Circularity and the Circular Economy

Transcript

Sheldon Young
Welcome to No Footprints, a podcast brought to you by Alpha LaBelle. I’m Sheldon Young.

Jason Moreau
And I’m Jason Moreau.

Sheldon Young
We’re here to talk about impact and efforts and people behind making sustainability real. Welcome to episode four. Taking it now.

You’re just taking it in? Just taking it in.

Jason Moreau
Quattro. Here we go.

Sheldon Young
Quattro. Yeah.

It’s going to… The joke’s getting old, what we’re talking about. We’re now, what, 33% more than we were last week, right?

Jason Moreau
It’s impressive math skills.

Sheldon Young
It’s the last time I’m making a joke.

Jason Moreau
I promise. Because it is.

Sheldon Young
Pretty soon I’m going to… 12.65%. Exactly. We are…

My math skills are going to fade quickly. So, yeah. So, we’re going to talk about water circulatory today.

Actually, before we kick off, I want to talk a little bit about a little adventure I had this week. I went to the Wisconsin Cheesemakers. It’s called Cheese Con.

They have it… One year it’s Cheese Con, and then the next year it’s Cheese Expo. They go back and forth.

One’s in Madison, Wisconsin. The other is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I think the difference is the Cheese Expo, they have…

The cheese competitions, they have international entries, and so they call it Cheese Expo. That’s what I was told, at least. Yeah, but really interesting, dairy and cheesemaking, all that, is really a fascinating case story from the perspective of sustainability.

The dairy industry uses a lot of resources, a lot of water, it’s a lot of agriculture. They are also, however, one of the most focused on sustainability. I sat in on a really, really great lecture, or I guess panel that was given, where three people talked about how sustainability, how they are driving it in their organizations, in their facilities, and the things they have to look out and move forward on.

It’s the things that are obvious. It’s the change management aspect of it, having those very clear, achievable goals, being able to quantify value from doing something. Same challenges that we face throughout sustainability, but I feel the dairy world has been doing it a long time, because they’ve had to focus on water intensity in particular, and I’m talking about in the facilities.

Agriculture is also a big part of that, but another thing they talked about that was really interesting was, while the big impact, I think, for greenhouse gases is definitely agriculture, like the raising of cows and all that stuff, it’s much harder to capture. One of the people that was speaking said, focusing on your internal facilities, and the things you can control very directly, can sometimes yield better results in many cases, because you are kind of lasered in on things you can control, as opposed to trying to do a third party. It sounds great, but it’s a lot more of a lift.

That totally makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.

It did to me as well. Anyway, so anyway, way too much fantastic cheese, but really, again, they also have a trade expo there, and just going and seeing all the different technologies out there that are focused around improving sustainability, it’s such a core thing, and everything from energy use to water use to wastewater, all those things kind of come together, and so shout out to CheeseCon for making sustainability there at the center.

Good, good. Okay, so on our last episode, we had a guest that talked about water circularity. Thought I’d be good to build on that this week, and talk about circularity as a whole, like the circular economy, and how it kind of connects to sustainability in today’s society.

So when I say circular economy, Jason, what do you think about?

Jason Moreau
I think about, so Fadan used the term cradle to cradle, which I thought was a really great way to describe it, in the sense that there is no waste. Right. If this ideal state of a circular economy would be, at the very end, it’s the snake eating its tail, right?

Like it is a circle. There is no waste, because that waste just becomes an input for the next step, and it just keeps going, just keeps going, and yeah, I mean, I think it’s critically important to figure out how to design more and more of this into our society, into our processes, because we’re not, call back to another guest, Paul Shapiro, the planet’s not getting any bigger, and so there is a finite amount of resources.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it’s, as opposed to that, the traditional model that I think many organizations are familiar with is take, make, waste, right? And while I think there has been some efforts to reduce that, I think it’s just, well, we produce things.

That’s what we do. We take something, we make something, there’s waste left over, and then that goes somewhere. Trying to eliminate that cycle, or that lack of cycle, and create a virtuous cycle there whenever possible.

I think, again, why does it happen and why does it not happen? It’s just people focus on the things that they do many times, not on the impact after, and it takes work. It does take work.

You know, all this stuff is, it takes additional thinking, it takes additional resources sometimes, and it takes planning and coordination outside of the things that, you know, you currently do. Now, what’s the business case for it, right? I think you kind of made it.

Why is it important, Dean, that linear economy that we often have to live with, it’s kind of running out of runway. You keep going the way we are. I mean, a quote here I pulled up, we keep doing this the way we are.

By 2050, we would need the equivalent of about three planet Earths to sustain our consumption. It’s kind of, that’s what the data kind of says. I’m like, wow, okay, that’s not too far away.

We’re 20, you know, I’ll still be around at some point, I hope, right? Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I think I’d rather not have to be worried about having three planets or other stuff.

Now, again, people can argue that number and stuff. I think it’s from data, so it’s not something that we can hide from. I think there’s always conversations we had around it, but I think it’s key to say, look, we are consuming more.

We are growing more. You see the population growth over the past, you know, decades here. It’s like, okay, we’re taking up more space.

We’re using more. Societies are evolving and wanting to consume more because they have resources and funds to do so. How do you start saying, okay, look, we got to kind of get away from this?

Now, in the US, it’s been interesting. We used to do more things. I would say that we’re circular.

It’s funny. We almost regressed a little bit. I’ll use an example.

Have you seen a television repair shop anywhere? No, you haven’t, right? Not a new one.

They used to exist. We used to fix and repair things. That was part of it.

We’ve become very consumer-focused and stuff got cheaper. It’s so funny. It’s almost the reverse.

It’s like, wow, things got cheaper, so now I don’t have to fix them anymore. I can just buy another one. From an efficiency point of view of making things cheaper and being able to do it more effectively and efficiently, okay, but from a circular perspective, that’s bad news.

It doesn’t clock out. If it costs me basically as much to fix something as it does to buy a new one, that doesn’t promote circularity. How do you change that?

You have to think long-term. That’s sometimes hard for humans to do because what you don’t realize is that, okay, this piece of equipment or whatever it is that I’ve purchased, it may cost a little more, but I can repair it and I can continue to use it for a really long cycle. That’s circular activity.

At the end, I can recycle it and reuse it, right? In the long run, that pays and that works out.

Jason Moreau
Yeah, I think you see a lot of people starting to come back around to this idea. I know different states have right-to-repair laws and things like that that they’ve tried to implement. Yeah, consumer electronics is a big category that they tend to focus on and just this idea that things are designed to be more disposable versus to last as long as possible.

And for me, I think thinking about this, that first intentional design step is really key because if at the very start, you’ve already gone down a particular path, it becomes much harder 10 steps down the line to adjust and loop that back into a circular way or or into a circular path. And yeah, so I think that intentionality of design from the very start is critical.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, and you’re right. I think as you think about it from the very beginning, it’s like, how do we build this in? Then also, moving into your world a little bit, how do you tell that message and tell that story?

Because I think a lot of people will say, oh, well, geez, that’s 20% more expensive. We’re not going to buy that, right? And sometimes that short-term thinking will win, but I think it’s as we look at it, if we tell the story appropriately, it’s like, all right, this thing you’re buying, you’re planning on keeping it for X period of time, hopefully a long period of time.

It is fixable, refurbishable, recyclable, and at the end of the day, there’s something for it for you to recycle it, right? I think that incentive aspect has to be a key thing, right? Perfect example, my wife loves this milk, particular milk here that we have in Virginia.

It comes in a glass bottle, like a big glass bottle.

Jason Moreau
I know what you’re talking about.

Sheldon Young
Oh, I know, right? It’s fantastic. The product is fantastic, but what I really appreciate is they have this program.

Now, again, you buy it like, wow, that’s expensive. Well, okay, yeah, there’s a $3 deposit on the bottle. It’s a robust glass bottle.

They want you to return them and keep that circular path going. You are using the core product, which is the milk and the vessel, which I mean, milk cartons and plastic jugs or whatever come from milk. Typically, this is a recyclable bottle, and it brings back the concept of the milkman, that used to deliver those milk bottles and collect the other ones.

It’s adding a step to your process, but we buy it because of that. We do. It’s something that’s important to us, and so we purchase that product because I feel that, first of all, the product is great, but I feel good about taking those bottles back and knowing they go back to the facility to be cleaned and reused.

There are lots of things we could do that. Reusable shopping bags, a simple one, right? There is a dark side to that.

You have to use them 16 times to make them— That’s a crazy stat.

Jason Moreau
Yeah. I didn’t realize that.

Sheldon Young
You have to use them 16 times for them to break even on their resource use, because they’re typically made of, I’m going to say plastic, but some kind of man-made fiber and stuff like that. The bad thing is that many people only use them two or three times, okay? So how do you make sustainability real?

Okay, use those things. Buy ones that are tough enough, first of all, that you can reuse them multiple times and continue to get use out of them, but the number I’d found was 16 to actually have a positive impact. But like I said, we use them.

My wife scolds me when I forget them, right? Well, I scold myself when I forget them. She reminds me that I should be scolding myself.

Because, you know, again, it’s about the little impacts that we can make that drive difference there.

Jason Moreau
I’m also—I mean, going back to your example with the milk bottles, financial incentives, man. I grew up in New England where you had a $0.05 return on aluminum cans. I mean, even just outside of a product, there’s a certain supermarket chain that requires like, what, $0.25 for the cart. And then when you return the cart, you get the quarter back. And it’s such a small thing. And yet, how much does that sort of improve the circularity of, no, the cart comes back to where it starts and you do it because you want the quarter back, right?

And that’s the system. And so I think what’s crazy to me is that’s a quarter, I think it was like $0.05 or $0.10 depending on your state back in the day for the can return. I think Michigan had $0.10. I remember because I was that kid too. There was the whole Seinfeld episode of whether you could take the cans from the state and then was it worth it to return them and get the extra $0.05. But like, no, but what’s crazy to me is that the financial incentive doesn’t have to be extreme to be—like you asked the question of how do you create that awareness or change behavior. It can be something super small like that. But if you institute those things, those incentives are in place and you will see behavior change.

So I don’t know. You’re not wrong.

Sheldon Young
I mean, listen, the state of Maine had their own little personal can collector here. I was roadside litter pickup. Trust me because I would love to take those cans.

I get a big bag on my bike. I collect a ton of them. I go to the recycling center and get several bucks.

When you’re a kid, that was big money, right? Yes. And I take that.

I would immediately go spend it. But still, it created incentives.

Jason Moreau
Good for the environment, good for the economy.

Sheldon Young
It created incentives, right? To your point, I think incentives are so important in this. But I think going back to the original point there is like, how do you communicate those?

First, to your very first point, make it real. Make it something that is impactful. Build it into the design of your product and then make sure that people have a good reason to purchase and utilize beyond just, oh, it’s the right thing to do.

Look, I wish that everyone would do it for that reason. If you do it right, it can make good business sense and it can also create value while also doing the sustainability things right. So totally creating that circular effect that we want.

Jason Moreau
Yeah. And just being intentional about the design at all levels, right? So that’s the consumer side.

I heard a story recently here in our state of Virginia. They were talking about, this hit me as a circularity issue in the sense of, I think we have one or two glass manufacturers here in the state, but no glass recycling facilities, which is crazy. So they need to, so when we recycle glass as consumers, it goes out of state.

And then the two glass manufacturers here in state have to bring it all the way back in, right? So if we wanted to design a more circular economy, more efficient, we would invest and build a glass recycling facilities here in state, ideally located somewhere near the manufacturing, right? And so it’s that intentionality of just looking at like, oh, this seems silly, honestly, the way that it is now.

So that’s that next level up of designing and incentives. I mean, I don’t have a degree in this stuff, but to me, that just comes down to like, well, that just makes sense. Why wouldn’t we do that?

Sheldon Young
Yeah, I know, right? To your, you’ve triggered me to think back to that last episode, we talked about Collin Borg, Denmark. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, totally, I figured it out. At least to the point where they can, right? I know they continue to evolve and grow there.

I was speaking to someone this weekend or this week about it. And, you know, I said, yeah, one of their challenges is like, you know, finding enough people to move there. It’s like, you know, it’s interesting.

And I think, when I think in the US, how do we do that? Collin Borg, for those that didn’t hear last episode, Collin Borg, Denmark is a city that basically has brought together around 20 companies or so, or 20 entities, I think. And they’ve interconnected, yeah, public and private, both.

They’ve interconnected it all so that it is as circular as it could possibly be, like waste for one will go here to make biogas. And that biogas is used to power this other factory down the street. Totally figured out how to do this.

It’s been around for 50 years, so nothing new, right? It’s been something they’ve been doing. And we chatted a little bit last episode around, hey, why are we doing more of this?

You know, again, it’s not easy. I think in the US, another thing that popped in my mind, Jason, after we spoke about it was we’re so spread out. Yeah.

We’ve become kind of naturally that way. Where, you know, we don’t have factories necessarily in the middle of cities. You know, they’re often out in the middle of nowhere, frankly, or in smaller towns.

And getting things to co-locate, again, requires a coordination effort. I have seen things that, for sure, like, you know, I was speaking to someone again this week at the cheese thing I was at, around they have a kind of cooperation with the local municipality, where they basically send their waste product to them, and they create biogas, et cetera. And so, interesting circularity.

We see it in small little spurts, but nothing quite to the scale of, like, a Kallenberg would be.

Jason Moreau
No. And I’m struck by, as I was thinking about this topic, that Kallenberg, it’s called symbiosis. Yeah.

And I think that was very intentional, because I think a lot of what we are looking at from a circularity standpoint, in terms of our technological or manufacturing capabilities, is really just trying to get back to and inspired by nature, and looking to nature and the systems that have developed over millions of years. And nature is the ultimate in circularity. And so, you know, as much as we can be inspired by and mimic what is happening there, my older son actually introduced me to the concept of permaculture.

Okay. And their philosophies are really interesting. But there’s a couple that I thought were particularly apropos, which is working with rather than against nature.

Sheldon Young
Right?

Jason Moreau
So really embracing those natural circularity processes that are already there. But then the other one was, you don’t treat any area as a single product system. Right.

Everything is overlapping and works together from a whole standpoint. They call them guilds. You know, it’s sort of like how the fungi work with the tree roots, work with the insects, right?

Like, so there’s usually just all of these overlapping organizations, organisms. And so Colin Burt is really, to me, that sort of grand scale version of that. And yeah, I mean, I just think that’s that type of thinking, you know, breaking down the silos, whose waste becomes somebody else’s input is just, that’s the heart of circularity for me.

Sheldon Young
Absolutely. And we focus back to water circularity. You’re seeing a lot of companies, water is becoming such a strategic resource that they’re having to think about it more and more.

A lot of companies out there, you know, data centers is a big area, right? They use a lot of resources because again, we’re evolving more and more in terms of our use of AI and things like that. Well, that generates a lot of computing needs.

And so data centers are going up like crazy. They require cooling. They require lots of water.

They require lots of resources. So those companies are now kind of leading the way in some regards of how do we think about circularity in our water loops so that we can, you know, bring that back around, you know, it’s becoming so critical. And I think, again, innovation sometimes is driven by necessity and we’re going to see more of that, I think.

Hopefully, I think the ones that are going to win are the ones that are thinking about it before it’s a problem. And I think you’re kind of ready for it. I keep a keen eye on our industries and the people that are kind of leading in this space.

Jason Moreau
Yeah, I think there’s two forces that seem at odds but are really sort of more potent together and you see it in nature too, right? So this isn’t anything new, but I think the more that public-private entities embrace this is there’s the competition, right? Like we all know that, but there is the cooperation and it’s the interleaving of those two and sort of harnessing those in balance that I think creates this circularity and this conservation of resources where everybody benefits.

And it’s, yeah, it’s the cooperation bit in the breaking down silos where it’s like to your earlier question of like, why don’t we see this more in the States? I think we just have typically maybe been on one end of the scale versus the other and I think driving those types of cooperative efforts, public-private, I’d love to see more of that.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, I mean, of course, I think it’d be fantastic. Again, incentives are everything, as you said. We traditionally in the US have had cheap water.

We just have as a general. So it’s like it hasn’t been as important, frankly. I think, again, we see more push from the public.

We do see like companies will demand it of the product and stuff that they have, that they want things that are more sustainably created and sourced. I think if that continues and hopefully that does continue, we will see the kind of court of public opinion will weigh in on that and you’ll start to see it. Again, the ones that do it well are the ones that are going to actually realize that if you do it right, you will have a good return on investment because there’s more than just the water.

I mean, it’s not a one-dimensional problem, right? It is a one that hits multiple dimensions of your business and there’s costs involved in many ways, shapes, and forms and it can all come back and be reduced if you approach it intelligently, with the right technology, and through just thoughtful planning and finding ways to create that circular loop with either your municipalities or the people next door or whatever it is. I remember there was a company here in Richmond that I engaged with for a while and talked about.

Their whole thing was like using pyrolysis to create energy. Pyrolysis is basically vaporizing something to the point that it creates biochar. But it took waste product and did that.

It did it with wood chips or just waste scraps and it would basically vaporize that, collect the energy, and then circulate that back through the facility. So it’s possible to take your waste products and create a circular motion with it, right? And it just takes thinking and planning.

It will take investment, but that investment does get returned if it’s done in a thoughtful way.

Jason Moreau
Yep. There is no waste, just inputs for something else.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, there you go, Jason. Look at you. Always the philosopher, the thinker.

I sit here and take five minutes to explain it, Jason just wraps it up in one sentence. That’s why you’re here, buddy. You’re here to keep it real and simple for the people.

All right.

Jason Moreau
Doing my best.

Sheldon Young
That’s right.

Let’s close this up. I like bullet points. I like to keep it simple.

Circularly, it’s not going away. In fact, it keeps rearing its head in something we have to address and think about in our business every day. It’s constantly evolving in its form and focus, right?

Where we pay our attention and the technology that comes into play and all that can really create different ways to think about circularity. It’s good business. It is good business.

If you do it well and you’re thoughtful, you can actually have a pretty good return on investment with a circular approach. It starts with that open-minded idea of what can be circular, continues with that collaboration and creativity on how to get it done. And really, at the end of the day, a circular economy is a healthy economy.

And the more that we put our minds to it, collaborate, share, and think about that whole virtuous cycle. Was it cradle to cradle, Jason? How do you put it in the beginning?

Think about cradle to cradle, and we’ll keep this thing rocking and rolling for sure.

Jason Moreau
Great summary. No notes.

Sheldon Young
No notes. Oh, look at that. I like that.

Okay. All right. Well, we’d like to thank you for joining us here on No Footprints.

We’re excited about our next episode as well. We’ll have a guest. That’ll be on the first Tuesday of the next month.

And I’m excited about him too. It’s talking about sustainability in that dairy world, which we play a lot in ourselves.

Jason Moreau
Oh, nice.

Sheldon Young
Looking forward to it. Good stuff. All right.

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