During the Session about Green and Circular Economy – Network Activities of European Environment Agencies, Eveline Lemke raised a question about the usage of secondary materials and recycle pathways when it comes to food security and packaging. No direct answer was given, which is why I talked to her after the session about this problem.

Lemke stated that she missed a discussion about the details when it comes to implementing Circular Economy on the different levels. One of those practical issues is that “We have a problem of material variety in product packaging, making it impossible to ensure quality standards in secondary materials.”

We all buy and eventually litter composite materials, such as Tetra packs or yoghurt containers, containing 2 or more different materials, making efficient recycling an impossible task. Even though this issue might be relatively small in comparison to secondary material usage in other fields like construction work, it affects all of us on a daily basis. Progress on this field is essential to get the transition done.
During her work as a state minister, she worked with different companies in Rhineland Palatinate to make them use only one type of packaging materials for their products.
For further information, feel free to visit Lemkes’ Blog on www.eveline-lemke.de.

By Erik Daber

At the last Plenary Session, we had the honour to listen to three different experts in the field of digitalization. Starting with the presentation of Dr. Martin Vogt, followed by Dr. Maja Göpel and ending the 4th ERF with the speech of Prof. Dr. Dirk Helbing.

Martin Vogt presented the topic of digitalization and Resource efficiency and Industry 4.0. Primary he was presenting the results of some case studies and the potentials for the SMEs of manufacturing Industries. The studies showed how digitalization contributed to the management of resources and its cost. During his presentation, he also presented some of the measures of digital transformation and the level of digitalization that companies can achieve. Based on those two, he was able to present how efficient companies can be according to their level of digitalization. He also pointed out that most of the SMEs are still beginners in the field of digitalization. Based on that assumption Dr Martin Vogt presented some recommendations for the SMEs such as the collection and evaluation of data, and development of resources efficiency strategies. In addition, he presented recommendations for the scientific and researchers. Some of them are the importance of monitor the data, and the implementation of AI. He also expresses the importance of the knowledge transfer and of course, the investigation of the digital transformation impact.

As the second participant, Dr. Maja Göpel was introduced to the stage. She was starting her presentation by pointing out that digitalization, on the one hand, has great potential to push us forward but on the other hand it can head in the completely other direction. In other words, it can be said that the impact of digitalization is not causal. If we, for instance, have a look at the element of Cognition, society may share knowledge in order to improve digitalization around the world, on the other hand there may arise the “black box effect”, where society and corporations simply have too much trust in technology until we run the risk of following it down some potentially dangerous rabbit holes. Additionally, Dr. Göpel pointed out, that digitalization merges from within the system and it is hard to identify where it starts and ends. The last important point that was mentioned was that the technological revolution changes the socio-ecological-technical composition of our systems.

Prof. Dr. Dirk Helbing focused his presentation on diversity, decentralisation and Modular design, distributed control and subsidiarity. He exposed some technologies that can be found around the world nowadays such as cybernetics, synergy, IoT and Artifical Intelligence. But what was more important about those technologies are the ideas and concepts that are built around and how those ideas contribute to solve problems. However, one of the takeaways of this presentation are the seven success principles for the digital age, which are: co-learning, co-creation, convinatoirial, co-ordination, co-operation, co-evolution and collective Intelligence.
The very pleasant and delightful presentations were followed by a discussion session, which also tackled many interesting issues. At one point during the debate the participants discussed the importance of the real impact of the digitalization on a macroeconomic and social level. Another aspect that has been mentioned was the AI and the related risks and concerns regarding the collection and usage of personal data. Although there have been different points of view, it is clear that digitalization is present and we have to accept it, anyways we should incorporate and link it to the concept of sustainability and circular economy.

LEARNING OUTCOMES AND IMPORTANT QUOTES:
→ We should create a competition of trust

→ We don’t have time to lose – sustainability and digitalization has to be linked and we need to put that down on the table NOW

→ We can learn from the knowledge that has been gained from other parts of the world, so share the knowledge

→ In terms of technology and digitalization speak a language that everyone can understand

→ companies should start to get data and start to measure its processes and resources

→ be aware of the benefits of the digitalization and see the bright side of the technology
applied to the old economical and industrial models

→ Be a GAMECHANGER

By

Hannah Katterl

Jhosimar Aguacia

Interview with Riina Antikainen
Zero Waste – Movement that deserves more attention from institutions?
Because her presentation showed a lot of initiative, insights and concrete actions regarding waste management, we asked Riina Antikainen if there’s any initiative in Finnish Environment Agency about investing into worldwide growing Zero Waste movement and especially Zero Waste shops. She was not familiar with Zero Waste shops (where you exclusively go with your own bags, jars, bottles and other types of containers), but informed us about pretty successful Finland’s “Green Deer” aid from Ministry of Environment that motivates supermarkets and different types of shops to not offer free plastic bags but charge them, which resulted in plastic bag reduction. Riina also pointed out that many of Finland’s shops are allowing consumers to bring their own packaging for raw products.

By Semra Mahmutović

“Who of you is a consumer?” (Bas de Leeuw) This question not only opened the session “Circular Economy – the Consumer Perspective” but also ensured a sense of community and gave us something we could all relate to.

Since every speaker is focused on Circular Economy, their information brought together to a broad spectrum of insights and approaches to integrate Circular Economy into consumerist behavior and habits, promoting sufficiency over efficiency. By using a policy mix rather than a singular policy, the speakers want to implement Circular Economy step by step, avoiding radical suggestions to ensure a easy access for mainstream society – as Markus Terho stated “Little by little, but fast.” Speed was emphasized since we have to rethink our behavior to avoid extinction. “Not Germany first, not America first, but World first” as phrased by Jagoda Munic. Furthermore, Circular Procurement, mention by Lieze Cloots, was presented as a concept to create a learning network, combining the public and private sector, to create awareness, offer education as well as resources and fill a void with information. The speakers illustrate that consumerist behaviors, as well as Industrial methods need to evolve and adapt to the concept of Circular Economy to ensure a long term sustainable future for humanity that differentiates between needs and desires. “Expand the understanding of sustainable living, shifting desires to get to behavior.” (Dr. Vanessa Timmer)

Following to the speeches an interactive task was delegated to every group that shared a table – “How do we improve involvement of Consumers in the Circular Economy? How do we get to the people that are not in this room?” The consensus among the groups was that the way to catalyze and implement Circular Economy into society is easy access to knowledge and incentivizing a sustainable and sufficient lifestyle. Further tools mentioned by the audience were transparency, awareness in mainstream media, sustainable price politics by the Industry and responsible consumption.

Gers Leander – Horticulture; FH Erfurt, Germany
Mühlburger Daniela – Business Administration; Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

Material Matters – How to cope with the abuse of resources

In the course of the ERF 2018 we got to know Heiner Benking. He introduced us to Sabine Rau-Oberhuber, CoFounder of TurnToo and CoAuthor of the book “Material Matters”. Within her book she states the necessity of moving from owning materials to giving them individual rights to ensure effective resource usage and ultimately decrease waste.
She is also author of the book “Declaration of Material Rights” which will be presented at the UN meeting in New York at 10th of December.
Creative minds and innovative ideas are essential to complement the idea of sustainable Circular Economy. “Our current economic system is a one-way road and we need an alternative!”

By Lars Erik Daber, M.Sc. Environmental Sciences, University of Freiburg, Germany

The third parallel session focused on the green and circular economy from the perspective of the interest group of the European Environment Agency.
The interest group was represented at today’s parallel session of the European Resources Forum 2018 by European Environment Agency (Pawel Kazmierczyk), German Environment Agency (Ines Oehme and Herwig Unnerstall), Finnish Environment Agency (Riina Antikainen) and Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (Aldert Hanemaaijer) whereas the whole session was moderated by Dr. Bettina Rechenberg from the German Environment Agency.

The parallel session started with a focus on international collaboration and knowledge sharing as Mr. Pawel Kazmiercyzk from the European Environment Agency presented how they integrate the science and policy making in cooperation with the environment agencies across Europe with the main aim of encouraging information sharing and capacity building within EEA’s Eionet network. According to the research conducted by the European Environment Agency, there are only six countries in Europe that have by now adopted a resource efficiency roadmap or strategy. That is quite a low number. Yet, nine other countries have started to work on creating their own strategy or roadmap on resource efficiency/circular economy since 2016 – a positive trend that can partly be explained by the raised awareness of the topic among the policymakers and general public. Interestingly, the European Union has not adopted any targets for resource productivity due to differences on the national levels of the member countries. Luckily, about nine countries (e.g. Austria, Germany, Estonia, France among them) have taken the initiative and now have targets in place. Mr. Kazmiercyzk emphasised the importance of having targets and goals by stating that “targets mobilise action”. One of the issues that came up during the presentation is the increasing gap between the countries who are top performers of resource productivity and those who are not that productive. This gap could possibly be reduced by sharing the best practices that have proven to be feasible by the top performers.

Increasing the product lifetime by making repairing them feasible

Ines Oehme and Herwig Unnerstall from the German Environment Agency explored the topic on how to increase product lifetime and make them less obsolescent. Currently, consumers tend to replace their products based some of the following reasons:

• Defects due to lack of performance;
• The desire for a new product, or
• Refraining from repairing the product based on the cost.

As there is a correlation between consumer satisfaction and product lifetime, one should consider how it would be possible to encourage product appreciation as well as repairing the products with defects. Average first use service life of large household appliances has declined between the years of 2004 and 2012/2013 from 14.1 to 13 years which is an alarming development. Therefore, some of the core actions and policy instruments were proposed during the presentation for a longer product lifetime. One of the core actions would be to establish product requirements with regard to minimum lifetime and reparability. For this, the already available Ecodesign Directive (Directive 2009/125/EC) offers a suitable regulatory framework. More information about reparability should be given to the consumers (regarding which spare parts will continue to be available) during the point of sales when anyhow repairability issues are anyways covered. Another core action could be targeted to the manufacturers – they should issue a guarantee statement as a mandatory obligation to indicate a guaranteed product lifespan. In addition, the spare parts should be made available also for independent repairers and repair initiatives as well as to re-use centres. Taxation could also increase product lifetime – when reducing VAT rates for repair services should be added to current discussions on green and circular economy. Last, but not least, product appreciation should be strengthened – there is a need for awareness campaigns targeted both to producers and consumers on the impact of virgin production on environment and health. Clear targets of nation states according to the core activities and policy instruments mentioned before could help promote product repairing and as such reducing the number of product become obsolescent in the long run.

Waste to secondary material – a key to a green and circular economy
Riina Antikainen from the Finnish Environment Agency (SYKE) presented several case studies from across Europe about how waste has been successfully transformed into secondary materials. The cases focused on food waste and biomass, plastics, construction and demolition as well as the critical raw materials. Accordingly, measures to increase market demand need to be implemented into policy making. This includes to set quality standards for secondary raw materials. Stakeholders need to cooperate within a clear frame of regulative means which support the usage of those materials by e.g. tax advantages. One very interesting question was raised by Eveline Lemke: “How do we ensure food security whilst using secondary materials for food packaging?” This is one of the many unanswered questions of how to implement secondary materials in our production cycles. However, Riina Antikainen highlighted many sectors, where using secondary materials comes with less problems.

Aldert Hanemaajier highlighted the necessary steps to successfully implement Circular Economy as mainstream business line. To put it simply, these steps include creating a framework, setting targets, monitoring the progress and using the findings to steer further policy making.

The main conclusions were reported in the discussion paper of 2017:

• Use a framework with different tiers: lead, dashboard and specific indicators;
• Targets help to shape the transition and assess the progress of Circular Economy;
• The Circular Economy monitoring framework should cover: effects and transition process of getting there, effect monitoring for environmental and socio-economic effects – footprint indicators as an extension to the circular economy indicators of the European Union.

Aldert further emphasised that we should build upon an already existing knowledge base while starting the process by setting quantitative targets and goals that we can use for developing further indicators of what we went to know when we research Circular Economy processes. Then, we should also keep track on the activities and measures (as well as of the new business models) that have been implemented with the aim of achieving the c
Circular Economy goals. Facilitation of learning between different actors regarding should be encouraged more that would lead to an expanded knowledge base and collaboration as such. The importance of measuring what we manage and the need for knowledge management is increasingly evident.

As a conclusion we want to highlight a statement from the audience: “in a time where the european idea is questioned so much, it is very encouraging to hear that international measures are taken to combine forces for coping with global issues – these are the strengths of the EU, what makes this alliance unique. This is why the EU is so important.”

By: Kristiina Paju and Erik Daber

Practical examples and insights from Estonia, Romania, Serbia and Czech Republic were presented during Parallel Session 1. During the session, governments, NGO’s and consultancies shared not only the achievements but also struggles of working with SME’s towards resource efficiency.

The message that stood out during the discussion was that enabling SME’s to switch to more resource-efficient practices needs to be a systematic and concerted effort. For example, the panelists agreed that it is critical to combine financial support with technical evaluation and advice in order to be successful. Only providing one of those two will fail to deliver the hoped results.

The barriers that SME’s face, as well as what drives them appeared to be universal across the represented countries. The main barrier for taking up resource-efficient practices is largely financial — SME’s are often unable to finance the investment that is needed to make the change. Additionally, SME’s lack capacity and are resistant to consulting and advice. Reaching and convincing the top management was also highlighted as a crucial barrier. On the flipside, the financial benefits were identified as a major driver to reform their operations. However, the financial benefits are not always easily quantifiable and need to be clearly demonstrated in order to capture the attention of leadership.

Overall, the struggles of Eastern and Central European countries to enable more resource efficient SME’s are not so different from that of Germany. Despite the differences between the countries, there was a resounding agreement that there is plenty to learn from one another. As student reporters, we were quite delighted to hear about concrete initiatives that are taking place on the ground. The examples showcased in this session were from resource intensive and environmentally challenging sectors, such as peat mining and chemical cleaning. Progress in these areas is critically needed to reduce their environmental footprint. We hope that in the near future we will get to see more radical examples in improving the resource efficiency and overall sustainability of SME’s.

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Below is a brief summary of the presentations given by the panelists.

Branko Dunjic (Cleaner Production Centre of Serbia) gave the example of chemical leasing business model, which was implemented in FKL Temerin (factory of rolling bearings and cardan shafts). The chemical supplier changed its business model from being payed for the quantity of chemicals sold to getting a monthly payment for their service. This changed the incentives for the better. The result was less chemicals used by the client, reduced negative health and safety impact of the chemical and resulted in 15% financial savings, which were shared between the service provider and the receiver.

“By cooperating and changing the business model you can drastically reduce the use of very toxic chemicals”.

For more information:
http://www.chemicalleasing.com
http://chemicalleasing-toolkit.org
branko.dunjic@tmf.bg.ac.rs
Janna Merisaar, (Project, Manager, Environmental Management Department, Ministry of the Environment, Estonia) has presented a support measure for the manufacturing industry. The measure is a practical example of how the Ministry is helping companies to be more resource efficient by combining funding and providing technical consulting and evaluation to enable SME’s to achieve resource efficiency. In addition, they are investing in training experts to assist in the evaluation of the SME’s. One of the 29 benefactors of this scheme is the largest peat miner. By purchasing innovative mobile shredder it is now able to turn its wood stumps (a waste product) into wood chips, which provides additional income.

For more information:
http://resources.envir.ee
janna.merisaar@envirr.ee
Pavel Růžička (Senior Consultant, ENVIROS, Czech Republic) talked about the complexity and governance issues of resource efficiency policy and its implementation in the Czech Republic. Considering that Czech Republic is one of the most industrialized countries, the current pressures are very high. The majority of industrial waste comes from construction and demolition. Even though 84% of it is recovered, according to Pavel most of it is down-cycled. Initiatives to tackle resource efficiency include the creation of National end-of-waste criteria and a catalogue of secondary building, construction and demolition based materials.

For more information:
http://www.enviros.cz
pavel.ruzicka@enviros.cz

Aida Szilagyi (President, National Centre for Sustainable Production and Consumption, Romania) talked about her mission which is to contribute to the development of sustainable production and consumption patterns by supporting private and public sectors to increase resource efficiency and environmental performance. She stressed the importance of systematic and holistic approach to tackle the problem and also discussed the obstacles while working in the field.

“We believe in knowledge exchange and cooperation”…“In our country this subject is not commonly discussed, therefore we need to stay in close connection with international organizations to share knowledge.”

While discussing consulting in the field of resource efficiency, Aida pointed out:
“Only advising and not providing money for improvement will not guarantee the change!”

For more information:
http://www.cncpcd.ro
aidaszilogyi@cncpd.ro
Written by:
Helen Marton, M.A Creative Sustainability in Design, Aalto University, Finland
Anna Kintsurashvili, M.Sc. Creative Sustainability in Architecture, Aalto University, Finland

Maija Itkonen, founder of Gold & Green Foods Ltd.,

She is also known as ‘the oat lady’. Coming from a background in industrial design, her lecture was about her inspiring journey of an idea put in practice, as she says “do something and don’t stay only dreaming”. In the method she puts her skills sets into the center “Somebody needs to take the responsibility. You really to have to believe in what you are doing”.

Test runs were her core advice of approaching the startup path, and is her number one tip for a new sustainable business. The second is, collaborate. Her products are packed in 100% recycled plastic and her main resources have a short paths in the supply chain, being very transparent. However she agrees that it is difficult sometimes to track down smaller suppliers.

Interview by Babi and Laila

Key findings of this session:

• There are many innovative ideas and start-ups in place but what many of them are lacking is a good financial funding
• The EU offers many possibilities for the support of innovative ideas but funding is only available for the top 5% of them
• It is not about the technology, it is about the culture, people have to be willing to share knowledge

This session was special in itself because if the unique mixture of speakers. To begin with Prof. Dr. Fichter provided a theoretical view of different modes of change in transformation pathways. From ‘Invention – Innovation – Diffusion – Exnovation’ he explained at which step he sees startups struggling. From his point of view the diffusion is the mayor problem because nearly two thirds of all startups remain a niche product or service and gather on average only 10% of the market shares. For him the community and available resources are key for a success for a startup. Followed by this introduction to the topic innovation, startups and success, three startups introduced themselves to the plenum. Maija Itkonen from the Finnish startup Gold & Green Foods Ltd. shared her personal history from the beginning of thinking of alternatives for meat consumption to their great success in providing plant based protein sources via pulled oat – meat replacements. Food ranks as #1 opportunity to fight climate change.

“Think about it ! You are eating your one steak
and watching 2000L of water running away”

Going into a different direction, Hubert Rhomberg from Cree GmbH is in the realm of the construction industry and how to lower the environmental impacts related to that, reuse

the material at the end of their primary use and to adopt digitalisation as a tool for sustainable and long living buildings. His approach was to rely on wood – contrary to the common opinion that you can not build a high building out of wood, the Cree GmbH is proving the opposite by already having a huge building built in Switzerland.

“It is important for me that you see that is really
happening and nothing something that will happen in 10 years”

His main point was that we have to change our mind sets and open up to a shared and open source community. The startup Sustainabill tackles the problem of the big black box being the supply chain of companies and how to make it transparent. He states that most companies only know the first ‘tier’ of their supply chain and lacking the rest. For a just and sustainable business this would have to change, is Co-Founder and CEO Klaus Wiesen saying.

“Platform is the future, platform is the core”

The closing of this session was performed by Eva Revilla the Policy officer on cluster internationalization, DG for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurs and SMEs of the European Commission. She talked about the different stages to get funding for business innovations from the EU and which clusters there are to support them.

–

Written by
Babi Brasileiro, M.A Visual Communication Design at Aalto University
Laila Darouich, M.Sc. Environmental Sciences at the University of Freiburg

The puzzle developed by Michael in collaboration with Sitra, the Finnish innovation fund, aims to provide a roadmap of actions that can be easily implemented by citizens, in order to decrease their footprint.

In the past few years I have made an effort to take actions in reducing my footprint; it was surprising to see that, although I am in the right track, I still have a long way to go. My pain point in particular is traveling. I am a Mexican living in Finland, and I want to go back to my family at least once every two years (and yes I have asked myself the question whether I should just go back to Mexico to avoid this painful guilt area).

 

The puzzle, however provided alternatives for me to do for the time being, at least until the end of my studies. To my surprise, one of the most impactful changes was to adapt konmari, a japanese lifestyle that consist in reducing your belongings and be more tidy in order to be happier. This is something I can easily do, but it will require a big effort as I like to own things.

On the other side, I noticed some of the efforts were very hard in Finland, such as consuming local food. One of the reasons for this, and the most obvious, is the weather. Because of the long winters this is only a luxury for the summer times. But the other not so obvious reason is the fact that local is more expensive, which is not because of the weather, but rather the government’s subsidies. In finland, as in most places in the world, subsidies go towards meet and a few industrialized crops, but the small and medium producers have a hard time making a living from their farm, thus abandoning their production to move into the city. I believe that in order for consumers to lower their footprint, governments and companies have to make it easier for them to effectively make this changes.

 

The puzzle designed by Lettenmeier & Sonja Nielsen, an Aalto University student, is a great tool to be used by consumers. It is a great and simple road map to achieve a sustainable lifestyle by 2030. Now I have a clear idea of what I need to do next, and maybe you should try it too!

 

Written by: Andrea Gilly