The Guide to the Circular Economy: Capturing Value and Managing Material Risk (DoShorts) - Softcover

Benton, Dustin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1910174351 ISBN 13: 9781910174357

Publisher: Routledge, 2015

Synopsis

The term "Circular Economy" is becoming familiar to an increasing number of businesses. It expresses an aspiration to get more value from resources and waste less, especially as resources come under a variety of pressures – price-driven, political and environmental.Delivering the circular economy can bring direct costs savings to businesses, reduce risk and offer reputational advantages, and can therefore be a market differentiator – but working out what counts as "circular" activity for an individual business, as against the entire economy or individual products, is not straightforward.This guide to the circular economy gives examples of what this new business model looks like in practice, and showcases businesses opportunities around circular activity. It also: explores the debate around circular economy metrics and indicators and helps you assess your current level of circularity, set priorities and measure success; equips readers to make the links between their own company’s initiatives and those of others, making those activities count by influencing actors across the supply chain; outlines the conditions that have enabled other companies to change the system in which they operate. Finally, this expert short work sets the circular economy in a political and business context, so you understand where it has come from and where it is going.

About this title

About the Author

Benton, Dustin; Hazell, Jonny; Hill, Julie

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Guide to the Circular Economy

Capturing Value and Managing Material Risk

By Dustin Benton, Jonny Hazell, Julie Hill

Do Sustainability

Copyright © 2014 Dustin Benton, Jonny Hazell and Julie Hill
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-910174-35-7

Contents

Abstract, 
About the Authors, 
Acknowledgments, 
Preface, 
Introduction – A New Model for Business and Society, 
1 Getting Hold of the Key Concepts, 
2 Seeing the Benefits and Interpreting Them to Colleagues: Some Case Studies, 
3 Reviewing Your Organisation's Potential for Implementing More Circular Approaches, 
4 Identifying Priorities and Measuring Success, 
5 Making Best Use of the Brokering Organisations, 
Conclusion, 
References, 

CHAPTER 1

Getting Hold of the Key Concepts

No. 1: Our economies are underpinned by natural resources

WE MAKE, BUY AND SELL STUFF, and the stuff has to come from somewhere. Everything we use is either grown or mined, and everything tracks back to the physical sources of these raw materials – be they food, timber, fibres, metals, minerals, or the oil that gives us fuel, plastics and chemicals.

No. 2: Resources are becoming less 'secure' for a variety of reasons

These are the converging trends and concerns that have helped to increase interest in the circular economy:

• A reversal in the trend of the last four decades of declining resource prices. The prices of food, metals and plastics of have risen in the last eight years faster than background inflation, and continued rising through a recession.

• Not only are prices rising, they are more volatile, with bigger spikes and troughs. This uncertainty is a big problem for businesses, stifling investment and inhibiting confident forward planning.

• Underlying these price trends are environmental pressures – although the basic metals, for instance, will not 'run out' any time soon, the increasing energy and water needed to access more dilute sources drives up costs.

• One of the factors underlying food price rises and limiting a shift to using more bio-based or 'renewable' materials is the competition for high quality agricultural land (for food, fuels and materials).

• On top of this, there are fears of restrictions on access to key resources by political decisions – for instance, the Chinese Government restricting export of 'rare earth' minerals to keep them for their own use.

• As demand for resources rises, and prices become more volatile and strained, we may see more resource nationalism – an effort to stop flows of key resources outside a country under stress.

• At the same time, the world is facing increasing demand for resources as global population rises, and the affluence of that population increases.

• Climate change may mean a less predictable climate, disrupting access to raw materials and water. In response there are moves in several countries to regulate or price carbon emissions, which would have further impacts on energy and resource prices.

• These aren't just abstract risks – putting a proper price on carbon (i.e. around &8364;75 per tonne) would cause the price of primary aluminium to rise by 70 percent, chromium to rise by 240 percent and nylon to rise by 40 percent.

• Companies are subject to increasing scrutiny of their supply chains by consumers and by campaigning groups, and their reputations are at risk in the event that environmental or

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1910174351
• ISBN 13: 9781910174357
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 106