Clear goals
In early 2021, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation published a set of policy goals that make several things clear. The circular economy is the way for the world to put the current wasteful way of doing things behind it. It is critical for finished product companies to use available, renewable, bio-based materials rather than let them go to waste. It is imperative for governments to put economic measures in place to help drive this forward.
Earlier this year, influential non-profit organisation the Ellen MacArthur Foundation published a new set of circular economy policy goals. In a paper with ‘Universal circular economy policy goals: enabling the transition to scale’ as its title, it explained what these goals mean and outlined its vision for bringing them to fruition.
The organisation says the aim of this initiative is to help governments and businesses in all parts of the world derive benefit from the circular economy, using it to help them address “key global challenges” including climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. It lists five universal circular economy policy goals: stimulate design for the circular economy; manage resources to preserve value; make the economics work; invest in innovation, infrastructure, and skills, and, finally, collaborate for system change. Many aspects of these overlap with efforts to ensure leather’s place in the discussion about the circular economy.
Good examples
There are clear examples of this in goals one and two. Deciding to incorporate into a product’s design materials that will last a long time is to make durability a part of its appeal. Designing longevity into a product is to design for the circular economy; this is what goal one urges. For goal two, managing resources to preserve value, it is hard to think of any material, of all those we can use to make consumer products, that preserves value as well as leather.
Goal one encourages governments to introduce policies that will stimulate designs that incorporate durability, repairability and reuse. The paper envisages policies that will levy penalties on companies for “planned or premature obsolescence”. It calls for fee-based extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes that will place financial liability on producers with regard to the collection and sorting of the goods they bring to market.
It also says that it would be a good thing if the labels on products said more clearly what the material content is and made references to that material’s durability, upgradeability, reuse, repair, and recycling options. It wants brands and manufacturers to highlight links between these characteristics and a product’s environmental footprint. It also wants to see “clear marketing and advertising standards” around this.
Connections that are implicit
The document makes no explicit reference to leather (sadly, we should all be used to this by now), but the connections to leather that are implicit in the text are important. People in the leather industry should have no hesitation in poring over this paper and quoting the Ellen MacArthur Foundation when making the case for leather in discussions with customers about circularity. Suppliers of leather are in a wonderful position to help those customers achieve the circularity they seek.
There may be no specific mention of leather, but the wider arena of fashion receives considerable attention in the document. It estimates that our tendency to leave large numbers of fashion items lying forgotten in wardrobes the world over leads to the loss of more than $500 billion in value per year. It insists that designs that have circularity at the forefront can help products remain at their highest value. For this, these products should be repairable, suitable for renting out and be made from materials that are ideal for reuse in new items at the end of one product’s useful life.
The foundation makes it crystal clear: getting the design of products right means using the right materials. Beyond fashion, new buildings should have materials that are easy to maintain and that stop waste. Refurbishment projects should also give preference to circular materials. Leather is perfect for this, and if the leather industry has to work hard and tirelessly to put that message across, it should take encouragement from the rewards it can reap.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation document says that public procurement exercises should make it clear that, if the authorities must spend their citizens’ money, they should spend it on materials that are in keeping with circular principles. This means those bidding for public procurement contracts and those awarding them should favour projects that use materials made from renewable resources, materials that are recyclable, repairable, long-lasting and that prevent waste. It adds that there should be tax incentives to reward companies that make and use those materials; this, it says, would encourage “regenerative production”.
Show us the money
Elsewhere, it talks about actively developing the market for secondary materials and for by-products. It says circular-economy business decisions must become the norm rather than the exception. Supporting this with taxation, subsidies, state aid and government funds is the focus of goal three. Without this support, it says there is a risk that the incentives and systems set up in goals one and two “can never truly scale and, at worst, may be unintentionally undermined”.
It describes the economy we have at the moment as “wasteful and polluting”. There are many sources of waste in this system, but hides from cattle slaughter and skins from sheep and goats ought not to be among them. Wasted hides and skins are the inevitable result of finished product brands using synthetic alternatives (that we do not need) instead of leather (made from raw materials that will accrue anyway and will go to waste unless we let tanners work their magic on them).
The cost of waste
The foundation has a lot to say about waste. It contends, for example, that at least 30 diseases have been associated with uncollected waste, and that between 400,000 and 1 million people die each year in low- and middle-income countries because of diseases related to mismanaged waste. One of its proposals is that landfilling organic waste, which includes hides and skins, ought to be banned. Instead, what communities and industries must do with organic waste is create biomaterials from as much of it as we can and turn the rest into compost.
It goes on to call for governments to “unblock current waste legislation”. If possible, it wants them to classify materials that we can recycle, reuse, repair, or remanufacture as resources rather than waste. It says this can bring important economic and environmental benefits because it will help make sure materials that are compatible with a circular economy stay in use.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s five universal circular economy policy goals
1 Stimulate design for the circular economy
2. Manage resources to preserve value
3. Make the economics work
4. Invest in innovation, infrastructure, and skills
5. Collaborate for system change
Credit: The Cambridge Satchel Company
