Circular economy to be the ‘new order of things’
European Commissioner for Environment Janez Potočnik has highlighted the need for a circular economy in the opening speech of Green Week 2014.
Running for three days (3-5 June) at the Egg Conference Centre in Brussels, Green Week 2014 marks a new focus on the development of a circular economy in Europe.
It is expected to host 100 different speakers covering topics such as the development of a circular economy, ‘New-Environmentalism’, investment, technological development and green policies.
The main focus, however, is the incentive to move from a linear economic model ‘towards a more circular one’ as part of the means to face the challenges posed by increasing need for resources in a resource constrained world.
During yesterday’s (3 June) opening conference, Potočnik gave a speech emphasising the importance of the transition from a linear to a circular model of the economy in Europe as the ‘new order of things’.
‘Change is not easy’
Potočnick opened his speech by highlighting that the main difficulty facing the transition to the circular economy is that ‘change is not easy’.
Although he acknowledged that policy makers ‘have the ability to help to drive change’, improvements are continually delayed: “too often we subsidise continuity, we preserve the status quo”, he said.
However, he warned that continuing procrastination over making definitive changes are hindering the environment, adding “the strains on the earth’s resources are increasingly becoming problems for our generation”.
He continued: “The change we face is inevitable, and its scale will be enormous.”
‘Moving towards the resource revolution’
In his speech, Potočnik said: “Europe’s comparative advantage in the coming decades will be defined by the relative availability of resources – the factors of production from energy to materials, from labour to land, from water to biodiversity – and our ability to maximise their productivity. We will be obliged to focus on the markets where we are able to compete in the increasingly inter-connected world.
“I leave it to you to work out whether this will be in the energy-intensive, labour-intensive, resource-intensive or knowledge-intensive sectors and markets. But I think the writing is pretty much on the wall for us all to see. Resource-poor, crowded and ageing Europe will have to compete for inputs and markets with many other global regions. The formula that gave us growth and prosperity in the past just won’t work in the future.
“But I believe that innovative, experienced and creative Europe will be capable of moving towards the resource revolution by decoupling our growth from our resource use.”
‘A push for higher recycling rates, and a push for the elimination of landfill’
As part of a push towards the development of a circular economy, Potočnik announced that the package of updated waste targets that the commission will adopt in “a few weeks” will have at its core “a push for higher recycling rates, and a push for the elimination of landfill in waste legislation”.
However, Potočnik noted that waste legislation is only “one tool among the many needed” to structure a circular economy in which “secondary resources are sucked back into the productive economy by demand, in which one company's waste is another’s resource, in which we buy performance, not stuff”.
He was keen to emphasise that the circular economy package is “not only a green agenda” and that an “integrated approach” is necessary to achieve a truly circular economy.
Potočnik concluded: “I can guarantee you that any proposal for a target for resource efficiency will meet the usual cries of ‘not now, not yet, wait until we have more data, and a mature methodology’. But after four years of work – analysis, consultation, modelling – I can assure you that there is really no legitimate reason to delay.”
