Circular Economy
Our current prosperity relies on a fully unsustainable linear model in which we take mineral resources from the ground, transform them into products, use them and throw them away as waste at the end of an often short lifetime, often even after a single use. This model is unsustainable, as it (1) implicitly considers mineral resources to be infinite on a finite planet, and (2) generates masses of polluting and bulky waste.
Circular Economy constitutes a paradigm shift. In a Circular Economy, resources are kept in use as long as possible, potentially indefinitely, and waste is avoided, by acting on the design of products, their manufacturing, use and end of life. Thereby, (1) resource use is reduced in absolute figures, and is decoupled from economic growth, and (2) waste is transformed into a resource.
Trinomics’ Circular Economy experts enthusiastically support this paradigm shift. As economists, engineers, specialists of industry and of waste management, they work on a wide variety of subjects related to sustainable production and consumption, green growth or waste, in isolation or in relation to climate policy or the Just Transition agenda. The types of studies we undertake reflect this diversity, with service contracts involving, among others, impact assessments and evaluations, development of Circular Economy action plans, stakeholder engagement, merging quantitative and qualitative tools. Our work advises leading public clients and international organisations, at national, European and international level. Trinomics’ Circular Economy experts work at the forefront of European and international policy-making for a materially sustainable future.
Sustainable production & consumption
- The consumption level of EU citizens is currently, for most categories of environmental impact, not sustainable. The underlying consumption and production system is at the root of the main environmental and social challenges faced by our societies.
- The impact of consumption includes that of production performed in the EU for use within it, but also that of imports. It is way above the safe planetary boundaries that maintain the stability of the climate and ecosystems that support our livelihoods: more than 8 times above the limit of the “safe operating space” for climate change, more than 10 times for particulate matter, 3.5 times for the use of fossil fuels and 1.8 times for other mineral resources. Beyond environmental sustainability, there are large and growing concerns regarding the social and human rights conditions under which the products that we consume are being produced along long, global value chains. This statement is valid for the European Union, but also for most of the developed world – and for a growing fraction of the global middle class in emerging or emerged countries.
- Attempts to de-couple economic well-being from material consumption over the last 20 years have essentially failed. Whereas some impacts of production activities performed in the EU have decreased (e.g. GHG emissions), this has been more than compensated by an increase in the impacts of imported goods, so that no meaningful progress was registered.
- If the current situation were to continue, then the stability of the “system Earth” would be threatened, potentially leading to irreversible changes deeply affecting the stability and prosperity of our societies.
- This persistent environmental and social unsustainability is due to the nature and the volume of the demand for final products and services, to the structure and processes in these global value chains, and to the deep systemic interactions between the two. There is thus a clear need to change our current consumption and production patterns, towards more environmental and social sustainability, acting on both sides of the market: demand and supply.
- At Trinomics, we have been actively engaged in studies for public authorities aiming at making the current consumption and production system more sustainable, by considering both the consumer and the producer. We studied the behaviour of consumers, in the “collaborative” economy, as well as the conditions under which they could engage in more “circular” consumption patterns, based on additional information on product durability or repairability. On the producers’ side, we worked on Industrial Symbiosis, where by- and co-products of one company are used as raw materials by another. More importantly, we have worked at system level, developing integrated strategies that enhance jointly the sustainability of the production and consumption systems: in the EU in the Impact Assessment of the Sustainable Product Initiative and in several African States. We also modelled and investigated the impacts of more circular consumption and production systems on some key variables, such as the labour market or the climate.
