Having spent a good deal of time reviewing countless articles on industrial symbiosis, the circular economy and everything in between, I have come up with one overarching reaction which is: Be careful what you wish for.
It is challenging to take even a modestly critical view of what are important ideas and initiatives in our effort to alter our industrial framework to reduce the effects of climate change and other deleterious impacts on the environment. My defense is to quote Aristotle in saying, we should try to follow the "Golden Mean" - everything in moderation.
In this case, this is more an admonition to think carefully about what we are doing and not simply jump into action without considering fully the implications of our efforts. We obviously cannot afford to be inactive. However, we should try not to rush into unthoughtful action allowing our enthusiasm to get us into other - though different predicaments.
What I have found most sobering is the realization based on the learning from these initiatives that even some of our best efforts can be suboptimizing on a larger system level.
One example is clearing forests to grow crops that can produce biofuels. Demand for biofuel has contributed directly to the loss of millions of acres of tropical forest which are replaced by soy fields for biofuel production. (Murray, et al, 2013) Ethanol production requires more fossil fuel than it produces. (Murray, et al, 2013)
Another example is when we forget to include transaction and transportation costs, etc. in our assessment of whether industrial symbiosis makes sense. In the end, IS may still make economic and environmental sense, but we should approach this with as much intelligent consideration as possible.
Something else to consider is that recycling, refurbishing and remanufacturing may likely require a certain scale of waste materials in order to be efficacious. This requires the producer to produce more rather than less waste and use more rather than less energy. We need to carefully ask ourselves whether this gets us closer to our goal of putting less carbon into the atmosphere. Would not a company that uses less raw material, less energy and produces less waste be better for the environment? In taking short-term action, companies may lock themselves into a relationship that is not helpful from a longer-term environmental perspective.
Something else that I have noticed is that many of those speaking of these solutions do so with the implicit or explicit assumption that economic growth and continuing with our existing economy are still possible. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which has published extensively on the circular economy, is one such example. Few seem to be talking about the large elephant in the room which is that we may need to be designing our industrial systems to be non-growth systems albeit with a large amount of built-in innovation and development. Value in the future may need to come from something other than growth.
Some sources and companies address this in moving to new business models such as service businesses. There are a good number of new business model ideas out there which can be the basis for new forms of value in a "no-growth" economy. One example is providing carpeting as a service. Carpets can be based on recycled materials and replaced whenever needed but not owned by the customer.
There is occasional but not consistent reference in the literature to the change in attitude that needs to take place as part of the transitions that will be required on the part of focal companies, their suppliers and customers. Granted that where the transitions involve only embellishments to the current industrial model, this is more an issue of education, awareness and new skills and less about attitudinal changes. Companies and their employees can learn to do more about the recycling of outputs to inputs. They can expand their value chain skills to encompass partners in industrial symbiosis. This becomes more of a problem solving issue than anything else.
However, what I believe will really be required is a profound change in paradigm and attitudes away from a cradle-to-grave model to a cradle-to-cradle model and towards this entirely new sense of what constitutes value in what may be a non-growth economy. A true systemic orientation will need to address changes on this individual level as well as on the corporate-enterprise level. Unless we deal with this, we will not be optimizing the entire system.
We need to do as much as we can to think out and assess scenarios and consequences down the road as we embark upon each of these initiatives. We do need to experiment and let a "thousand flowers bloom." We need to create a large, fertile field in which new solutions to climate change can emerge, However, we should also be trying to assess what makes most sense to do while avoiding obvious pitfalls like clearing forests to grow biofuels.
In the end, we should continually endeavor to optimize the overall system rather than individual components.
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