Dr Peter Wilson - Material Requirements 

Following on from last time we had already done some work on some of the 6 areas we identified such as legislation.

We discussed clean energy and some of the issues that surround this. There are a lot of political issues around getting resource efficiency and net zero energy.

There was also a lot of discussion around recycling.

Standards prohibiting new material selections. There was discussion around the complete headache that the aerospace sector faces when getting any new materials. We covered some of the rail industry and what it's struggling to do to adopt new materials.

We also talked about ineffective recycling or non-cost effective recycling. I think generally the consensus from this discussion was it wasn't that there was an issue with the recycling process in the main part, but it was more to do with the cost competitive nature.

There was a part on materials passports. We also covered that on Friday.

We did a little bit of a discussion around some of the key drivers. I think generally within the group, the feeling was that legislation needs to be driven forwards and we did try to come up with some of the kind of short and medium term actions. We believe that a kind of a review on the taxation of imports like a carbon tax is important, but also that that needs to eventually lead to balance. We were worried about the ability to export products if not.

 Right to repair was seen as very important.

There was a little discussion about rail standards and the recycling aspect. The point was that we need to have standardisation of waste, which needs to occur to enable design with these materials. We need material passports to come forward so that we can actually know what's going into a recycling plant as at the moment it really inhibits recycling from going forwards.

Dr Evi Petavratzi - Role of CE 

We've been doing this in a slightly different manner because we had a lot of in-depth discussions about our challenges and our enablers.

1) Producer responsibility for materials. What we identified as key is change in policy and regulation.

We need more focus on materials that we now dilute and we do not recover, such as our technology metals. We talked quite a bit about how at the moment, the way we recycle is not fit for purpose. We shred everything, so we lose a lot of useful materials when we downcycle. So, we need to think about dismantling, disassembly and separating different materials components. We need a different methodology.

2) Foresighting technology was another one of the priorities we looked at. We discussed leasing models and how that can be useful. We can take good examples from the aerospace sector because they are doing a lot of material circularity in this respect, that the automotive and other sectors are struggling to do. Working across sectors with aerospace might help us to develop useful methodologies for other transport systems.

We talked about material leasing, design, which goes back to the dismantling; Thinking about the longevity of design and of the components we use, and the necessity for global coordination systems and standards.

Prof Steve Evans - Social Trends 

We echoed some of the conversations that we've already just heard about the importance of having a really good recycling infrastructure to make things happen. So I think these these conversations will roll into each other and integrate in interesting ways. I just want to pick out a couple of examples we talked about.

Inadequate design of the infrastructure and the vehicles together which would increase vehicle sharing in particular and we thought that we should gather more international benchmarks, map what governments and academics are doing, what infrastructure projects are out there; Generate possible future scenarios from that. So, as an early activity, there is a need to actually understand the knowledge base that’s already out there.

We talked about starting to influence designs through proof of concepts that we hope in the medium term would then influence actual vehicle designs happening in volume.

On the somewhat softer side of design of integrated products and services, we were worried about the desirability of these products and we wanted to see very early 2020 proof of concept of ideas, segmented, with different customers who would go: “I would really want one of those, now that's absolutely fantastic, that hits my need perfectly.”

On disputes about the ownership of public space, I think this is an area that personally, I think is quite fascinating. I believe we need to start running experiments on different ways to build governance systems, So what are the rules of the system, you know? Do we allow people who live in the street to decide? What happens to that street even though other people travel through them. Let’s bill them?

Dr David Butler - Supply Chains 

We were looking at material supply chains for circular economy, focusing first of all on poor economics.

In particular, what are the incentives we need for industry to adapt towards circular economy?
In the short term, we need cost models to investigate what industry can produce itself, and we have to encourage industry amongst themselves to set standards.

Going forward, we may even need to ban exports of waste materials to force industry to do it locally, with economic incentives initially to start recovery and recycling, but going forward that should become less of an incentive with reduced need from the government.

We also felt medium term, we need to look at things like establishing infrastructure to promote a circular economy supply chain. Moving forward, we could see the UK in a position where we could look at international agreements as a whole circular economy standard like COP 26 or COP 40, maybe becoming an exporting nation in the area circular economy.

Looking at the big picture, we realize there's a lack of knowledge among stakeholders at the moment. It's going to require engaging a lot of different organizations, including individuals.

We thought about the idea of material passports for materials. But how about individual carbon passports for us as individuals, to incentivise us? To try to exploit education to reduce our dependency? We see the use of digital tools as well to promote that.

Zero waste in 2050. The word waste will disappear from British dictionaries in around 2050. Now, what this means is that in the future, we will get to the stage where everybody thinks and naturally behaves in a circular economy way.