The Circular Economy: It’s Time Has Come

by KSL (Biofuels Digest) ... Prior to the energy crisis, most economies were too extravagant; now, they have now overreacted and have become retrenchment-mad. It is imperative to think rationally and design progress with the right analysis and tools to achieve a truly sustainable society.

A contrasting picture is where the proximal resources are limited. In such a system, the resulting supply chains become strongly interlinked and form a complex supply chain as we know today. Here, the flow of materials within the proximal domain may be quite large, but the flows into and out of the domain (resources to waste) are quite small. Such a system is more efficient than the previous one, but clearly not sustainable over the long term because the flows are all in one direction. The system is ‘running down’.

To be ultimately sustainable, the system has to be cyclical in nature, with ‘resources’ and ‘waste’ being undefined, since waste to one component of the system represents resources to another. It should be noted that cycles within the system tend to function on widely differing temporal and spatial scales, a behavior that greatly complicates analysis and understanding of the system.

Many present-day processes and products remain largely dissipative such as lubricants, paints, pesticides, automobile tires. Some examples where the specific materials are sufficiently precious for example, precious metal recovery are not all dissipative and come close to the Model C. A classic example is the recycling of rhodium metal used in the Oxo-process to generate n- and iso-butanol wherein, the metal is recycled to ppb levels!

The key would be enhanced communication among specialists, a restraint on the use of jargon, and a willingness to develop new concepts to deal with new approaches to understand the functioning of individual processes.

Approaches to Circular Economy

There is a need for the big ten of the plastics industry (Dow Chemical, Lyondell Basell, Exxon Mobil, Sabic, Ineos, BASF, Eni, LG Chem, Chevron Phillips, Lanxess) to design efficient ways to create plastics that can be recycled appropriately.

Circular Economy cannot be studied and optimized in isolation from the institutions of various kinds that promote or constrain the material/energy flow, for example:

a. Engineering excellence/efficiency can often promote cyclic behavior by designing processes and promote materials reuse,

b. Green synthetic chemistry to reduce the quantity of wastes of (better) to substitute materials or components that result in less toxic wastes,

c. Extensive taxation to promote raw material flows and import-export flows that are contrary to cyclization,

d. The overall economics may make it difficult to raise capital to alter a process and render it more efficient, that is, to improve it cyclic nature,

e. Government regulations may make the reuse of materials so difficult that enhanced waste flow is de facto encouraged. Policies should provide support to entities that help minimize such waste streams,

f. The rapid rate of technological evolution and obsolescence contributes to an enhanced waste stream. Accomplishing the much-to-be-desired-ends is to chart the obsolesce of capital and consumption goods at the time of their production, by designing with focus on planned obsolescence versus built-in obsolescence of various goods,

g. Standard of living of the consumer may encourage long product use or, alternatively, may promote early product disposal,

h. Adapting Blue Economy, where the best for health and the environment is cheapest and the necessities for life are free utilizing a local system of production and consumption that works with what you have, i.e., use local buy local, eliminating multiple steps involved in the supple chains,

i. The price system, by failing to include relevant externalities in prices and costs, may preclude adoption of circular economy by manufacturers and producers. Alternatively, one could use force majeure by ensuring that all environmental costs and benefits are priced at their full social value, for example with a CO2 tag – higher the CO2 emissions should result in a higher penalty. READ MORE