CIRCULAR ECONOMY
CIRCULAR ECONOMY SOLUTIONS We are at the dawn of a new era for business Bridget Wijnberg and Catherine Wijnberg of entrepreneurial support programme provider Fetola describe the beginnings of the circular epoch. Fetola’s Circular Economy Accelerator is keeping track of companies’ progress toward circularity, and achieving remarkable results. Cleaning 600 000 kilolitres of used car oil can save 500-billion litres of water. Credit: Jimmy Nilsson Masth on Unsplash Early adopters might appear as today’s revolutionaries, but the onboarding of circular business models will rapidly become an economic imperative and a societal obligation. Given the number of extreme weather events in 2022, few can dispute the reality that climate change is here. The KwaZulu-Natal floods of April 2022 were a devastating example of that, initiating a state of disaster with over 450 lives lost and an estimated cost of R25-billion. Globally, the price tag of climate-related disasters in 2022 alone was R500-billion. While the cost of material damage is easy to quantify, how does one assess the cost in human misery and irreparable damage to future generations? As United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced with his opening statement at the Cop27 UN climate summit: “We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing… We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” Yet despite these loud warning signs, we clearly have an action deficit problem. It’s COP number 27 and global leaders have gathered 27 times to discuss this same issue. Tipping points are being passed again and again, country pledges are being tabled and ignored. If the realities of 2022 – with widespread floods also occurring in Pakistan and Nigeria, 16 000 deaths from heatwaves in Europe and food insecurity from drought in the Horn of Africa are our warning signs, we no longer 32 | www.opportunityonline.co.za
CIRCULAR ECONOMY SOLUTIONS have the privilege of time to wait for these global platforms to reach meaningful mutual agreements on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for a low-carbon future. The baton urgently needs to be taken into the hands of the wider grassroots community. South African warming South Africa is recorded as the 30th-driest country in the world, and it is warming at twice the global average. Climate change is creating huge disruption and uncertainty to the water cycle, which means that we cannot continue with the same disregard for water resources through over-extraction and pollution. Water stress will displace up to 700-million people in Africa by 2030, and with South Africa the most populated nation south of the equator, how will the inevitable migration trends impact the country? Water is required at all stages of food production with agriculture accounting for 70% of the water used throughout the world as well as a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities. Alongside this, food productivity is being significantly impacted by climate change and has already decreased by 21%. Available solutions The stage is set for radical transformation. We have shifted from a need to simply try to mitigate the problem by reducing our GHG emissions to a need for us also to develop ways to survive the effects of it, through climate adaptation. This is now both an economic and a social imperative. Fortunately, there are solutions at hand and the prospects of transitioning to a new, circular economy that designs out waste is a real opportunity. It is one that also addresses the other critical societal factors in the South African landscape, namely unemployment and poverty, both of which cannot be ignored. A telling study on the personal economic situation of individuals reported that 87% describe their situation as stretched. Yet, despite this backdrop we are an extremely wasteful society, and roughly 122-million tons of waste are produced by South Africans each year. Of this, an estimated 10% is recycled or recovered for other uses, with 90% being thrown away. This waste is an important part of the value chain yet there remains the mentality that waste is both worthless and inevitable. However, by changing this to a narrative where waste has value, it opens the potential to build a virtuous cycle of use and reuse. The circularity model achieves this by rethinking existing models which create waste to incorporate concepts such as rental, repair and life extension which make clear business and environmental sense. Collaboration across the value chain is also a key component in future solutions and the Southern Basadi Multipurpose Co-operative led by Delores Mackenzie is one such company which has created a partnership with Netcare Adcock Ingrams to take used IV bags, an item previously considered worthless, and turn them into durable, waterproof and incredibly cost-effective school shoes. Southern Basadi Multipurpose Co-operative makes school shoes out of IV drip bags. Credit: Fetola Once outgrown these again can be re-crumbed and re-made into new shoes in an endless circle, meaning that the reclaimed plastic never has to end up in landfill. While farming is a huge contributor to the climate change challenge there are immediate solutions that can be adopted. Synthetic nitrogen-based fertilisers, which are a major source of GHG emissions (their use having increased 800% in the last six decades), can be replaced by climate-friendly organic fertilisers that replenish the land, capture carbon in the soil and limit methane emissions. One collaborative effort between municipalities who were battling with a toxic mountain of sewage sludge and a creative agripreneur who saw value in this waste is doing just that. This innovative circular business, Agriman, currently processes a small portion of the 700 000 tons of sewage sludge that goes to SA landfills each year. The company aims to expand and significantly scale the benefits of regenerative agriculture, reducing waste to landfill and increasing employment where it is needed most. Similarly, Dilex, which initially received short shrift from oil refineries concerned that its model would affect their profit, is now a business cleaning 600 000 kilolitres of used car oil, that saves 500-billion litres of water annually from contamination. This South African company has successfully shifted a typically cradle-to-grave (take, make, waste) business model into a cradleto-cradle model where the oil is as an eternal resource and considerate of future generations. The cleaned oil is cheaper than crude and can be repurposed again and again, resulting in both cost savings and a lower environmental impact. The time has long passed for simply accepting wasteful, polluting business models. Circularity can be incorporated either by tweaking elements of the production chain, or full immersion into a low-carbon, high-sustainability, circular model, often resulting in improved profitability alongside environmental and www.opportunityonline.co.za | 33
