Is the circular economy just another form of sustainability? Taking the key overlaps and core differences in turn, this episode explores some of the common pitfalls in conflating these two vital yet distinct practices.
Is the circular economy just another form of sustainability?
In this premiere episode of the Circular Curious season, Emma Elobeid and Lou Waldegrave explore the key overlaps and core differences between sustainability and the circular economy and discuss some of the common pitfalls in conflating these two vital yet distinct practices.
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Emma Elobeid 00:02
Welcome to the first in our three-part season for the circular curious. Over the next few episodes, we'll be talking around the edges, peeling off some layers and unraveling some common misconceptions around the circular economy. I'm Emma Elobeid, and this installment of the Circular Economy Show is all about sustainability. You might be thinking, hold up a minute. Isn't the circular economy just another word for sustainability? Well, actually, no, given that many of our guests we have on the show talking about their work in the circular economy, have what I'm calling the "S word" in their literal job titles.
Seb Egerton-Read 00:38
Head of sustainability at H&M group.
Pippa Shawley 00:40
Sustainability coordinator.
Finley Phillips 00:41
Environmental and Sustainability Manager
Laura Franco Henao 00:43
Senior Vice President of sustainability.
Finley Phillips 00:45
Chief Sustainability and Social Impact Officer
Seb Egerton-Read 00:48
First Chief Sustainability Officer,
Pippa Shawley 00:50
Chief Sustainability Officer,
Lou Waldegrave 00:51
Chief Sustainability and Government Affairs Officer,
Laura Franco Henao 00:54
Senior Director of sustainability,
Lou Waldegrave 00:56
Head of sustainability,
Pippa Shawley 00:56
a professor of Design Methodology for Sustainability and Circular Cconomy, Senior Director for sustainability initiatives.
Emma Elobeid 01:05
Clearly, there are overlaps, but until today, we've never before explicitly explored the crossover. But first, I guess we should go back to basics. What is sustainability? The word, the field, the practice, what indeed is the circular economy?We'll look at some of the overlaps and some of the points of difference. And finally, because I like to finish on an existential note, we'll ask: Does it even matter? So maybe the easiest way to do this is with a simple, plain English definition. Well, not so easy, since there are over 300. Here's Lou to run us through the main ones.
Lou Waldegrave 01:43
Hi, Em, thanks so much for introducing me into your poddy. You're right. There are literally hundreds of definitions out there that said. Most of them seem to stem from two core ideas. First one, the UN in 1987 the United Nations Brundtland Commission defined sustainability as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Emma Elobeid 02:14
Okay, nice. Humanity has essential needs, but meeting them shouldn't come at the cost of our children and grandchildren?
Lou Waldegrave 02:21
Well, yeah, hard to argue, as that one. Meanwhile, the World Bank takes a slightly different lean, defining sustainability as growth that is inclusive, environmentally sound and efficient with resources. Do you want to know what the robots think?
Emma Elobeid 02:36
Always.
Lou Waldegrave 02:38
Interestingly, the AI definition, although it also takes its cue from that UN one point to the ability to maintain or preservecertain conditions over the long term.
Emma Elobeid 02:52
Okay, I'd like to pick up on something here, because it feels to me like there's a kind of theme coming on in some of these definitions around sustenance or the process of keeping going, but for now, let's hold those thoughts, because it feels like a good segue to start thinking about where the differences lie between sustainability and the circular economy. So safe to assume we all know what the circular economy is.
Lou Waldegrave 03:15
Yes, yes. But it never hurts to recap.
Emma Elobeid 03:19
Very true. And to Ellen.
Ellen MacArthur 03:24
I always think that the simplest way to kind of get the circular economy is to think about the difference between a line, literally a straight line, and a circle. And when we talk about how we use stuff, you know, materials, things, metals, plastics, in our economy today, we use stuff up. Eventually it falls off the end of that line. It becomes waste. It becomes rubbish. It falls off the end of its useful kind of platform. If you turn that line into a circle, then you think of everything that goes into the economy, stuff, food, metal, plastic. Everything goes around in a circle, and it keeps going around in a circle so the materials can be fed back into the system. Food waste gets broken down and turned into fertilizer, metals get recycled and put into the next products. It's all about a system straight line shifting to a circle.
Emma Elobeid 04:13
So that line to circle visualization is an enticing entry point, but what does it mean in practice, and how do we translate that big, beautiful idea into an actionable top line.
Lou Waldegrave 04:24
Well, this is where a demonstrated clip of those three key principles might come in handy.
Emma Elobeid 04:29
It really would, wouldn't it?
Sarah O’Carroll 04:31
Eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials and regenerate nature.
04:35
Eliminate waste, cycle products and materials and regenerate nature.
Miranda Schnitger 04:39
Eliminate waste and pollution keep products and materials in use and regenerate nature.
Lou Waldegrave 04:46
Yeah, it's testament in the massive momentum the circular economy has had over the past decade that increasingly most people have some level of familiarity with the core concepts, if not the exact three principles. In the exact right order.
05:02
Yeah, and I, and I think that sustainability is, by comparison, such easy social shorthand is also testament to the scope of its influence throughout business and society. I think sustainability has almost become the umbrella term for describing any political, business or individual activity deemed to be better or more responsible. It's reaching. Kind of cultural lexicon has become so wide that it's come to signify everything from large scale renewable energy projects to household level efficiency measures like turning the thermostat down and sustainability has of course, also spawned the evolution of the environmental and social governance that's ESG movement in the noughties and led to the development of the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs in 2012 in fact, now feels like a good time to note that the circular economy is a framework that can help us deliver against many of Those SDGs.
Lou Waldegrave 06:00
While it's nice to have an easy, single source reference point for some of these activities, it'd be even better if we could get specific about exactly why a circular economy is distinctive.
Emma Elobeid 06:14
Yeah, totally agree. Because from the outset, the circular economy sought to do something new, not less bad, not just more efficient, but completely different.
Lou Waldegrave 06:25
Should we bring Ellen back out here?
Emma Elobeid 06:27
Let's!
Ellen MacArthur 06:28
The economy is what we all live within. We all live within an economy. It's how money flows within a system. But it's much, much broader than that. You know, the very nature of the way our economy works. It's actually quite challenging. You know, we've, we've had the Industrial Revolution, there weren't many of us around. Now things have just grown and exploded. We have more people. We have more use of resources. We have a culture, really, that takes many, many, many more materials much, much more quickly. And in that linear system, where you take it, you make it and you throw it, we're just kind of using this stuff up faster and faster. So if you change the whole system, you could call that a circular economy. We're so used to thinking, let's just make this last a bit longer. Let's eek out what we've got a bit longer. But this is a completely different way of thinking. Let's actually make it better.
Emma Elobeid 07:11
A story or a memory. I hear a lot from those who have been at the foundation longer than me. Is that when it first started out, the question they asked themselves was, what's the goal for our global economy? So it was never just about using fewer resources until we eventually run out or stop making things. The brief has always been more ambitious than that. So it was that really core question of "what does good actually look like?" That led to the circular economy.
Lou Waldegrave 07:38
Yeah, and I think it's that central thread of more good over less bad that forms the core of this difference to sustainability.
Emma Elobeid 07:47
Yeah, it's a it's a subtle but really significant difference.
Lou Waldegrave 07:52
Yeah, I've also heard it told by way of metaphor, quite a lot. There's one about a cliff, one about relationships, another about a bathtub.
Emma Elobeid 08:00
I've definitely used the bathtub one. So that is basically, if your bathtub was overflowing, you wouldn't just get a bucket and start baling all the water out, or even just pull out the plug so the excess could drain away. You'd turn off the tap.
Lou Waldegrave 08:14
Although it's a compelling image. But is it quite right?
Emma Elobeid 08:18
It's got the right intent. Treat the upstream cause, not the downstream symptom. But there's something a little simplistic about just saying stop. We need jobs. We need a thriving economy. So it misses that systems wide perspective, I think, and leaves out the considerable Circular Economy opportunity.
Lou Waldegrave 08:36
So would you say maybe it's more redesign the plumbing system?
Emma Elobeid 08:40
I mean, look, I think we could unpack sustainability at a word level almost endlessly. What all these stories kind of hint at is a slight implication of business as usual, but less bad. And it's that that feels at odds with the intention of the circular economy as being about doing much, much more good.
Lou Waldegrave 08:59
Yeah, we often see this play out in the great recycling debate, don't we, which is probably one of the activities that for a lot of the population springs to mind when they think about sustainability, and maybe even when they think about the circular economy.
Emma Elobeid 09:15
Yeah, and this is one of those really big questions that we engage with a lot. Here's a clip of our colleague, Seb from an episode not too long ago exploring this exact thing.
Lou Waldegrave 09:25
Pretty sure the episode was called big questions too.
Miranda Schnitger 09:29
Very well remembered.
Seb Egerton-Read 09:30
It's very common conversation. When you when I say to people, oh, I work in circular economy, people say, Well, yeah, I I like recycle my cardboard. I recycle this thing. And very often that's the first conversation with businesses. They'll say something along the lines of, okay, so yeah, we're thinking about, how can we recycle our products? And as Sarah said, that's not a bad thing, but actually it's you're kind of starting at the wrong point in in the way in which you're thinking about the solutions are out there. Like, for starters, like, you can't really recycle a. Effectively design the product differently from the outset, anyway, so you have to think about what's going into the system. And secondly, actually recycling is effectively how we take materials and return them back into the system. But if you think about the foundations, or people might be familiar with the foundation's kind of butterfly illustration, what we kind of know is that things like reuse, redistribution, remanufacturing, they require less energy, less labor to return, to keep things in use at a really high value, or circulate products and materials, the second principle of the circular economy. So the answer is, obviously that recycling is a good thing, but it's almost quite helpful to think about it as the last resort for a product and material component, as opposed to the starting point when we have the conversation.
Emma Elobeid 10:42
This conversation is a very familiar one to us all, I think, and part of the distinction from sustainability, whether we're talking about recycling or any other kind of broadly sustainable activity that finds its focus on the symptom side of the fence is that a circular economy asks, at a material level, at a product level, at a business model level, and at her supply chain level, and across industries and the entire global economic system. How can we redesign things for the better, not just avoid the worst?
Lou Waldegrave 11:11
In sustainability's defense...
Emma Elobeid 11:14
That makes it sound as though I've been sustainability bashing!
Lou Waldegrave 11:17
Not bashing, myth busting maybe.
Emma Elobeid 11:19
Okay.
Lou Waldegrave 11:21
In sustainability's defense, maybe it's unfair and borderline reductionist to define sustainability as reducing the negative impacts of the current linear economy.
Emma Elobeid 11:33
I agree. I also think it's that the circular economy goes beyond a concept. It's an economic framework with real world application that works within planetary boundaries.
Lou Waldegrave 11:44
But isn't that more or less the UN definition of sustainability, meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs?
Emma Elobeid 11:55
Yeah, I think there are definite commonalities and intent, rather than there being, you know, massive ideological chasms between the two. And that's what makes this conversation so nuanced. For me, it's more that the circular economy helps us to tackle the triple planetary crisis in a very actionable way across multiple sectors and multiple scales.
Lou Waldegrave 12:17
We've spoken about how sustainability can be easily misinterpreted, and about how, by contrast, the circular economy can offer a clear and coherent framework for economic transformation. Are we saying then that the circular economy is almost immune to that kind of scope creep or message dilution?
Emma Elobeid 12:37
I mean, sadly, not Lou. I think that's kind of the nature of, you know, human nature. The bigger an idea or a framework gets, the more chances there are for things to get a little fuzzy around the edges.
Lou Waldegrave 12:50
This is a real danger. Then, as the big idea of a circular economy continues to gain momentum and reach ever outwards?
Emma Elobeid 12:59
I definitely think it's something to be aware of. And actually, when Colin sat down with circular economy and Cradle to Cradle expert Katja Hansen recently, this is a risk that she raised, specifically.
Katja Hansen 13:11
Circular economy is pretty much going the same way that sustainability is going originally, sustainability was defined by the Brundtland Commission, and there was a report that defined sustainable development. Then it was popularized. And now everything is sustainable, the same as everything is green. And you can drive trucks through the holes in that approach. And unfortunately, what we have seen in the circular economy as well is that business has jumped onto it as just another word for doing business as usual.
Lou Waldegrave 13:53
Well. That doesn't sound too promising,
Emma Elobeid 13:56
No. And I think Colin pushed back a little on this point.
Colin Webster 14:00
I can see what she's talking about in terms of definition erosion. There was actually an academic paper published in the last few years where, I think they said there was 144 definitions of a circular economy they found. So, so let's not deny it. There is definition erosion, and I think that's inevitable as a consequence of the popularization of the term circular economy, that there are a lot of bodies out there who've seized upon the idea, and they've seized upon the idea in different ways. So some see Circular Economy purely as a recycling initiative, or recycling 2.0 or a way of just doing business as normal without really changing how they operate. And we do see examples of that, and we do see people putting a circular economy badge on things. And I think that can be troubling, because we're that's not the way we see a circular economy. We've got a. Higher ambitions for how a circular economy should operate at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. And I think we're always quite clear about what those ambitions are and about how we define it, and we're trying to shape conversations so that other people are defining it in the same way.
Lou Waldegrave 15:16
So what Colin is saying there is that, on the one hand, there is an inevitability to people picking up the idea of the circular economy and applying it in ways that are not entirely in line with our vision. But on the other hand, it's important we don't get too hung up on the exact way in which words are being used. Yeah, and
Emma Elobeid 15:37
I totally agree with that words matter. They really do. But in order to take the circular economy from niche to norm, we're going to have to get more hung up on the outcomes than the prefix.
Lou Waldegrave 15:48
So the circular economy needs to go beyond the circular economy.
Emma Elobeid 15:52
It needs to go beyond sustainability too. The real tipping point, whether that's at a business policy or society level, or, you know, ideally, all three will come, I think when the circular economy transcends these kind of functional boundaries and just becomes the economy. This was echoed recently in another conversation just before New York climate week, when Pippa caught up with the foundation's North America lead, Danielle Holly.
Danielle Holly 16:16
I'd like to see Circular Economy come out of this box of environment sustainability, it really does transcend that.
Emma Elobeid 16:26
What I found particularly interesting about this conversation is that Danielle goes on to explain how in the US, because the whole field of sustainability is so highly politicized, there's quite a lot of mistrust surrounding business practices deemed to be environmental. For example, the fact that the circular economy makes such good business sense in terms of resilience, in terms of value creation, is what gives it the potential to break free of this wider ESG backlash.
Lou Waldegrave 16:54
This feels like an especially pertinent point amid recent news that many CEOs have been dialing down on the sustainability commitments.
Danielle Holly 17:03
Absolutely, it's really something that transcends political divisiveness, and I think that, to John's point, is part of why we've been slower in the US to really realize the circular economy is because we have divisiveness and a backlash against all things environmental, social and governance, that really is a misnomer and a misunderstanding of the concepts and the practices that are underneath.
Emma Elobeid 17:30
It's this unboxing of the circular economy beyond sustainability that can help us get to that point of normalization, and that's something else Seb touched on recently.
Seb Egerton-Read 17:40
I'd love to see a kind of massive upskilling of people beyond the sustainability teams in organ or beyond the environmental ministries in organizations on circular economy, because that, to me, is a sign that the circle me is becoming part of the infrastructure of an organization or policy body. And I'd love to hear people making jokes about the circular economy in the pub. I think that would be a really interesting sign that that there's perforating into culture, which is what
Pippa Shawley 18:06
I've been exploring recently as well, right?
Seb Egerton-Read 18:08
It's something I'm really interested in, because I think it speaks to the kind of mainstreaming and normalizing of an idea. And again, like, what that exactly means if they're using the precise term circular economy, or if they're using our three principles, that's like, that's a question. But I think that notion that this, this way of doing things, is somewhat understood and engaged with in a context that people are beginning to recognize it and reflect on it in their own lives, would be, to me, a sign that that agency from policymakers and businesses is taking action has been to influence people. If that is happening in the pub, I think it would be a sign that the agency of policy, institutions, financial, financial mechanisms and businesses is taking hold to a point that people are beginning to recognize that a different way of doing things is impacting their lives, and it's culturally understood enough that two people can talk about it in a social interaction.
Emma Elobeid 19:01
For all that, much of this episode has taken a slight. Oh, look at the trappings of typology, type theme. I don't think what we're really advocating for is a world in which terminology ceases to matter full stop, though.
Lou Waldegrave 19:14
I do think there's some truth in the fact that action matters more than academics.
Emma Elobeid 19:19
The academics might disagree with you there, Lou, but when we're up against the clock like this.
19:23
I'm inclined to agree. So what's our message?
Emma Elobeid 19:27
Okay, how's this for size? Circular Economy and sustainability push in the same direction, but they're different. Both are important and they are complementary. Good activities are good co opting of any description, especially for extractive, polluting and linear gains, is bad. Let's honor the overlaps, keep questioning, keep doing, and not box ourselves in.
Lou Waldegrave 19:52
Works for me, thanks, Lou, thanks for having me in and clearing up the word sustainability in such a succinct manner.
Emma Elobeid 19:59
We tried. If you've enjoyed this episode of the circular economy show, there's two more in our Circular Curious season yet to come join us next time. As we ask, can the circular economy help us adapt to climate change as well as mitigate against it? And what does durability even mean? The materials, the business models and the mindsets make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. See you next time you.