Thank you, Mark Lancelott for sharing this knowledge. Indeed, it is rather challenging for most businesses to transition towards circular economy as “How we’ve always done things” is their only viable business model.
Yet, many companies, working in linear, cradle-to-grave economy adopt circular measures in the fields of product design, waste or GHG neutrality. These are the pioneers of the transformational wave. We will see more of these trends until they become the new norm.
Scaling circularity is the challenge that we all need to get our heads around.
Steven Kotler sharing his incredible insights in this excerpt from the Art of Impossible. Worth investing 8 minutes of your time!
“While a good mood is the starting point for heightened creativity, a daily gratitude practice, a daily mindfulness practice, regular exercise and a good night’s rest remain the best recipe that anyone has yet found for increasing happiness”.
European Commission’s Remanufacture Report 2015 states that currently, less than 2% of all produced products are remanufactured. Nevertheless, this sector employs 194,000 people and accounts for almost 30Bln€ in revenue in EU alone.
In December 2019, the EU Green Deal has been announced. It was then adopted by France and Germany in March 2020 turbo-boosting the remanufacturing industry by imposing significant limitation on product-to-waste business models and incentifying remanufacturing.
For example, on February 10th 2020, France has adopted their own “Anti-waste law for the circular economy”. Among it’s five core objectives, part 4 specifically focuses on remanufacturing:
1. Apply a repairability index and make progress towards a durability index 2. Facilitate repair and promote the use of used spare parts 3. Extend the legal guarantee of conformity 4. Introduce mandatory information on the duration of computer and phone operating software updates 5. Create repair funds 6. Enable the use of 3D printing for the repair of objects”
LSA published a good summary of current trends in home cleaning industry. Consumer and legislative pressure on the manufacturers result in a big number of promising initiatives to reduce, reuse and recycle plastic.
Key eco-trends in this industry today are: * Adding recycled content to the packaging (unfortunately, a short-term PR stunt, like substituting sugar with fructose in a milkshake) * Selling solutions in bulk (promising idea, lacking convenience and scale today) * collecting plastic back (most promising way to close the supply chain loop, conflict of interest with existing waste-to-value actors) * DIY (the niche of the niche, like fax machines 🙂
Worth mentioning also non-plastic eco-trends: * water/waste reduction (concentrated or recycled solutions) * ecological and non-petrol based (renewable) solutions
Looking for ways to avoid plastic in the first place should be the first priority.
Equally important priority is a shopper education. More budgets should be spent raising awareness of the plastics threat and new solutions.
Here are two exciting books I am finishing now. Quite unorthodox. Written by a historian Yuval Harari. Highly recommend!
Some of my favorite quotes from Homo Deus:
“History isn’t a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others.”
“The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realised how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress.”
Some of my favorite quotes from the 21 lessons:
“If you cannot afford to waste time, you will never find the truth.”
“The very sophisticated artificial intelligence of computers might only serve to empower the natural stupidity of humans.”
By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.”
Here are some new books that I have been traveling with lately
Dark Money
Interesting at the beginning, but then too detailed and repeatative. An account of when, how and at which cost Koch family financed Trump’s ascent to power. From an outsider, it was interesting to learn the know-how of modern intronisation.
The Narrow Corridor
Ouf. Still reading it. Too disturbing for me. Quite a frank representation of societies, cruelty, agression, subjugation. The midieval notion of Leviathan as the state, realised in the book of Thomas Hobbes analysed and applied to the 21st century world.
The conclusion is rather interesting. The Leviathan represents state absolute power and violence and repression is a natural part of the state’s essence. However, there are 3 types of societies today. The stateless, the autocratic and the democratic ones. Therefore the Leviathan can be “chained”, restricted, managed. Or “unchained” in the likes of autocratic and repressive regimes.
I would recommend this book for those, interested in the social contract theory. What are the norms and how they evolve. Why certain things are acceptable and others aren’t. This book is about it.
And the narrow corridor means the path from autocracy to democracy. The reasons why most post colonial world has failed to transform into the Western liberal model explained.
Owning the Earth.
My book of the year. Definately.
Modern history, key world events, transformation of society into what we are today explained by focusing on the 2 main ideas of how we own the earth (privately or collectively).
Slavery, serfdom, England’s industrial revolution, colonial world conquests, Russian and Chinese territorial expansions, American war for independence, all these events carefully analysed and reviewed from the land ownership perspective.
Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die…
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Lewis Carroll, “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There”, 1871.
***
To get yourself in the 2020 context, just substitute the word “country” above with “industry” or “job” and read the text again.
Running fast gets you nowhere these days. It is running twice faster then the others that you will excel.
