Closed loop 'circular economics' - for fabrics and all products by climaterescue

Please find below the judging results for your proposal.

Finalist Evaluation

Judges'' comments

The idea of shifting the economics of from linear to circular is important and well articulated in the proposal.

The four conceptual steps outlined to reach a future state make sense, but the proposal would benefit from additional detail on context, particularly around how would this initiative start and who would drive it.

Semi-Finalist Evaluation

Judges'' ratings

•	Novelty:
•	Feasibility:
•	Impact:
•	Presentation:

Judges'' comments

Congratulations, you've been selected as a semi-finalist. To further develop your proposal for the finalist judging review, please see a few comments from the semi-finalist judges below.

Circular economics seems to be essentially industrial ecology or circular economics, ‘precycling’ is essentially design for environment, ‘waste risk’ seems to be extended producer responsibility, etc.

It could be interesting to explore how fiscal instruments (e.g. EPR for AP and FW) could help shift the take back system, but this would be a serious body of work not suited for this.

This proposal, requires government involvement which limits feasibility, and also requires a significant shift in the way manufactures view waste/environmental impact.

Please provide more info on how one would actually achieve this beyond bringing people together to discuss it.

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Climate Rescue

Jun 19, 2016
06:29

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Thanks for the interesting comments. Responses are included in the proposal and summarised below. Any further questions are very welcome in the comments section or by colab message.

Circular economics is the economic mechanism to get circular economy, which is the modern term for industrial ecology.
Precycling includes design for environment and other actions by other sections of society to ensure that current resources are not lost as wastes in ecosystems.
Waste-risk is an indicator for the likelihood of a product becoming future ecosystem waste.
Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a practice of product take-backs or recycling fees that can be generalised to a financial responsibility for the waste-risk of products.
Fiscal instruments have been proposed and used to a small extent internationally since a 1976 report to the EU Commission by Walter Stahel (who is on the expert council for the project offering this proposal)
Fiscal instruments and conventional EPR have limitations for circular economics, which this proposal overcomes.
This is a serious body of work but largely completed and published as research for NATO, so well suited to being discussed in climate colab and other platforms.
Feasibility is conventionally viewed as what seems achievable within existing economics and policy, which is never enough to solve big challenges such as climate change and resource sustainability.
Alternatively we could say it is unfeasible to try to solve big challenges with small initiatives that do not change the game.
Involvement of government is, I understand, an accepted part of business sustainability dialogues and a prerequisite for implementing new large-scale policy and economic incentives (as suggested by the climate colab proposal template).
A significant shift in the way manufacturers view waste/environmental impact is an outcome of this proposal, in particular the shift from generating and then 'managing' waste/emissions to precycling.
After bringing people together to discuss and propose this to government, you need an act of law, such as in Europe an EU Directive that would effectively replace weak prescriptive regulation with strong economic incentives.
Achieving this may not be so difficult, since most policy makers are currently unaware of the option being available, and it has the potential to resolve numerous major issues with a modest legislative effort.