The Chair of Societal Transition and Circular Economy organized the second session of the seminar series “Freiburg Talks on Environment and Society” at the Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography of the University of Freiburg. On this occasion, we were happy to host one of the fathers of the circular economy: Prof. Walter R. Stahel.
He is founder and director of the Product-Life Institute (Switzerland), the oldest established consultancy in Europe devoted to developing sustainable strategies and policies for a circular economy since 1983. Since 2013, he is a full member of the Club of Rome. His most well-known publications include ‘Jobs for Tomorrow, the Potential for substituting manpower for energy’ (1981) and ‘The Performance Economy’ (2010). His talk “Circular Economy – Back to the Future” provided new sources of motivation towards a circular economy. This and related issues were discussed with an audience of more than 50 students, researchers and professors of our School.

During her first field trip, Anran Luo brought the Circulus project to scholars, practitioners and business exhibitions in China. In Shanghai and Beijing she explored the views and understandings of the Circular Economy. Surprisingly, the term Circular Economy was considered rather politically passé with other terms currently gaining increasing traction. Anran Luo attended the 2017 China International Circular Economy Exhibition in Beijing from November 20 th -22 nd , which included a broad selection of discussion forums. The discussion forums included themes such as Remanufacturing, Urban Mining, Investment Financing, Agricultural Recycling and Natural Resource Conservation, featuring speakers from the political, business and academic spheres.

Circulus team members join the dialogue on new economic systems and a regional food in the national competition “Future Cities” (Wettbewerb Zukunftstadt) for a sustainable Freiburg.

The City of Freiburg participates in the national competition “Future Cities” (Wettbewerb Zukunftstadt) that aims to motivate municipalities to come up with local visions of a sustainable future. Having entered the second phase of this competition, the city of Freiburg’s “Future Dialogue II” (Zukunftsdialog II) held on 18th July 2017 brought together about 60 citizens, researchers and representatives from policy and business to co-create visions and concepts for implementing a transition to a sustainable City of Freiburg 2030. Building on a first stage of the Future Dialogue, local-state-of-the-art studies in the three focus areas sustainable energy, new economic systems, and a regional food system have informed the dynamic debate on further steps and research needs as well as possible pilot-projects to be set-up in the near future. The aim of this dialogue is to implement real-life laboratories in several districts of the city that serve as a sort of “playground” for experimenting with production, consumption, and management practices to put actions behind the visions of a sustainable city.

For the Circulus team, contributing to closely related, practice relevant and transformative projects in front of one’s doorstep is not to be missed. Dr. Sina Leipold joined the working group of new economic systems in which topics such as sustainable construction, shared responsibility, and strengthening the link between social entrepreneurship and citizen engagement emerged as a priority. In the working group regional food system, attended by Robert Gundlach, an animated debate included issues such as quantifying the regional food shed and the potential to eat more regional, conducting “consumption experiments” on eating habits in several districts, reducing food waste and increasing food sovereignty by strengthening the relationship between producers and consumers.

With the abundance of ideas and enthusiasm demonstrated by the dialogue’s participants, the Circulus team is keen on seeing the City of Freiburg launching into the next phase of the competition and looks forward to the real-life laboratories to be set-up all over town.

As part of conceptualizing a circular economy’s supply chains and material flows, Circulus met with Klingele Papierwerke at their headquarters in Remshalden on the 20th of July. Klingele Papierwerke will contribute to the case study with insights and data on challenges and possibilities of a sustainable circular economy in the cardboard sector.

In line with developments towards a more bio-based economy, Klingele Papierwerke has launched a cardboard bag amongst other initiatives, aiming to meet sustainability challenges related to plastic bags in the retail industries. While the German cardboard industry’s products are generally made from 85% recycled materials, Klingele Paperwerke’s cardboard bags are 100% recycled.  The necessity of packaging for many parts of our economy and the cardboard industry’s existing experiences with material loops makes cardboard packaging a relevant case study for Circulus.

This case study aims to assess and compare the environmental impacts of cardboard packaging with other solutions, as well as to evaluate the potential to upscale the use of cardboard to a greater part of the packaging markets. A consequential life cycle analysis will help develop possible pathways and product-level solutions towards a more circular economy in the packaging sector.

With a symbolic launch on World Environment Day, the first World Circular Economy Forum brought together more than 1500 participants from business, policy and civil society from 150 countries last week. All came to Helsinki to discuss the circular economy. The vivid exchange highlights the need to create an economy that enables us to live within planetary boundaries.

The Forum underlines the growing support for a Circular Economy. It brought together a comprehensive portfolio of current circular-economy initiatives. These include the EU Circular Economy Action Plan, the Circular Economy Roadmap of the Finnish government, new products and services of global corporations like Stora Enso or Startups like VIGGA, as well as scientific projects like Circulus or Circwaste and city initiatives like the Circular Economy Plan of Amsterdam. At the same time, it highlighted that the attention given to the Circular Economy originates predominantly in Europe, and particularly in the business community. More than half of the participants were from European business. Civil society organizations or participants from Asia, Africa, Latin America or North America were still underrepresented.

Despite a largely European audience, participants critically discussed the global dimensions of overconsumption of resource worldwide and the pressing need for a paradigm change in the economy and society. In a pointed analysis of the current state of affairs, speakers like Janez Potocnik presented scientific evidence showing that global material efficiency has been declining over the past ten years while material consumption has grown. Furthermore, consumption has been a stronger driver of material use than population growth, with the richest countries consuming ten times more than poorest countries.

While there seems consensus on that such a shift is necessary, critical questions on how to realize this shift had been left open at the Forum. These include for example questions of the required labor force or the amount and source of energy to achieve a transition. Another question was whether efforts of businesses will provide enough drive for a full transition. Symptomatically, when asked in a poll to judge current efforts of the private sector, the audience was divided into optimists and pessimists.

The Objectives of the Selection and Specification workshop were to develop a common understanding of circular economy between the participants from Industry associations and Science. We discussed criteria for and selection of appropriate case studies for the investigation of innovations for the circular economy. It also worked as a first matching of mutual expectations and reconciling the realization in the Circulus project.

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Press Release of the University of Freiburg.