Mr. Ken Webster, Director, International Society for Circular Economy, IS4CE 3rd OECD Roundtable on Circular Economy in Cities and Regions 18-19 May 2021 More information: https://www.oecd.org/regional/roundtable-circular-economy.htm

1. Source: Ken Webster
based on Cradle to
Cradle (McDonough and
Braungart)

2. Thus the first and foremost rule of the game that
needs to be changed is the shift from "ever lower
costs" to "ever higher generation of value" with what is
locally available.
Gunter Pauli
Efficiency:
‘doing things
right’ doing
more, faster
lower labour
energy and
materials cost
Effectiveness:
optimize whole
system; transform
return, maintain
system fit

3. Source: Goerner, Lietaer and Ulanowicz, 2009
Effective Systems as a Dynamic between
Efficiency and Resilience
Window of Viability
Sustainability
Diversity & Interconnectivity
Optimal balance
Real life ecosystems
Towards
stagnation
Towards
brittleness
Greater Efficiency Greater Resilience

4. Exchange surface in
relation to Structure
and Flow cores
FLOW
FLOW
EXCHANGE
EXCHANGE

5. Exchange function: enabling conditions 1
INFRASTRUCTURE
of energy, water, places, workspaces, tools and means of exchange
Temporary materials stores, community kitchens, hacker and fab labs, platform
cooperatives, local currencies, city banks, real sharing economy redesigned
planning zones, affordable housing and workspaces

6. Enabling conditions 2?
SPEND and TAX
Managing macro flows of expenditure and income
for circularity and exchange? NOT non productive
assets. Business needs customers, customers need
income
Taxshift away from people to non renewables and
non productive assets?
Job guarantee? Basic dividend? Infrastructure
spending

7. Source: Adapted from Kate Raworth / Exeter Centre for Circular Economy / Inaugural Lecture 2018
What kind of circular economy is emerging?
Centralised Circularity
Zero - waste manufacturing
Product-to-service
Recover own-brand goods
Top-down
In-house R&D
Material control
Proprietary technology
Distributive Circularity
Open standards
Open source
Open data
Network-based
Distributed R&D
Material ecosystem
Knowledge commons
REGENERATE
biological
materials
TAKE
MAKE
USE
RESTORE
technical
materials
LOSE
Notions of effective
rather than efficient
systems answer ‘both’ -
through iteration of
nested systems within
enabling conditions