The Circular Economy as the New Normal
This case study explores the steps that must be taken to apply circular thinking in the real world. It gives examples, shares experiences, and discusses the importance of a multi-stakeholder approach. It also describes the need for upscaling and innovation from a pragmatic and programmatic approach and shows how implementation gaps can be bridged.
Why is cooperation in the value chain needed at a multi-stakeholder level? If capitalism and industrialization are responsible for social and environmental degradation, what economic reforms are needed to create a circular economy?
Pragmatic And Programmatic Approach
organizations should get access to knowledge and innovation centers with specialists in the area of Design Thinking, open innovation, and value chain collaboration. These are resources they would normally not invest in themselves. Combining existing knowledge, insights, and practical challenges with innovations is key to creating an optimal learning curve. Unfortunately, this is not yet widely incorporated into ways of working. The government has a role as launching customer of pilot projects and knowledge institutions contribute by sharing knowledge.
Even an extensive project cannot achieve a circular economy within the sector. A combination of projects that can learn and develop together, with bigger market demand and substantial size to remove barriers, might do so. This combination of projects should be governed within a programme structure. A programme has the advantage of knowledge sharing and, given the longer timeframe, also has opportunities to resolve common problems for all projects at once. A circular building programme was launched recently to accelerate
accounts for 25-30 per cent of total EU waste. The construction sector in the Netherlands accounts for 40 per cent of total material use. This sector occupies a significant share of the Dutch economy. The Amsterdam region will build 250,000 new houses and large infrastructure and utility projects by 2040. organizations like Schiphol Airport in the same region have ambitions to develop a circular terminal, and the Port of Amsterdam has a strategic focus on renewables and circular.
Figure 8: Open Innovation Track
Creating a circular product or service requires collaborative design with organizations within the value chain and relevant disrupters outside the value chain. This process is often more difficult than it seems. In this open innovation track we collaborate in different stages with an ecosystem of partners and disrupters to create a circular solution at scale. We start small, defining the right ecosystem and collaborative approach, and then create a prototype before actually scaling up to pilot projects. Our public launch is underpinned by a large-scale go-to-market strategy.
The building programme has a pragmatic project approach, and sets high standards for circular construction, i.e. high-value, reusable, healthy, and sustainable materials and components for all buildings. Cradle-to-cradle will be used as a principle during the construction phase, and buildings should have a positive environmental impact during the phase of use. The programme focuses on various projects that can contribute to practical evidence to motivate adjustments in legislation. For example, there are several initiatives aiming to create material passports. Yet there is no standard available. This missing common understanding impedes organizations from discussing the future value of components. Working together in a programme could encourage a whole sector to embrace one standard material passport, a typical development that cannot be achieved by a single organization but only by collaboration.