Every Friday, Circulate rounds up a collection of interesting circular economy related stories and articles. This Friday, we’ve got a systems thinker’s take on Brexit, a brief recap of this year’s CE100 Annual Summit, and a report from the frontline of the e-waste industry.
Brexit – the complex systems angle
If you’re visiting Circulate today hoping for some respite from the news that the UK has voted to leave the European Union, then we can only apologise. But stick with us! Fast Company has a short but insightful piece that relates the Brexit vote to systems thinking, and a ‘classic psychological error’. That error is that recent tensions in the UK have been interpreted through a lens of linear causality: that EU membership is the cause of problems for many voters. However, it’s becoming more widely appreciated that most real-world systems aren’t simple and linear, but fall into the category of ‘ordered complexity’. What’s been missing from much of the debate around the referendum is that “maybe improvements in air travel, wars in the Middle East, or global climate change caused the economic changes troubling some in the U.K…without a control condition, it just isn’t possible to know”. Art Markman also offers this nice analogy to highlight the difference between simple and complex systems:
Complex systems like economies aren’t like air conditioners. If a room is too hot, you turn on the air conditioner, and it cools down. If the room gets too cool, you shut off the A/C unit, and your room warms up—voila! There aren’t a lot of other factors governing the temperature in the room. Global political economies are different. Removing the same set of factors that caused a drag on the economy may not be enough to reverse those same trends.
It’s this thinking that has made the circular economy a popular vision – we can’t solve the problems of today just by tinkering with isolated components of the current system, but through a deep appreciation of how complex systems work.
Come Together
Abbey Road Studios has been celebrated as a petri dish of musical innovation and invention for over eighty years, and this week hosted experimentation of a completely different kind. Business leaders, academic visionaries, progressive governments and thought-leaders gathered in London for the fourth CE100 Annual Summit; a day of groundbreaking presentation and conversation that aims to further understanding of the circular economy. Attendees heard from speakers from around the globe, on topic ranging from materials science and regenerative agriculture to education and health. Among the stellar lineup of speakers were Nike’s Cyrus Wadia, Leontino Balbo Jr of Nativ, Hunter Lovins of Natural Capitalism Solutions, and Greg Hodkinson of new Ellen MacArthur Foundation Knowledge Partner Arup. Watch this space for more coverage of the day in coming weeks.
The chips are down
To reach a circular economy, we’ll have to look beyond recycling, to the inner loops of a circular economy. That said, the way in which we cycle materials if of great significance to the development of an economic model that delivers long-lasting prosperity. Reporters from The Verge toured various stops on North America’s e-waste recycling journey, providing a good overview of some of the challenges faced by logistics businesses, recyclers and resource management companies along the value chain. Summarising the issues in one line, author Andrew J. Hawkins states that “The profits are slim, the overhead is huge, and regulatory landscape is endlessly confusing”. The report focuses mainly on the volume and variety of the waste electronics problem, and offers plenty of material for a further analysis of how it should be addressed. For instance, one particularly gory extract highlights the destructive nature of today’s end of use practices for electrical goods:
Around the warehouse, old electronics are endlessly brutalized. Teams of workers snap laptops in half, smash screens, disembowel computers, and cripple keyboards. One employee wearing a Ghostbusters T-shirt rips apart printers and bulky Toshiba laptops as if they were made of matchsticks. Giant piles of circuit boards and shredded plastic gather at his feet. A roller coaster of conveyor belts soars overhead. It’s the perfect place for a Luddite with anger issues.
Work by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to define the building blocks of a circular economy has suggested that through innovation in design, business models, reverse logistics and system conditions (such as education and incentivisation), stakeholders could move from the current extractive and destructive practices, towards a restorative system; one that circulates products, components and materials at the highest utility at all times.
The on-demand economy grows up – a bit
In the past couple of years, people have been asking ‘where next?’ for the on-demand economy. Fast Company has an answer: nowhere – it’s just business. Explaining how ‘The On-demand Economy Hits the Reset Button’, Sarah Kessler features the stories of four different startups that have embraced unique business models. She concludes that the oversaturated on-demand market is maturing, with companies differentiating based on the needs of their specialisation and customers. So just aiming for ‘the Uber of X’ isn’t a fast track to success, and ‘the on-demand economy is more complicated than merely applying a clever business model to different service sectors’. Of course, this is just part of the story, as the article is primarily concerned with the financial success of the startups in question. An overlooked and arguably greater complication is the wider values governing these new businesses. Are they still ruled by ‘colonial economics’ as Doug Rushkoff puts it, and therefore missing an important opportunity to build not just financial capital, but social and natural capital too?
Caption competition
Did you hear the story this week about the snake who shed its skin in a perfect circle, getting trapped inside in the process? We know there’s a materials, re-use, circular economy joke in there somewhere, but we haven’t figured it out yet. Answers on a postcard please.
The post Circulate on Fridays: the complexity of Brexit, life in the e-waste industry and what’s wrong with on-demand appeared first on Circulate.