Economic forum. The topic is from waste to wealth. In the face of resource constraint how can economies make the transition from linear to circular growth. The beauty of the World Economic forum is as obscure as a question like that may sound to us. It is critical, and we have the people around us who have answers. Starting from your least, jean francoir von boxmir, chaum and c. E. O. Of heineken. Neil gurr shen fell, director at the center for bits and atoms at mit. Francoir halten is the president of royal phillips, a dutch company. Ellen mckarthar, founder of Ellen Mcarthur foundation, she sailed around the world in 2005, and became the fastest person to sir calm nav knat the globe back then. Bill mcdonough a consulting professor of civil and Environment Engineering at stam poured ford, an architect by training. Ellen, i take it you have a more vast and intimate nonetheless of globe after circumnavigating the world. When i hear and talk about the environment and want to promote things that are about good stewardship i am accustomed to the word sustainable and heard people use regenerative, restorative and sclag. We like circular economy. We feel its a different economic model. You mentioned from linear to circular. We kuptly take something out the currently take something out of the ground, making is out of it and ploe it away. We have 3 billion consumers coming on line, is century of commodity prices. What is the option . What we are doing is being more efficient with the linear economy. We are using less, being careful with the resources but well run out at some stage, thats a huge issue. A circular economy looks from the outset, designing systems and products to recover materials. Its a Business Innovation which, through the Business Model innovation, allows them to go back so the materials can be recovered creating an economy that can last into the long term. Jean francoir, when you have a panel with a beer maker, its good to get into the good books early. The state of gulf is to recouple growth is to recouple Economic Resources and consumes. If you grow, you have to suck up resource, you use more resources. I think of one example where that hasnt been the case. I look at oil in the United States. The United States has been a disproportionate user of oil. As it grows, they are consuming less oil. Is that the starting point, that we can decouple consumption from resources. I think you can do, and we are doing it for many, many years already. That needs technology. As it progresses, it uses less and less resources. So Energy Efficiency that you raised, if i look forward, well continue to do that in industrial processes using energy. Im fairly optimistic that you will need energy and continue to find new sources and you will start to work with alternative sources of energy which are renewable. Its a journey. As the horizon progresses, you have more and more opportunities, and to your point about the circular economy, its just that everybody in its own process looks at what is waste, and can you reuse that waste in a valuable way in the process. Draw the line for me between why you do some of those things because you should, because its Good Business and people will protest, versus where it becomes Cost Effective, what do you do where you make money off that. Its a good question. It started by activists pushing on us. Its been a discovery of how you integrate it in your Business Model. If you price resources, and most are priced in this world, you find out quickly that you can make money out of it. I would argue to say that perhaps water is one of the least wellpriced resources that we have in the world. Reversing to that, the rise of the commodities and materials, because the world is growing. And thats good news. It pushes us to all the time put it more and more into the economic mould. I would say that the whole sustainability agenda is a business gander. Let me ask the other major ceo. Do you find the regenerative restorative stanable approaches that your stanable approaches that your company uses are more or less Cost Effective today. Where do you fall on the paradigm . We see the circular economy as a way to make a giant step forward. It will make us more profitable, helping us get more growth, hep us design new Business Models. Id like to give you an example. We are a world leader in led lighting. It saves you 6070 on the electricity bill. You would assume everyone lines up to buy it. Municipalities in europe are cash strapped and spend a lot of budget on electricity. You assume they line up to buy it. However, led lighting is a little more expensive from an initial procurative point of view. We have a mismatch. They need to design a new Business Model where we sell light as a service. We continue to open the product. And we sell the benefit. Since we know that we are selling the benefit we can design the product for a longer lifetime. You are talking about representing out a light bulb. Its a paper lux Business Model. We give the opportunity to the municipalities to pay us as they go from the energy savings. Now we have a new Business Model, where we open the product, we take back the old product at its end of life cycle. Which is good, because no one recycles a light bulb. Exactly and we recuperate the materials and the municipality pays for the benefit of the light. Thats the example of a circular Business Model, helping to generate growth in an economy that is down. Its a win win. More growth. Its interesting how much of a light bulb can you recoup when its given back, how much can you recycle . We can recycle many parts. The ewaste is enormous in this world. Theres more cold coming out of ewaste than out of the mines built. Lets talk about the infrastructure that is needed to create this circular economy, and how much of that is underway. Im asking you about two things physical infrastructure, you are an architect by training, you know a lot about physical infrastructure, and the production infrastructure. Whats the infrastructure needed to meet the investigation that ellen so elequipmently made out for us. I think the infrastructure needs to be seen on a broad basis that the whole world is part of this. We grew up for thousands of years thinking the world was to big to effect. Really the whole world is a place that we can engage as the infrastructure. When we talk about sustainability. I dont use the word sustainable that often, even though i wrote principals for design sustainability and cradle to cradle, about this issue. Its about design, and human intention. If our intention as a dominant species is to destroy the planet, we are doing great. If thats not our intention, what is the plan . If our de facto plan is the plan because we dont have one. This is a fascinating train of thought. The issue is what you said. If our intption is to destroy the intention is to destroy the planet, we are doing a great job. In the United States theres a large part of the population who tells you that is not correct. Yes. Well, we can look at most Living Systems in decline. We have fundamental sleeps that is of scenes that is of coninspector. Climate issues concern. Climate issues are debated. When nuclear active material washes on shore from japan, and the air in tokyo is awkward because of things going on in china, et cetera, et cetera, they all connect. People start to realise, you know, is life Getting Better . Perhaps there are other ways to think about this. The thing that concerns me about the argument of people saying everything is fine, sustainability sound like maintained. If i asked you about your relationship to your wife and you said sustainable doubt date. My wifes in the awed yps, let not awed yps, lets not take it further. I would say im sorry. This is not maintenance. I dont know that i would get further saying it similar. What im getting out, i think theres a great joy in the hope of innovation and the human experience. The people that worry about these things create the technologies that will give people the hope not to worry about it because the pool that care are doing it people that care are dipping it for them saying its not a problem, arent we clever. Ali neil is on a panel of a couple of crazy scientists. Hes the really crazy scientist. When you walk around the worlds i want to bring neil in. Hes on a panel of a couple of crazy scientists, and hes the craziest. When you walk around the Economic Forum you see a fab lab, and its the hot thing, thinky places. They are becoming so common that theyll be at weddings and barr mitts farce. In this case it is to do with digital printing, 3d printing. Is it the next big thing . What has it got to contribute to this discussion. 3d printing is a strange thing in the meed ca that has media that has nothing to do with the next thing. Let me tell you what comes after it. Trash is an analogue concept. Digitisation. Analogue guy i have no idea what you are talking about, pursue that. Phones were analogue. The calls got worse with distance. Digital came in, helping to you correct errors. The reason 3d permitting is a distraction. The design is dimming tam. Its one of digital. It is one of 20 ways it smoosh stuff, to cut and deposit. But theres no information. When i say trash is analogue. You put it in a landfill, but it doesnt contain information on what to do with it. If you digitize fabrication, you cap. The model of the circular economy is a forest. When you die in a forest you get disassembled and reborn. The way it works, you are built out of molecular lago, amino acids are like lego, you can join them, take it apart and build something new. The resolution is dimming tieing the materials. Digitising the materialsful we are learning to put code into the construction of materials. Ha it means is you can disassemble technological materials and reassemble them. So trash is analogue means you smoosh stuff around. People on the panel are doing great to resmoosh it around. The real science and Research Behind the fab lab is dim tieing fabry ration to code the construction of materials, so rather than recycle you unbuild and reasell ble. I follow that and agree with it, maybe i can give a practical example. Please. We heard we need to design products for the circular economy. Waste is valuable. Products are made out of individual materials. All the materials are valuable. So think of a product as a whole list of xants and as a knk components and as a components and as a passport, and we will track where they go. Well extract the materials from those products because we know that they are there, we know that they are valuable. We get the cold out and all the other pressure metals in the rare earth and bring them back into the main stream process or product engines. In turn, if i can amplify that. This makes me look smart, because i have no idea whats going on. Where the technology road block is going on, theres chips, semiconductors and boards. What you can do today is fabulous is to unsolder it, separate the elements. Where the ramp is going in this roadmap that is not ready but is coming, and come on and well show you, we are making for ewaste for electronics microelectronics, think of lego. So a lego brick, you dont need a ruler to place it, blocks have geometry. They correct rors, and you dont put lego in the trash you take them apart. The had been is the bricks contain information. For ewaste, the research is making a brick that is a conductor, a brick that is a semiconductor and one that is an ipp sulators, and they are tiny. Then we are making asem builders that assemble the microelectronic leg j. You upsolder and separate the elements. The step after that is you pull apart the conductor brick from the ipp sulator from the semiconductor brick and reassemble them. This is automated. Its automated. Its not a forecast. Come visit ill show you the early version, thats where we are heading. We will not get there fast enough to transform the economy, but it is essential to take the existing supply change and close it. But as clickly as possible the quickly as possible the job is to put more information in the materials so they tell you to disassemble them. You wrote a great article in foreign affairs, it says glowing articles of 3d printers read like stories in the 1950s claiming that microwaves are the future of cooking. They are convenient but dont replace the rest of the kitchen. You obviously have not been in my kitchen where the microwave does 90 of the heavy lifting and the toaster moving in for support. You became the only recipient for the president ial award for sustainable develop. I gs they didnt know about sclar. The 1999 time named you as a hero. A project you are involved in is you have taken the symbol of oldfashioned american manufacturing, the river rouge plant in michigan, the old ford plant and were asked to do something with this. It was 12 years ago a mess. Tell us what a mess it was, what you were asked to do and what you have done. In 1999. Billford asked me to take on the river rouge, it was his greatgrandfathers center, the Industrial Revolution in the United States. Vertically integrated manufacturing from the beginning of wood, limestone, coal, iron ore, vertically integrated from start to finish. And steel meals, paint shops and we went to the site. It was very compromised, as we could say, with concerned metals and things like that. We were not allowed to test the soil. If we did, it started crazy soil issues, things leek that. We decided to clean it up using plants. As we took the Industrial Facilities plant, and underway, and with the same budget and schedule had to open up, we built the Worlds Largest green ruf. Instead of having plants and 4km of concrete pipes and 70 workers standing around, we used Natural Systems and created habitats. The budget was interesting. In presenting it to the board for approval, this is a fiduciary board worried about the money. They said whats your Business Case . Turned out using Natural Systems using Chemical Treatment plants saved 35 million. Capital expend tur. 35 million in savings is the equivalent with the 4 margin out of chicago of an order for 900 million worth of cars. For those that have not seen the facility, one could argue this was the birth for america. It was a fully integrated site where they produced everything. To change that into a mod rn facility is a symbolic thing negotiation to being a great business Al Jazeera America presents a self portrait of generation now. So many of my friends is pregnant. I feel so utterly alone. You need to get your life together im gonna do whatever needs to be done. Ya boy is lookin out to becoming a millionaire. An intimate look at what our kids are facing in school and beyond 15 stories, 1 incredible journey in this envelope is my life right now. Edge of eighteen coming september only on Al Jazeera America israels invasion of gaza continues tonight. We have been hearing a lot of tank shelling coming from where we are, here. Every single one of these buildings shook violently. For continuing coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, stay with Al Jazeera America, your global news leader. Welcome back, you are watching al jazeera, this is the World Economic forum in dabos, where we are having a conversation about the sclar economy. Can you give me examples of stage two of this, stage one was what you both said you did because you were trying to save energy and not use toxic stuff. Now you are in statement two, where you stage 2, where you make money off the waste or using fuel resources. Tell me what you do at hiny ken. It starts with a design, how you manufacture, brew, bottle. Theres a lot of efforts in the design of the industrial processes, so as to reduce the amount of energy you consume, the amount of water you constum. This is a very important part. The second part is you have to sell it in a packaged way. You put it in a bottle. You can make a solid safe bottle with 30 less weight. When you know that glass is sand, and 70 is the cost of the energy of melting the sand down, if you reduce the amount of sand and energy, its a huge deal, a huge deal for the resources at large for the planet. And for ourselves, because we have some economies of scale. The same goes with the amount of carton, the thickness, how you glue it. Theres so many details that in the design you make a better product using less resources. Then you comb the waste. How do you recuperate the waste. That is a thing, a combined frt. You cant do it alone, a lot of time recycling waste is an energy the collective approach you have to do within an industry, other industry is to recycle the waft. Aluminium has a loft of value. Glass is 99 repsychable. Another example people dont realise. When you brew beer, you expend grain. You sell that to farmers. For the cattle. The yeast is sold to the farm industry, and used in the cosmetic industry. Theres a lot of things that are recycled. Each washable labels are recycled. I asked jean fransoir why theres two dutch c. E. O. S here. Is there something in the Regulatory Environment or sult kurl environment that supports the two of you. I know its no plan that the two of you are here, but you did say there was something. Yes the explanation is essentially cultural. When you have a obvious a quarter of the territory of the Country Living below the sea level, and for a long, long time, it has created between the population and nature a special bond. And that if you dont care about your environment, the environment is going to destroy you. When it comes to use of resources, sustainability and the whole lot, i think people get it. And the cos get it, but the people on the workshop get it also