Resources - Asia's expect-ations must be reigned in

WE KNOW all about the black economy — sometimes known as the shadow or underground economy. Then, there is the growing digital economy. And now, the circular economy — something else altogether.
   The circular economy involves changing the very basis of manufacturing, as we know it, to recycle material with the end aim of slowing likely depletion of natural resources in a world of growing consumerism.
   In time — and with the right level of Government and society acceptance — the circular economy could change the way we consume, the way we live and the way goods are made.
   In essence, the world has to accept “more from less”.

ALEX WONHAS, Executive Director of the CSIRO’s Energy and Resources Unit, points to six megatrends for the 21st century – and why the world must move toward a circular economy.
Foremost of his megatrends, he told the World Resource Forum Asia-Pacific, held in Sydney in June, is the expectations of Asia’s middle classes in wanting to enjoy the same standards of living as these of the developed world. These expectations, he says, will need to be reigned in.
The issue confronting humanity is how to sustain the level of growth needed to provide a certain standard of living with fewer resources. Growth, Wonhas says, has to be limited, and the world will run into significant challenges in coming years.
Indeed, in Australia alone, consumption growth has outstripped growth of both the population and the economy. Between 1995/96 and 2012/13, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia’s population grew by 25 per cent and the economy by 65 per cent — but consumption grew by 154 per cent.
Traditionally, the rate of growth in consumption has followed that of economic growth, but Australia’s experience (reflecting a global trend) has decoupled from economic growth.Wonhas says China alone will build three cities larger than Sydney every year until 2030 to house rural Chinese migrating to urban areas. The resources required are absolutely immense, costing many trillions of dollars.
This is a fact not lost on China, according to Janet Salem, Programme Officer at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). She says it was at a workshop in China last year that UNEP decided to develop a set of indicators to help countries benchmark against each other on natural resource consumption.
The forum brought together a range of
experts, including many from Japan who spoke of their respective projects to promote recycling.
Japan is a resource poor country, and, as one speaker said, is now a gold producer — through recycling. Japan recovers the precious metal — along with other precious materials like rare earths — from computers and mobile phones.
“We don’t have any gold reserves, but Japan has a lot of gold — it is in the computers,” says Masamichi Yoshimura, a Professor at Toyota Technological Institute, Japan. Yoshimura told the forum, held at the University of Technology, Sydney: “We are recovering the gold and we are now very happy because we don’t have to import gold from overseas. We have gold inside our (computer and cellphone) systems.”
(Kohmei Harada, a Managing Director at the National Institute of Materials Science, told the New York Times in an interview back in 2010 that about 6,800 tons of gold, equivalent to about 16 per cent of total reserves in the world’s gold mines, lies in used electronics in Japan.)
Japan leads the world in many areas of research and innovation — actively supported by corporate Japan and the Japanese Government. Japanese researchers attending the forum spoke of technologies developed to identify sources of materials and to retrieve virtually all of that material.
In car parts, for example, it is now possible to reclaim 99 per cent of the natural resources — pig iron, steel and so on — that go into making a car. The research  work is groundbreaking in terms of innovation, and has led to the creation of new man-made materials, like graphite (traditionally a mined mineral) and a widening
array of uses for nano carbons.
The new advanced materials can also
be used in other fields. Yoshimura offers the
example of producing artificial hip joints.  This is especially helpful in Japan, which is leading the world in ageing. In about 15 years, Yoshimura says Japan will have many more elderly women requiring hip replacements.
Moving away from the highly technical, and at a grass roots level, was US speaker Richard Anthony, from California’s Zero Waste International Alliance, where the principle is “no burn, no bury, no toxic” when it comes to waste management. In California today, he says, 99 per cent of waste is recovered. He jokingly told ATI that “today’s tuna can is tomorrow’s
Toyota”. California exports all of its recycled plastics, metals and glass for reuse in Asia, he says. Anthony also spoke of Ricoh’s recycling programme, which by 2011 had achieved 100 per cent waste
recovery — ending the need to dispose of old products in landfills.
Several Australian companies — ranging from mining houses to manufacturers — spoke of their sustainability programmes. One in particular was the Australian-listed building material manufacturer, Brickworks Ltd, which is now using methane gas piped from landfill for to fire all but one of its kilns (in Tasmania).
Steven Mouzakis, Brickworks National Energy & Sustainability Manager, told a forum session that it all started when the company noticed that the flare from a landfill next to its kilns was going to waste.
“We saw that there could be some kind of industrial symbiosis with Veolia, which was handling four million tonnes of waste that goes to land fill,” says Mouzakis.
Brickworks decided it would make good commercial sense to harness that gas for its kilns, which now have two systems — one to burn methane gas piped from landfill and
another for natural gas (when needed).
The growing cost of gas has prompted Brickworks to draw on and expand its existing
research and development capability to find
alternative energy sources and energy efficiency methods. Resulting product and process
innovations have allowed Brickworks to reduce its energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30 per cent in the last 10 years.
But it does not stop there. Brickworks also bought reusable waste from Veolia, from which it has developed new lightweight bricks.
Veolia is one company that has moved strongly into the circular economy.  
McKinsey (see following report) describes how Veolia’s Magpie materials sorting systems use infrared and laser technologies to sort plastics quickly. At its facility in Rainham in the UK, Veolia can separate nine grades of plastics and process 50,000 metric tonnes of them a year.
Mouzakis says Brickworks’ success with its sustainability programme in part reflects the industry in which it works.
Australia’s property/construction industry is at the leading edge when it comes to sustainability credentials.
Australian property companies have very high success rates in reusing materials from demolition of old buildings. Property and infrastructure major, Lend Lease, cited by McKinsey in its report, uses scrap wood chips from timber mills to create cross-laminated timber panels for construction.
Forum co-chair and Research Director at the Institute for a Sustainable Future (ISF), Associate Professor Damien Giurco, says that if the world can move to a circular economy – an economy where we “take, make and recreate” rather than “take-make-dispose”, it will open a door to new markets. In a circular economy, Giurco says, there could be greater resource productivity, innovation using “disruptive” technologies and new forms of collaboration, production and consumption.
Guirco launched an action plan for the circular economy in Australia during the forum, saying: “We believe Australian industry can thrive if it gets behind these new models for generating wealth — models which are already
being embraced internationally.”