Circular Economy – At a Glance
The materials used in the global economy have quadrupled in volume since 1970, far faster than the world’s population (source: OECD, 2019).
Approximately 1.3 billion tons or one-third of the food produced for human consumption worldwide gets wasted every year. The carbon footprint of food loss and waste reaches about 8 percent of the total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (source: FAO ).
1 million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute around the world, while up to 5 trillion single-use plastic bags are used worldwide every year.
Implementing the circular economy worldwide could yield material cost savings of up to US$1 trillion a year by 2025 (source: WEF ).
The transition to a circular economy could also unlock US$4.5 trillion of GDP growth worldwide by 2030 (source: World Business Council for Sustainable Development ).
Circular economy aims to reimagine a linear concept of material use to make products and generate waste and instead explore a regenerative paradigm to design waste and pollution out of the system, gradually decoupling growth from the consumption of non-renewable resources. Use of digital and other technologies is central to this rethinking of the business model.
This could also be a significant part of our climate change response. In 2019, half the global CO2 emissions (in addition to other wastes) have resulted from the over 92 billion tons of materials were extracted and processed. It is estimated that only 8.6% of the world’s economy can be considered “circular”.
Circular economy is considered a significant growing business opportunity for the private sector (valued at a US$4.7 trillion industry ). However, this requires us to fundamentally rethink the way we work and everyone has a role – from governments facilitating this transition with appropriate policies and incentives to private sector stepping in to move in on unrealized opportunities. But it also requires a mindset change in recognizing environmental and sustainability challenges, unlearning assumptions of the past, stepping out of the “comfort zone” and thinking out of the box to explore innovative opportunities by considering a larger more integrated system.
Open data and information systems can help facilitate the circular economy transition . For example open data and digital platforms can help improve decision making through trend analysis and predictive analytics, facilitating shorter food supply chains, waste collection and optimization, and reducing pollution and other adverse environmental externalities.
Two megatrends – AI and Circular Economy – could be synergized to accelerate the shift to a regenerative system fit for the future.
There are many approaches to a circular economy – from reuse/recycle approaches to finding innovative productive uses of what used to be considered “waste” – truly making what is now an problem into an opportunity. For example, Algae (itself considered a nuisance in water bodies) is now being explored as a “wonder plant” in order to process wastes both to reduce local pollution and sequester carbon. Even today, macroalgae (seaweed) and microalgae are a larger contributor to oxygen production globally than all the rainforests of the world combined. The products can include protein-rich food for humans, feed for fish and animals, or for biogas-related energy production and other industrial applications. The use of algae for treating wastewater or even into landfill leachate treatment can be especially attractive given the low operational costs and ability to remove nitrogen, phosphorous and other nutrients as well as produce biofuels and other food/feed byproducts .
GENeco is helping create a circular economy by a food waste recycling process in the UK. Food waste is turned into biogas which is then used to make electricity and heat. This helps power local homes - extracting maximum value for a greener, more sustainable living.
Another successful example of managing food waste is from Singapore where Insectta is using insects to create a circular economy by transforming waste into high-value biomaterials.
Bioplastech is making biodegradable plastic by reusing existing plastic. Biodegradable plastic is created by converting the existing plastic into a liquid using heat and then having bacteria feed on it.
Newlight Technology creates a biodegradable and nondegradable plastics from existing biogas. Their products are cheaper than existing plastic, and nonbiodegradable products break down within a year.
Avantium is producing biodegradable plastics from sugar and they expect to make bioplastic from wood and agriculture residue.
Smartphones are made with dozens of precious metals such as gold, silver, titanium that are not efficiently extracted using a traditional recycling machine that smashes the phone. To reduce the demand for rare earth minerals that are highly energy-intensive, Apple has introduced the robots “Daisy” and “Dave.” Daisy can recycle 200 iPhones per hour, while Dave, a specialized robot, can extract magnets and tungsten from a specialized component.
The waste stream in recycling plants is complicated to recycle since it consists of recyclable and non-recyclable material. AMP robotics system called Cortex can identify recyclable materials using artificial intelligence and computer vision and pick up the recyclables off the conveyer belt. The system keeps track of all materials that pass through, including the recyclable material that Cortex doesn’t target.
The clothing and textile industry is one of the world's largest polluting industries that accounts for 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions because fashion is continuously shifting. Approximately 15-20 percent of the fabric used to produce clothing end up in landfills. evRnu is trying to recycle old clothing by shredding the garments and creating new fibers for new clothes.