concept in China, it's gaining even further momentum now.
Seb Egerton-Read 04:22
So we've done this research on the link between the circular economy and and how it can support what China wants to achieve in terms of climate goals. This is an extension of some research we did more globally in 2019 called completing the picture. And we're and we're launching, publishing, promoting that during the cop conversations later this month in November. My question to you is, where did the need for this research come from? You know, what do we do? What did we do?
Lei Chen 04:56
It's become very evident that from. A different legislation and framework and government policy that circular economy can and should be a part of the climate solution in China, and together with energy transition, they complete the picture for addressing the climate change. Well, there is a strong consensus on the importance of the circular economy on climate action, but the barriers remains there to realize its full potential. For instance, the qualification barrier, the implementation barrier, and and then as EMF, we realize that we the need to move beyond the way so the way Circular Economy matters to and focus on the whole question so how to deliver its potential. So as a EMF, we have been, as you mentioned, working have some efforts to try to bridge the evidence gap by, for instance, publishing the completing the picture reports some years ago, and we also have done some research in China in recent years. So but, you know, we see in China the localized efforts was still lacking and sometimes also scattered. So we try to, that's why we tried to initiate a research collaboration with Tsinghua University, we realized the facts are important, the narrative matters as well. So we spent quite some big time crafting the narrative and to tell a companion China story. So the story, the story went different from it differs from the typical narrative we often hear and encounter in the in the China markets. So our aim for this research was to make these concepts more relatable and engaging for weather audience. So not only for circular economy experts, but also for climates. Climate experts,
Seb Egerton-Read 06:57
I really liked what you said there lay about the this is about the data and the evidence and the insights to support a point of view, but it's also about the story and the narrative for China and and the relevance of social economy for China, specifically in that and those two things being equally important. So what? So let's get into that like, what are the what if there were one or two key insights that someone would take from this publication, what would those? What would those be?
Lei Chen 07:28
Well, yes, I think the key, the key message, is actually embedded in the title of the paper. So the title of the paper is circuit circular economy as a triple play solution for achieving China's climate objectives. So the triple play is a key message. So our research has offered a triple play solution being reducing green, hot greenhouse gas emissions in hardware based sectors, and secondly, helping secure critical raw materials in the transition to renewable energy and certainly enhance resilience across the economy to against the effects of climate change. So that's the three things, three strategy we you know, we set forth for for circular economy in climate, climate action. So I just want to quickly deep dive into the each of the strategy of the three triple play. Maybe So firstly, about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So we, you know, we have EMF, we have the narrative. 55 of the emission comes from energy, and 45 comes from the way we consume, we produce and consume food and goods. So it is, it is very evident that circ economy should be part of the emission reduction strategy. And then in this research, we focused on three case sectors that shape our daily life, so build environments, mobility and plastics. So in total, there accounts for nearly half of the total emissions in China. And we, by doing, by synthesizing the existing studies, we found out that if we, if applying a set of circular strategy, then we can reduce 1/3 of this 3/3 of the emissions of the three sectors. So this is quite a big potential. And then secondly, about securing raw materials. You know, China is actually leading the world in renewable energy transition. But the the more the element which is often overlooked is the, you know, innovative energy transitioning relies very much on the critical raw materials, and much of it actually depends on import. So how circular economy can support a decoupling the renewable energy growth from this material, extraction energy? So that could be a big topic, and we have done some research on this. So that's the second strategy of the triple play solution, and certainly which is relatively under discovered, and we found very limited evidence, is the it's the linkage between circular economy and resilience, circulation, resilience and climate's adaptations.
Seb Egerton-Read 10:22
And it feels like that resilience topic will only increase as in its importance as the conversation around climate change adaptation increases as well. I really think that point you make the second kind of insight that you mentioned about the dependency one that it's perhaps some listeners won't know just how significant the investment and speed of transition towards renewable energy, towards electric vehicle vehicles, is in China, which is really substantial. I was, I was reading a piece the other week about, like, the scale of the infrastructure build up and the likelihood of being, you know, really a high percentage of electric vehicle cars by a very short time frame being, being far outstripping the kind of progress that we're seeing in other parts of the world, whilst we also seeing progress in other parts of the world. But, yes, but of course, that being effectively also very dependent on raw material extraction and increased utilization and circulation of of those critical raw materials from both a resilience point of view, but also from a from a material effectiveness point of view. It's really, you know, it's really significant. And obviously, that's hopefully where the insights of this paper come in. So, what are so, you know, we've, we've published this research, we've told, hopefully, a compelling story. What are the key recommendations that come out of that work for a circular economy in China?
Lei Chen 11:52
Yeah, yes. Thank you. As in this paper, we have leveraged the EMF universal policy goals framework for for come up with a set of actions. So we have proposed 15, 5051, 515, actions and the five goals. So they are like, so the policy can take, so we focus very much on the policy making side. So the first one is stimulating design for the circular economy. So design is always important, and we always have to emphasis as upstream innovation opportunity here throughout the economy. And the second leader about managing resources to preserve value, so we how we can really build efficient and high value resource management. So go move beyond waste management, but resource stewardship. So that's basically the key elements to harness the benefits of the design considerations, and then we talk about how to make the economics work. So we need some incentives, and perhaps also some disintegnce for the linear model to make the economics work, to make the business case opinion, and then fourth, the fourth point. So we mentioned about investment, invest in innovation, infrastructure and skills. So we need some hardware and software properly integrated to deliver the potential to upskill the circular benefits. So that's that's about the facility, that's about the data infrastructure, that's about the skills needed for the from the labor force. And we also talk about collaborate for system change, because circular economy, as we put it in the paper, it is a system agenda, and system agenda need systems thinking, system framework, so we have the policy, and we need the business, and we need the civil society and, and also all the sellers, they have to work together to deliver the, you know, the benefits needed. So that's, that's a five goals. And each goal we propose three actions. Well, there are, there could be more, of course, but we keep it 15 and and all. I think they are all very relevant for China, for the climate and for circular economy, so...
Seb Egerton-Read 14:28
You thought, you thought asking him to do 15 things was, was it was a good place to was a good place to leave. It was enough. And I think the emphasis of those, those actions you're talking about, of course, are towards policy makers and towards policy makers in terms of move beyond thinking about this as a waste management issue alone, all five of those areas you articulate talk about making policies that don't purely focus on that kind of downstream recycling and pipe, but actually move upstream. Think about the economics. Think about resource stewardship, investment and collaboration. Lei, thank you very much for joining us on the circular economy Show podcast. So as Lei said, the circular economy topic is being led by the policy agenda in China, but there are increasing opportunities for other stakeholders to get involved. And he also shared how the topic is moving upstream towards how do we design for a circular economy, or shape the economics to incentivize it or regulate against linear economy practices? And finally, he highlighted the triple play benefits from our publication, reducing greenhouse gas emissions in line with China's climate goals, to securing the supply of critical raw materials for the renewable energy transition and transition to electric vehicles, and finally, the increased resilience of the economy, all benefits of applying the circular economy in China. We'll put a link to the executive summary of that report in English in our show notes. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Circular Economy Show brought to you by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Please, do subscribe to our podcast if you're not already subscribed, and we look forward to having you listen to future episodes.