The Circular Economy in Europe

Front matter

Routledge Explorations in Sustainability and Governance

THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY IN EUROPE

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON POLICIES AND IMAGINARIES

Contents

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements Preface

PARTI Circular economy as a policy concept

1 Introduction: the sixteenth century map 2 Limits to growth: historical antecedents of the circular economy 3 Enter Ellen: the circular economy hits the European scene

PART II Critical perspectives

5 Postulating circularity: biophysical flows and the problem of entropy

6 Imagining circularity: the circular economy as a sociotechnical imaginary

7 Measuring circularity: indicator development in the circular economy

8 Governing circularity: how to govern in the nexus

104 127 viii Contents

PART III The future of change

9 Narratives of stop and go 10 What kind of science is needed in a changing world?

Index

141 143 156 172

Illustrations

Figures

1.1 Facsimile of European Commission press release on the Circular Economy Action Plan, dated 4 March, 2019

1.2 The sixteenth century map

2.1 Metabolism of an economic system embedded in an ecosystem

2.2 From an empty world to a full world

3.1 Timeline of the circular economy

3.2 The Ellen MacArthur Foundation representation of the circular economy

5.1 The circular flow of economic activities

5.2 Alternation of generations in the human species

5.3 The biophysical narrative of the circular economy

6.1 Representation of the circular economy in the Communication Towards a Circular Economy

6.2 Sankey diagram of material flows in the global economy

6.3 The Ellen MacArthur Foundation representation of the circular economy

6.4 Representation of the circular economy in the Raw Materials

Scoreboard

Visual representation of the circular economy monitoring

framework

7.2 Representation of rare earth metals in recycled materials

8.1 Circular material use rate

9.1 Bios and Geos a

Tables

3.1 Summary of the regulations and communications linked to the circular economy 7.1 Monitoring framework for the circular economy

35 117

Contributors

Zora Kovacic (born 1985) holds Italian and Brazilian citizenship. She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, at the University of Bergen, Norway. She has previously held research positions at Stellenbosch University (2018-2019) and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (2012-2018). Zora was trained mostly in the social sciences, with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (UK) and a Masters of Science in Environmental Studies from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) and the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg (Germany), which included ecological economics and environmental engineering. Zora obtained her PhD in 2015 from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Guided by post-normal science, her research focuses on the challenges of uncertainty and complexity that emerge when scientific knowledge is used in policy-making. She analyses and theorizes how quantitative evidence and uncertainty are mobilised in sustainability and development policies. Zora has contributed to science advice mechanisms, including a Scoping Workshop devoted to the European Commission Group of Chief Scientific Advisors on “Making sense of science under conditions of complexity and uncertainty” in 2018, training courses directed at policy officers of the National Secretariat for Planning and Development of Ecuador in 2014 and 2015, and policy advice to the municipal government of Stellenbosch in South Africa. Zora has also been part of the scientific committee of the bi-annual post-normal science symposia since 2015. She has collaborated in the research projects EPINET (FP7), MAGIC (H2020), NETEP (Marie Curie IRSES), PARTICIPIA (ACP-EU EDULINK II), and Co-Dec (LIRA2020).

Zora’s main research interest is in the development of the study of complexity and science for policy. Complexity matters for informing policy because in the context of complexity, science cannot give one representation, advice, or option. Zora encountered this challenge in the first case study she worked on for her PhD: she was studying water governance, and the different representations of water used to inform policy seemed to talk past each other. On the one hand, she encountered the narrative of water

List of contributors xi efficiency, which referred to water use in agriculture, and on the other hand, she encountered the water scarcity narrative through which conservation policies were formulated for the main water bodies. These two representations were used both to promote and restrict the use of water, albeit in very different policy areas. Zora has thus used complexity theory as a means to think through scientific controversies, policy inconsistencies and uncertainty in governance. Her doctoral dissertation, supervised by Mario Giampietro, developed a method of quality assessment of quantitative evidence based on complexity theory. She applied this approach to the study of indicators used in financial and economic policy, water governance, and to the assessment of new and emerging technology in energy policy. Her work has been greatly inspired by collaborations with Mario Giampietro, Louisa Jane Di Felice and Timothy Allen on complexity and social metabolism, Roger Strand on governance and reflexivity, Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz on post-normal science, Violeta Cabello on deliberative governance mechanisms and transdisciplinary practices, Josephine Musango and Suzanne Smit on development and the informal economy.

Interest in complexity led to the work of Charles Pierce on semiotics. Semiotics shows that the knowledge needed for governance must be validated by experience. This insight has important implications for the use of science for governance. It means that what matters is not only different types of knowledge, but also how knowledge is acquired. Zora has worked with public policy both in the European context and in the Global South, especially in Brazil, Ecuador and South Africa. These diverse experiences have created an awareness of the importance of validating knowledge through practice in the science-policy interface. In a consortium meeting of the MAGIC project, the coordinator Mario Giampietro talked about cyborg salmons — that is, salmons bred from aquaculture, as opposed to salmons that evolved from natural selection, through a semiotic process of millions of years. Cyborg salmons are created out of abstract ideals, not of validated practices. The meeting produced a yearning not to be a cyborg, or an automaton, as individuals and as researchers, who use ready-made thoughts and give quick-fix advice to policy-makers. This means overcoming the urge to speak not only scientific “truths,” but also of giving solutions, of letting a naïve wish to do good overtake common sense.

In this book, some of these ideas are taken up with the aim or arriving at a conciliation through humble criticism. Conciliation and care are not to be confused with the oppression of one’s perspective in the name of the common good. In this book we will try to express our concerns, doubts and uncertainties with humility and respect. The yearning not to be an automaton resonates with Zora’s interest and practice of Logosophy, which offers teachings that lead oneself to self-knowledge and self-improvement through a process of conscious evolution. A basic insight in Logosophy is that in order to become who one wants to be, one must let go of what one is. It is impossible to go somewhere, while at the same time expecting to stay in the same place. Applied to the circular economy, this means that becoming something else, sustainable for xii List of contributors example, requires letting go of what is now unsustainable. Rather than making current practices circular, a reflection is needed about the identity, practices and culture that may need to be renewed.

Roger Strand is a Norwegian citizen (born 1968) and Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Bergen, Norway. Roger was trained in the natural sciences (obtaining the degrees of cand. scient. in 1992 and dr. scient. in 1998) with additional studies in philosophy and Classical Latin. Since 1993, he has been affiliated with the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (Senter for vitenskapsteori, SVT), University of Bergen, where he also served as the Director in the years 2005-11. Since 2013, he has also been associated with the Centre for Cancer Biomarkers at the same university, leading a research programme on the ethical and societal aspects of cancer research. Roger has been a Visiting Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and is currently Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim with a special mandate of implementing the principle of Responsible Research and Innovation within the Centre for Digital Life Norway, a virtual research centre for systems biology and computational biotechnology.

Throughout his research career, Roger has worked on issues of methodological underdetermination in science, scientific uncertainty and complexity. This has gradually led his research into broader strands of philosophy, ethics and social research and broader issues of policy, decision-making and governance at the science-society interface. He has led numerous research projects on the ethical and societal aspects of biotechnology, nanotechnology and emerging science and technology, including the two EU-funded projects TECHNOLIFE and EPINET that both addressed the need for more dynamic governance of science in society. These projects were coordinated in close collaboration with his colleague Kjetil Rommetveit. Within higher education, Roger has called for interdisciplinarity, reflexivity and responsibility, including in his work as member of the Norwegian Bildung Committee that initiated a broad public debate about the role of education and academia in contemporary Norwegian society. In Norwegian and European research policy, he is mainly known for his contributions to the development of the policy concept of Responsible Research and Innovation, RRI. In the EU’s 8" framework programme for research and innovation, the so-called Horizon 2020, Roger leads the contributions by the University of Bergen in the projects MAGIC, HEIRRI, SUPERMoRRI and TRANSFORM, the three latter being projects that work to develop RRI in education, research, innovation and policy. In 2014, Roger chaired a European Commission Expert Group on Indicators for RRI. In 2015, he and his colleague Matthias Kaiser were commissioned by the bioethics committee of the Council of Europe for a report on the ethical issues raised by emerging sciences and technologies. Strand served as a member of the National Research Ethics Committee for Science and Technology in Norway (2006-2013).

For more than 20 years, Roger has been interested in the development of complexity theory and the concept of post-normal science, discussing and

List of contributors xiii working with internationally leading researchers in the field, notably Silvio Funtowicz, Jerome Ravetz, Ragnar Fjelland, Dominique Chu, Angela Guimaraes Pereira, Zora Kovacic, Mario Giampietro and Andrea Saltelli. Most of this work has involved the close collaboration between Strand’s home institution SVT, the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the European Commission-Joint Research Centre at Ispra in Italy. Zora Kovacic, Silvio Funtowicz and Roger Strand form the Board of Directors of the European Centre for Governance in Complexity, a micro-NGO dedicated to develop research and public debate on such issues. Roger’s original point of departure was epistemological. His doctoral dissertation in biochemistry studied the so-called “in vivo-in vitro” problem, that is, that almost all of biomedicine tries to develop our understanding of living, intact, unperturbed organisms by use of methods that invariably kill, dissect, partition or at least perturb the organisms. How can knowledge about the living — in vivo — be constructed out of laboratory experiments in vitro —that is “in glass”? The epistemological studies led into science and technology studies (STS) and research on the social and political character of scientific knowledge while also sparking an interest in complexity in the tradition of Robert Rosen and relational biology. Out of all of this, an image of scientific knowledge emerged that showed the complex relationships between model and system, knowledge and action, facts and values, science and politics, and ultimately nature and culture. Science does so much more than creating maps of the world. Fundamentally it also changes the terrain, through technology but also by changing how humans think, speak and act. While this insight has been developed and consolidated within STS since at least the 1970s, it is almost absent still in research policy or any other field of policy or governance as the third decade of the twenty-first century is approaching. Especially under the heading of post-normal science, a lot of Roger’s policy-related efforts have been dedicated to find ways of introducing such post-empiricist insights and norms and practices of reflexivity into the world of policy and governance.

It seems fair to say that these efforts have not been crowned with considerable success, notwithstanding a few notable exceptions. The present book will introduce concepts such as uncomfortable knowledge and socially constructed ignorance. Since 2018, Roger has directed his interest into why the task of introducing thoughts of reflexivity and complexity is so hard. In part, there is a need to better understand how the institutions of governance work and what assumptions they make and need to make. The EU research project MAGIC, www.magic-nexus.eu, of which the present volume is a part, has advanced this understanding and paved a way forward through the approach of quantitative story-telling. In part, however, the reflexive curiosity also needs to be directed back to the complexity theorists and post-normal science activists such as the author himself. Roger is currently working with renewed inspiration from ancient Chinese philosophy in xiv List of contributors

Daoist tradition as well as the later Zen Buddhist writings, as well as from oriental practices such as kundalini yoga and kyokushin karate, in which he holds a black (Shodan) belt. In the practices of yoga and martial arts, as well as in their philosophical counterparts, there is the understanding that change for the better calls for a balance between push and pull, between giving and receiving, and between intention and the willingness to let go of one’s own plans and one’s own ego. When STS and post-normal science have been relegated to the dead position of uncomfortable knowledge, it may be that Roger and his colleagues have been unaware of their own Western action bias. Roger’s contributions to this volume are his first attempts towards a theory of policy and governance that incorporates a higher degree of spiritual awareness; a theory of governance in the Dao.

Thomas Völker (born 1982) is an Austrian science and technology studies (STS) scholar currently working as a policy analyst in the research department of the Austrian Science Fund. Thomas previously held positions at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra (2016-2018), the University of Klagenfurt (2015) and the University of Vienna (2009-2014). He was a visiting scholar at the RWTH Aachen’s VDI Chair of Futures Studies from 2013 to 2014, finishing his PhD thesis after being awarded a Marietta-Blau grant. Since 2018 he is also associated with the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (SVT) of the University of Bergen.

Thomas’ research circles around three broader topics: the ongoing co-production of technoscientific and societal orderings, new ways of governing technoscience in more participatory ways and practices of technoscientific future-making together with the ongoing negotiation of collectively shared ideas about desirable futures. He has been developing these broader interests within two main areas during the last years: one is the analysis of engagement initiatives designed and conducted at the science-policy interfaces of the European Commission. The other involves research on environmental governance, indicator politics and the role of collective imagination in Circular Economy policies.

Initially, Thomas set out to become a world-renowned bass player, but switched to a career in sociology very soon due to an unfortunate lack of musical talent. He is trained as a sociologist and in his Masters thesis applied a cultural studies approach to look into practices of valuation, asking how ideas about “quality” are formed in evaluative discourses of music magazines. Finally leaving music behind, Thomas was then confronted with STS and decided to dive deeper into that field. This decision led him to the Department of Science and Technology Studies of the University of Vienna. At this department he held a position as PhD candidate in a project called “Transdisciplinarity as Culture and Practice”. In close collaboration with Ulrike Felt he wrote a thesis on practices of “futuring” in transdisciplinary sustainability research. The thesis explores collectively held imaginations of science-society relations in sustainability research in Austria. It was

List of contributors xv during the time of writing this dissertation when Thomas’ research started to focus more on questions of collective imagination and the governance of science and technology as well as on issues related to sustainability policy. This interest was deepened at the RWTH Aachen, where Thomas worked with the group of Daniel Barben that focused more on the technology and innovation side of STS. After his time in Aachen, Thomas worked with Martina Merz at the Department of Science Communication and Higher Education Research in Vienna, focusing on issues of quality again. This time around it was about how “quality” as a category is constructed and applied in academia. This work focused on the interplay between practices and cultures of the humanities, natural and social sciences from a perspective interested in the formation and stabilisation of epistemic cultures.

Finally, at the Joint Research Centre Thomas gained experience in working in policy-oriented research at an institution that understands itself as situated at the “science-policy interface”. In his time at the JRC Thomas worked with Angela Guimaraes Pereira in interdisciplinary project teams and focused on policy analysis, on modes of engagement and participation and on questions about the role quantification in policy-making. Importantly, Thomas has been involved in work that aims at fostering more engagement-oriented and participatory processes within EU institutions. This has been done through a number of collaborations with both colleagues from other JRC departments and with policy makers from European Commission policy DGs. Additionally, Thomas has contributed to a number of workshops and designed and organized citizen engagement trainings for the European Commission. It was especially in these workshops and trainings that Thomas realized how important it is to go beyond academic rigour (which he enjoys immensely) and to “translate” (in the sense of John Law) ideas and concepts to various different situations.

Working at the JRC, Thomas also joined the H2020-funded research project MAGIC. In this project he worked with Zora Kovacic, Roger Strand and Mario Giampietro on Circular Economy policy, asking for the multiple meanings and futures of ‘circularity’. This research about the ongoing assemblage and stabilization of imaginations of circularity and the materialities that are co-emergent with them led to the idea of writing the book your reading at this moment. A particular focus of this work is to understand indicator development at the EC as a site of collective imagination.

A second project Thomas worked on with Angela Guimaraes Pereira addresses practices and models of engagement and participation at the Joint Research Centre, using a co-productionist approach to participation and what Chilvers and Keames call ‘ecologies of participation’. This research takes an initiative of the JRC called ENGAGE, which is an attempt to bring together and consolidate various ongoing initiatives on citizen engagement, as a case for studying institutional understandings and negotiations of participatory governance in a European policy context. This is particularly fascinating xvi

List of contributors since the JRC provides a unique site for conducting and studying engagement experiments at the science-policy interface.

This work ties into Thomas’ intellectual trajectory in that it allows him to focus on practices of knowledge production and circulation in environmental governance as well as on collective experiments with participatory democracy at the European Commission.

While Thomas has been working on these questions for quite some time now, there is still some residual interest in pop-cultural pleasures left. He recently co-wrote a paper on the role of science fiction novels in Big Data discussions. And, just so this story can come full circle, he is still playing the bass.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the continued help and support from our colleagues as well as the European institutions that we write about in this book. The work leading to this book was performed as part of the project MAGIC. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 689669. We are obliged to clarify that the present work reflects only the authors’ view and the Funding Agency cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. Furthermore, numerous civil servants and policy-makers, within as outside of European Union institutions, have made themselves available for research interviews and other inquiries. Without their time and generosity, this book would have been impossible. The University of Bergen is acknowledged for its generous financial support in the publication of this book. We are also deeply grateful to all our colleagues in the MAGIC project for their valuable inputs and support throughout. We cannot name all but would like to mention some of them: First of all, our project coordinator, collaborator and mentor Mario Giampietro, for teaching us what we know about ecological economics, giving us the opportunity to undertake this case study and finally, as the Series Editor, welcoming our contribution to the Routledge book series “Explorations on Sustainability and Governance”. We would also like to thank MAGIC colleagues Sandra Bukkens, Maddalena Ripa, Silvio Funtowicz and Kirsty Blackstock for all their help and support with this book, and our colleague Irmelin W. Nilsen who prepared the artwork and sorted out hundreds if not thousands of small and big issues in the final hectic phase of preparing the manuscript. Lorenzo Benini and Gernot Rieder were so immensely kind to read and comment drafts. And finally, we thank the publisher and above all Julia Pollacco at Routledge who provided invaluable support and encouragement throughout this project.

Preface

This book is different and a pleasure to read. It uses the wisdom of oriental philosophy to stimulate a reflection on the surge of the concept of circular economy in the sustainability debate. According to the proposed frame, “circular economy” is a name that is used by us to deal with the TAO. To bring this point home, in Chapter 4 the authors use a different version of this name “dflkjdrl haqwnmz” (the translation of “circular economy” into a fictitious language). This helps the reader focus on the meaning and on the purposes associated with the use of such a term. It is a worthwhile strategy: in oriental philosophy, in fact, there is always a yin-yang tension associated with the meaning of every new name. This tension is generated by the combined consideration of who introduced it, why it was introduced, how it is used and what the consequences of its use are. As such, the introduction of the term “circular economy” in the sustainability discussion cannot be considered to be either “good” or bad”. Rather, this name can be used as a clue to better understand not only the “external world” that western science and technology want to fix, but also us — i.e. the who, the why and the how of those that use the name “circular economy”. Importantly, the name “us” refers to an object of study that western science and technology tend to neglect.

What is the novelty of the term “circular economy” and what type of yin-yang tension does it generate? The term “circular economy” represents a good novelty, because for the first time both orthodox neo-classical economists and the establishment officially acknowledge that the economic process needs physical inputs, such as energy and materials, and generates wastes and emissions — represented by the flows that have to be circularized. On the other hand, the name “circular economy” is used to indicate a mission. It suggests that the current need of interacting with and depending on nature is an inconvenient aspect of the existing economy. That is, the circular economy admits the existence of a nature with which we are still, temporarily, forced to interact, but the adjective “circular” affirms the total conviction that very soon technical innovations, human ingenuity and the invisible hands of the market, in the form of a new business model, will finally get us out of this inconvenient situation. Put in another way, if the concept of circular economy is a welcome novelty because it shows the understanding that the actual linear

Preface xix economic model is not sustainable (it is not compatible with the work of nature required to stabilize our life support system), on the other hand it is a worrisome novelty because it shows a serious lack of understanding of the biophysical roots of the economic process. It shows good will, but good will can become dangerous if accompanied by ignorance.

The complexity of the process associated with the generation and use of names guarantees that the story to be told about this fascinating name does not end here. Assuming that the name “circular economy” can be considered by some critics as a new edition of the new invisible clothes of EU sustainability policies, the book questions whether crying that “the Emperor has no clothes” is a good thing to do. This question points at the delicate relationship between science and society. Those worried by the fact that “circular economy” represents the last outfit of cornucopians trying once again to sell a perpetual growth machine would definitely go for the cry. However, this criticism does not consider that this name charged of hubris — i.e. the Cartesian dream of prediction and control given by the combination of science, technology and the market — may represent a powerful Trojan horse forcing institutions to finally include biophysical aspects into the discussion of sustainability. When moving from the description of a socio-technical imaginary based on economic narratives generated by a combination of ingenuity and invisible hands to the actual measurement of visible plastic bags floating in the sea or tons of CO, emissions flying into the atmosphere, we will be forced to add feedback received by experience in the framing of sustainability issues. After giving legitimacy to the use of other names such as “plastic bags”, “soil”, “biodiversity”, and “emissions” in circular economy narratives, we will have a new source of legitimized information to be included in the master narratives about economic growth that will allow us to check the plausibility of the proposed socio-technical imaginaries.

But the book provides a deeper reflection with respect to this point. What if the need of a common ideal, a shared illusion — the invisible clothes of EU sustainability — is essential for the unity of the social fabric of a fragile construction such as the EU, especially when going through difficult times? By providing hope — i.e. the simple denial of pending troubles — we can allow society to remain functional while finding solutions. This reflection is essential for discussions of sustainability: it is about the meaning that should be given to the name “us”. Who is us? How much do we want to change our identity in order to become more sustainable? This question brings us back to the wisdom of oriental philosophy. In the relation between the TAO and the names, names have to be continuously changed. For example, from the use of the name circular economy (a new business model) we could move to the use of the name sustainable production and consumption (a new combination of social practices). This is a different name in which it is easier to include us in the analysis. Personally, I am sceptical of the strategy of continuing to praise the invisible clothes of the EU emperor. In the existing situation, this will translate in endorsing a policy of doing “more of the same” — i.e. investing more of the xx Preface scarcer resources in socio-technical imaginaries, whose plausibility is dubious. But I have to admit that the willingness to take part in the emperor’s illusion depends a lot on whether you are living at court.

If you want to reflect on the issue of sustainability through a new, informed and thought-provoking lens, this is a book worth reading.

Mario Giampietro

Part I Circular economy as a policy concept

The sixteenth century map

The first chapter introduces the reader to the policy concept of the circular economy and provides them with a first understanding of the structure of the argument in the book. Both for stylistic and methodological reasons, we do so by introducing the metaphor of “the sixteenth century map”. Sixteenth century maps were intended to be accurate representations of the world but not from “the view from nowhere”. The ideas, dreams and fears of the authors of these maps were ubiquitously present in the maps, for instance in the shapes of monsters and unicorns. What is known and thought about the circular economy so far indeed resembles a sixteenth century map, in which ad hoc detailed information is combined with imprecise notions of circularity. Repeatedly, the book will return to this metaphor, critically discussing the implications of navigating by such a map. Chapter 1 takes up the question “What is the circular economy?” and shows that it might actually be a lot of things at the same time while also being different things in different places. The chapter also introduces the structure of the book and briefly describes each chapter that follows.

Has the circular economy been delivered?

On the 2nd December 2015, the European Commission — the executive power of the European Union — issued a press release with the title “Closing the loop: Commission adopts ambitious new Circular Economy Package to boost competitiveness, create jobs and generate sustainable growth” (European Commission, 2015b). The press release emphasised the high ambitions and broad scope of this new policy initiative: “The Package has broken down silos in the Commission and contributes to broad political priorities by tackling climate change and the environment while boosting job creation, economic growth, investment and social fairness”.

Three and a half years later, on the 4 March 2019, the European Commission released news on the results of the 2015 initiative:

Three years after adoption, the Circular Economy Action Plan can be considered fully completed. Its 54 actions have now been delivered or are being implemented. According to the findings of the report, implementing the Circular Economy Action Plan has accelerated the transition towards a circular economy in Europe, which in turn has helped putting the EU back on a path of job creation.