An unprecedented crisis is costing lives, jobs and imploding global economies, while presenting immediate challenges for managing a pressing public health emergency. We need a safety net for those who have lost jobs and industries destroyed as a result of lockdowns.
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It has also exposed the shortfalls of just-in-time supply chains and the lack of local manufacturing of critical products.
As confronting as these challenges are, other pressing and existential global challenges have not fallen away. On the contrary, many see a chance to ensure that economic recovery packages are future-fit and enhance existing policies, goals and targets to address growing concern about climate change.
Many of these overlapping challenges are driven by our linear economy, which is premised on the idea of a 'take-make-waste' approach. We are pushing against the boundaries of natural systems for unsustainable resource extraction to meet relentless consumer demand. A circular economy, in contrast, is focused on designing out waste, reuse, sharing, refurbishment and remanufacturing with recycling a last resort. An explicit purpose is the regeneration of natural systems, seriously damaged after centuries of impacts from the predominant linear model.
The Hunter already has sources of biomass and renewable energy potential . . .
Recent global events follow a decade of significant and growing international momentum behind the transition to a circular economy. China adopted a Law for the Promotion of a Circular Economy in 2009. The European Union has invested billions into successive circular economy action plans. Dozens of major business brands have adopted circular economy strategies in the past few years. Google, Unilever, Ikea, H&M, Danone, and Renault are all members of a group known as the CE100, a program to accelerate development of a circular economy.
The growing momentum is one of the reasons that many international leaders are calling for COVID-19 recovery packages to focus on accelerating green and circular economy strategies.
Various circular economy strategies have, to a large extent, replaced or superseded more traditional industrial approaches. Distributed manufacturing, additive manufacturing (commonly called 3D printing), the Internet of Things and blockchain are examples of key enablers of both innovation and new business models.
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Tight manufacturing loops characteristic of a circular economy are more resilient to supply chain disruption and deliver more localised economic benefits. Circular economy hubs and makerspaces are democratising manufacturing capabilities by allowing open access to piloting and scale-up equipment, and enabling 3D printing to challenge existing centralised manufacturing processes.
Longer-term strategies and stimulus packages should address the gaps in critical supplies and products that this crisis has highlighted. They need to be manufactured on home soil. While additional funding for innovation in the manufacturing sector would be valuable, a parallel piece of work would be required to develop local capacity to provide sustainable raw and recyclable materials. This process is already underway in the EU, which has directed significant funding towards piloting facilities that enable products currently based on fossil fuels to be based on locally available biomass (e.g. trees, grass, horticulture residues).
The Hunter already has sources of biomass and renewable energy potential, teamed with highly skilled technical staff, manufacturing capability and well-developed energy infrastructure. The region is ideal for investment in manufacturing clusters around critical products for the medical sector, from face masks to ventilators. Clustering enables another key feature of a circular economy, industrial symbiosis whereby manufacturing plants are co-located to share not only waste, energy and material flows but to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing. Together they are more than the sum of their parts.
Australia is lagging in the circular economy space, with much of the focus on the waste sector, following China's refusal to accept Australian waste streams. We can re-frame this approach and re-envision our waste streams as resources within a circular economy framework.
The massive disruption we are experiencing presents an unprecedented opportunity to reset manufacturing policy and strategies. That can help Australia to leapfrog to best in class capabilities. Circular economy investment into innovation, R&D, science, technology, decarbonisation and manufacturing more generally, can deliver a future-fit, resilient, sustainable economy from 2021 and beyond.
Debbie O'Byrne is the circular economy lead at Lake Macquarie City Council
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