Terence Corcoran: Circular central planning

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Banning plastic straws and bags is just the start. In the background of Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s plan to ban toxic plastics by 2021 and move to zero plastic waste by 2030 is a big-theory concept known as “the circular economy.”

In announcing the bag ban, Wilkinson said the plan “embraces the transition towards a circular economy.”

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It’s all the rage at the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, within the EU, at sustainable development institutes and among business consultancies never shy about jumping on a lucrative bandwagon. The leading global consultancy flogging the circular economy (CE) is Accenture. In 2015 it launched the idea into the corporate and government policy stratosphere with Waste to Wealth: The Circular Economy Advantage.

Waste to Wealth is packed with hype and big claims — and a big number: “Our research indicates a $4.5-trillion reward for turning current waste into wealth by 2030. That’s not just waste in the traditional sense of rubbish, but the enormous underutilization of natural resources, products and assets. It’s about eliminating the very concept of ‘waste’ and recognizing everything has a value.”

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Under CE, there is no waste. Everything gets recycled, reused, re-processed, re-formed, re-manufactured. Everything old will be new again, creating jobs and growth and … is this a fantasy?

As David Clement of the Consumer Choice Center points out elsewhere on this page, purging plastic from the waste system will not be easy technically or economically. It will take a lot more than a ban on plastic bags to unlock $4.5 trillion in growth in less than a decade — especially since international versions of a circular economy and the Canadian version all point to a massive reordering of economic and corporate structures, with a controlling role played by national governments and international agencies.

Somewhat hampering the development of the circular economy is the possibility nobody really knows what they are talking about and that the costs and impact could be enormous.

A useful but dense academic review of CE by Swedish researchers published last week in a special issue of the Sustainable Production and Consumption journal notes there are 114 different CE definitions on record. Also uncertain is whether circular economy policies will actually achieve their claimed benefits, environmentally and economically.

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The Swedish paper hints at the trouble to come. ”Since a central tenet of the CE is a perceived reduction of environmental impacts, there is a need to fully understand the implications of the CE at different system levels. This includes the impacts of circular products and services, as well as potential macro effects, including e.g. rebound effects (increased efficiencies at the product level that lead to increased impact at the macro-level). “

To solve such major issues, we need to bring in the state planners, strategists and policy-makers to track, measure and tabulate the flow of waste through the economy and make sure it is recycled, reused and remanufactured.

But the Trudeau Liberals, at least in official documents if not in actual policy or practice, are all aboard. The plan is to get central control over plastics, with other segments of the economy to follow in a “transition to a circular economy,” as Wilkinson put it.

As part of its Plastics Science Agenda, Environment Canada says Ottawa’s CE plan does not stop with plastics. “Achieving zero plastic waste will have significant impacts for Canada’s economic sectors. Gathering data and developing approaches to quantify the economic impacts of a market transition to a circular economy for plastics is crucial to informing its adoption by Canadian industry, consumers, and public administrations.”

Ottawa’s CE agenda has broader objectives. “As part of its commitments to advancing circularity, the Government of Canada’s investments in science could further the principles of the circular economy in all projects or activities involving plastics materials, particularly by assuring that all materials are developed with comprehensive lifecycle analyses that fully consider the potential health and environmental risks of the products. It will also be important to gather lessons learned from the application of a circular economy lens to plastics in order to help inform its application to other materials and sectors.”

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While the CE concept is still in development and is filled with uncertainty and risks, Environment Minister Wilkinson is ready now. In a speech to the World Circular Economy Forum, the minister linked the COVID-19 crisis to three planetary crises: climate change, biodiversity and pollution. COVID-19, he said, provides “a window of opportunity, through stimulus packages, to prioritize circularity as part of a green recovery.” Government legislation — through financial reform, public procurement — “must accelerate reform,” he said.

Wilkinson claimed that by managing plastic waste into a circular system and “investing in innovative solutions,” 1.8 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions can be cut and create “approximately 42,000 jobs across the country.”

As is common with circular economy proponents, Wilkinson did not mention the costs of his plastic circle in lost jobs and growth.

Financial Post

? Email: tcorcoran@postmedia.com | Twitter: terencecorcoran