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Episode 18 - COPcast Day 4 · Unfolding: a circular economy podcast

• speaker-0: okay, so what day we're on day three. I'm on day three. Are you on day two? Am I on day four Tuesday, speaker-1: I don't know what day we're on. I'm on day two. You must have been day four. speaker-0: Wednesday, Thursday. Okay. Right, here we go. Thursday. speaker-1: I it. speaker-0: So Thursday, so what day is it today? City's Day, isn't it? But it's also from our perspective, it was the launch of the Istanbul platform, the launch of the Zero waste districts and the launch of the soft launch again I suppose of the report by Shape Foundation around speaker-1: champion, zero waste high level champion. It's really going to frame the action. speaker-0: Yeah, 'cause there were some some metrics that Joe presented about the contribution that circular economy, waste management and upstream activities can can take we'll we'll we'll we're gonna try and get a Joe to talk about that. We're gonna try and get Joe on the the pod and see if we can get him to d delve into a bit more into it. But what do you what do you guys so we were all at the launch, right? So what do you what do you kinda take from the speaker-1: was about the Istanbul platform, it? Which was the bigger picture, which was this thing to try and help people coordinate and take action on waste. We also had, as you say, Joe Papaneski from UNOMIA presenting some modelling he'd done to look at the potential. And that was from upstream interventions to avoid waste and to use things less and to reduce, effectively reduce consumption. speaker-0: Was that the Zero Waste Cities bit? speaker-1: That was the size of the prize. And then we've gone on to talking about the zero waste districts, were these sort of districts of cities where there would be action focused on individuals who are running, know, Hosey Manuel said you'd be able to put a name to each thing that was going on because it would be a shop or would be a library. speaker-0: So it was very it seemed to me to be very neighbourhoody in the sense that they were looking at sub sub areas of cities, not just cities. and they they I think there were twenty of the first cohort and all of them are in what we would call the global center. speaker-1: You had Asia, you? You had some in Latin America, some in Africa. speaker-0: Yeah, that's right, yeah. So that was really inspiring stuff. I think for me I'd like to know. I just now want to know so much more. So how how how do you get involved? How is is there money? And there was talk about finance speaker-1: funded the GCS and the meantime hub were funding the Global finance, global climate finance. think that was quite interesting because this is climate finance now going into repair, reuse, refillables, upstream action. I'm not saying no one's done that before, but that scale will never be enough possibly. speaker-0: And who was so who just mind us who was providing the finance? It was the speaker-1: global climate finance, GCF. speaker-0: And then global methane. speaker-1: So I think that was really encouraging. But I also think what's becoming clear is there's a whole ecosystem of initiatives. being established through the kind of action agenda and that was two this morning, think there's some others to come. So they're all addressing different parts of that. This was a report that Joe... speaker-0: talked about. So just just so for for people listening in that so you have the action agenda has six axes speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: and those axes have activation projects I think and that so there's something like a hundred and twenty seven there's thirty subsets of the axes and then a ho and and there's various projects associated with those 30. So there's lots going on and it feels I guess there's a danger that could be uncoordinated and that the sum of the whole does not kind of you know as a whole doesn't really punch above its way. And I think that's what Jose and the team are trying to kind of solve with the Istanbul flag speaker-1: So yeah, Istanbul platform I think is the foundation for that. To coordinate all, not just initiatives on the ground, but to try and understand how all of these other wider initiatives come together. speaker-0: So if as a you know as a former kind of city's CEO person I would be like and I am actually how do I get involved in this? What how d what's the route through? I'm really keen to you know project my city project. I would like to get some finance or I'd like to get some help or I'd like to partner with another city. you know there's lots of it loads of questions. I'd be really excited about this. So if you are out there, you know, I'm talking to friends and colleagues, former friends of colleagues, if you're out there you should be kind of really getting involved now and this time Finding out from the Istanbul. speaker-1: and by all accounts there would be support signposted to you. This was the climate action agenda which is like a parallel track to the country negotiations of more voluntary measures that can start now. mean we see everywhere the mantra is what you see on all these things, dialogue, consensus, action and there's loads of dialogue, there's some consensus and very little action. That's what's got to change and the idea of this is perhaps you can jump straight action and not have to negotiate everything first and get on with things and I like that. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, I agree. speaker-1: Definitely, I definitely got that vibe this morning. I think there was a slide from something again saying that this is the stuff that we could just get on with. Not quite saying we don't need a cop for it, the cop will help and contribute to that. We can really get on with it. The districts were described as like demonstration programmes, not trying to gradually sign up the whole world to do it, but to show what's possible. speaker-0: Yeah, but they want a hundred don't they? So they want to get by over the next five years. Yeah. They want those to be a hundred demonstrators. So, you know, I would I would be thinking I I want to be one of those. I wanna be involved in this. This is exciting stuff. And we we're so we're gonna have a few we're gonna go cut to a few interes. We've got Jean Billon from Circulaire in Paris who's you know, talking about his role as a transition broker. We're gonna speak to so just, you know, following on from the speaker-1: Well John Mark is from the Shape Foundation. speaker-0: And who are they and what do they do? Yeah. speaker-1: Well he's going to explain a bit more about that. So they're developing another initiative which will be part of that wider ecosystem to support wider action on upstream action, upstream activity. to hit some of those carbon numbers that are in the report. Because that's the point. It's not going to be one single initiative that's going to do all this. There's to be a number of things across the piece. I was speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: going say that there's a number of things going on. There's the zero-ice districts. But there are also these plans to accelerate solutions, which are these sort of voluntary measures. speaker-0: That's what I would like splendid. speaker-1: John Mark will talk to you about one of those that he has proposed, or the Shared Foundation has proposed and has been accepted on reuse and repair and the contribution that can be speaker-0: So he talks about that and then finally we're going to well we've got two more interviews actually. We've got Miranda from EMF who will kind of give a her view. She's she's a quite a seasoned cop attender, so she knows a lot more about the process. She will talk about this thing called the is it the cover agreement? The the cover The cover dis yeah. We should ask there's a guy sitting there who's one of the negotiators, we should ask him. But yeah, shit. Well, Miranda will tell us all about it and how the action agenda could bleed through into the into the whatever's agreed at the end of COP. There's a target that everyone kind of outside of COP probably starting to be aware of now called 35 by 35, which refers to electrification. But there are some other targets around circular economy, And we're and we're thinking maybe there's it's a starting point for you know COP thirty two discussions. Yeah. And then finally we're going to see if we can get out tonight a interview that Ian and I did with Catherine David from CA from Rap. We did that. In two parts. One part was in the G B Pavilion, then we got kicked out of the meeting room by the people who actually booked it and we final did the final part of the interview in the Zero Waste Zero Waste Pavilion. Okay. Brilliant. Alright, so more tomorrow. speaker-1: John Mark Simon is the Chief Exec of Shape and former Chief Exec Director of Zero Waste Europe, who I've known for a long time. If you could just explain a little bit about your initiative called Prism and how it fits into the COP technosis. speaker-0: So PRISM is an acronym that stands for prevention, reuse, inclusion, system change and material stewardship. And it's a plan to accelerate solutions. It's one of these weird mechanisms of the of the UN process. So hold on, that's that's a that's what we call a PAS or PAS. It's a plan to accelerate solutions. It's a PASS. Yeah. another acronym. and the goal is actually to accelerate solutions. Actually it's a voluntary commitment from countries to implement solutions. And this Prism what we're doing is focusing on accelerating solutions on upstream circularity. That means working with countries, civil society, industry, accelerating repair, reuse, eco-design, etc. So let's just be clear. So this is about upstream. Upstream. Not downstream. Not downstream. From recycling down, anything that is waste that's dealt with in other passes. So what so what is Prism exactly then? So Prism is it's a process. That starts now and will go until the end of 2028. This process is supposed to deliver an infrastructure to actually scale up upstream circularity. How we're planning to do that is one by providing the evidence. That's this report that we're launching. We have pre-launch today and official launches Monday. That should set the baseline. Second, we want to build the methodology because. if we cannot measure actually the avoided emissions from all of this, it's going to be difficult to actually have climate goals and all of this. So in two years we'd like to have a methodology that allows us to aggregate potential avoided emissions from reuse operations, repair, from across different sectors, so that actually that can be done. included in the second stock take which is kind of at the amendment of the Paris Treaty that is of the of yeah of the Paris Climate Treaty that is expected for two years from now. And we plan to do that by with like creating collaboration among civil society, businesses, and governments. That's a role of the PASS. The PASS is actually it's a plan to accelerate solutions, but in order to accelerate solutions we need to have civil society, reuse repair industry, and the public authority working together and a methodology to put this in place. So that's what we wanted to deliver in two years. So how do how do you Zah you're gonna ask a microphone? I know that's the beauty of sharing a mic isn't it? How do you how do you participate? You know how do you get involved? How does a country or a government or a or a business get involved in this? so we we're launching this on Monday. So for the moment this is not yet open. It's going to be open on Monday. We we have coordinators for Civil society. So that's Gaia is going to be coordinating the civil society. So if NGOs should get in touch with the coordinator of the Civil Society Park. We're going to create some sort of a global reuse repair business federation. There's going to be common house, another partner trying to like bring that together. and with countries, we're still talking to countries to see actually how to coordinate with all this. But the idea here is once this is working, then there's other things that you mentioned. That's the zero-waste districts. going on then it's an Istanbul platform. So this is only one piece of this ecosystem and I think everything together makes sense to actually to advance the speaker-1: So that's yeah, I I probably shouldn't have said that. That was that was very clear in there that this is there's an ecosystem that's being developed and there's bits of it that are being so dreadful revealed as we go kind of feels like as we go through the COP. but they're all kind of interlinked. That that was that was very clear. so I guess I'm just interested in in the initiative. So yeah, it's to come up with a kind of common methodology how to measure the impact of reuse in terms of climate and then that can be used to really ratify what's actually happening in this space. But ultimately, I guess maybe I'm jumping ahead of myself, but is there an opportunity to actually then I would say commercialise it, but to actually use that mechanism to fund those types of projects. So if you can you know, it's almost like if you can demonstrate that so much carbon is being saved then finance could actually then be drawn into those projects. speaker-0: the ultimate objective but it could be used like that. So one it could be used to set targets. Like test policy targets. That's why because I mean if you want to include this in some sort of a protocol within the Paris Agreement and all of that, we need to actually have the baseline and set targets. So that's one is to quantify. But the second thing is you can monetize all of this. So of course if you are a reuse business and you want to turn all these avoided carbon emissions into something, well you could actually have this kind of avoided carbon credits that could be used for this. It's not the ultimate purpose but it could be used for that. And that this was this we did this we've done this podcast series and as a result of that we've generated what we call our manifesto. But I mean it it's really the the the ideas and discussions of the people we've interviewed and one of the things that came out very clearly was that was some way of measuring and a materialist North Star. So this really kind of really fits into you know what I guess the global circular economy movement is saying we need. And then once you've got that like you say then that kind of goes back in potentially into the NDC. speaker-1: Yeah. But also that finance. Remember we spoke to finance people James, you know that's he didn't say it was the only barrier but one of the barriers is the finance people wanted to understand what was the impact, how do you quantify the impact of the work in in recognition? speaker-0: And how do you quantify and compare, right? Because like the the avoided emissions of a recycling process, a can and a window frame, recycling aluminium is recycling aluminium. It's it's easy. It goes to the same factory. But turning a recycled a can into a reusable system that sets has different indicators in terms of recovery, return rates, etc., is different from actually turning a building and like not demolishing it and just reusing it for something else. So it's complete it's a completely different method. I think it's more complex, but if we're not able to codify that, then we're not going to be able to set public policies on it or in fact have actually funding coming from this. And it sounds fantastic. I mean we we we wait to see how it actually works in practice, but it sounds absolutely wonderful, you know, with the potential to have a real legacy of of Ant Antalya going forward. Are you getting any pushback? You know, do you do feel that within COP thirty one, because we you know we've been around and we were we were talking yesterday on the podcast about this is great, we're hearing some really good things for the first time, we're really kind of optimistic. Are you finding there's any pushback in the in the margins or in the corridors that that you're detecting? Not yet, but again I think we're presenting plans. We're not yet implementing anything. and it's true that if you look at the the the funding is not there yet for example. What we want to do, I think it makes a lot of sense. It's a whole ecosystem, but it's a whole ecosystem that needs to be built and needs to be funded and needs to be implemented. And I think that's where we're going to get starting to get pushbacks because that's when you run into the the inertia of the linear system, the vested interest, etc. And Do you feel there's people are trying to pull you back downstream? You know, is there like a a push me pull me like we we want to kind of get involved in infrastructure rather than thinking about these up Not yet because this is still outside the radar of the waste industry. So I we're talking about the world that doesn't exist, right? So for the moment we're like walking into open doors because there's no doors. Yeah. Right? So the moment that actually we start like reducing waste and we start actually like pissing off people, I guess there's going to be some pushback. But for the moment, as long as we don't do anything, nobody's going to like What are you doing? But of course, I guess that's gonna come, but not yet. speaker-1: yeah. speaker-0: and I guess we better like be prepared because when they come they're gonna it's gonna be big. But speaker-1: So maybe that's for future cops then. So we're well we're gonna yeah enjoy in speaker-0: If we keep it at this level then we don't have to find it. speaker-1: a moment but yeah we should always be a bit guarded against vested interests as you say. So anyway, Jean Mark, thank you. Thank you very much for sharing that. it's been great catching up with you and seeing you around and yeah look forward to hearing more about the the PAS in due course. speaker-0: Me too. Thank you. Thank you. Miranda, if you could just introduce yourself. speaker-1: Hi, I'm Miranda. I'm the climate lead at the Ella MacArthur Foundation, which is the foundation that is focused on the psychoeconomy transition. speaker-0: And you know, I mean we we've had Joss on the podcast and you know we we're in we we hold EMF in high esteem, we have a debt of gratitude to EMF for a lot of the reason we're here actually. So, you know, d your objectives have probably changed over time and now that zero waste and circular economy are firmly on the agenda albeit the the action agenda, what are your what are your objectives for this COP? speaker-1: Yeah, think, so we started engaging in COP at Mayarm 2019 after we published a report about the strength of connection between the two topics. 45 % of emissions coming from how you produce and consume. If you want to tackle those, you're going to need to adopt sector economy approaches and integrate them across the different value chains. It's not just a question of the waste sector. It's right across the picture. So the first few years that we engaged, we were really bringing that message, trying to make more and more people understand it. It really wasn't on the agenda. In many ways the climate discussion thinks very much sector by sector. So anywhere maybe there was a little bit in the waste sector, a little bit in industry, but not much more than that. And then we are with Turkey hosting it this year and the First Lady being the First Lady of Turkey being the chairperson of the UN Secretary-General's eminent board of advisors on zero waste. She's brought that whole agenda to the cop space which is brilliant because it's given much more of a spotlight as you say. to zero waste and circular economy and we've of been working with some of that team that's been the Turkish team from the Action Agenda really encouraging them to embrace circular economy as the whole concept. So being here, I think one thing about EMF but also the climate space is it's moved into an implementation era or at least that's what everybody's now talking about and so I think that actually does encourage the conversation to move beyond the concept and try and get into specific. sectors or areas that you can take action. So for us we've really bought our critical minerals work. We're working on plastics, textiles and critical minerals as you know, but critical minerals fundamentally connects, it crosses that bridge really nicely between the material world and the energy world because it's the energy world that's going to drive up demand for these materials. And we're not going to be able to meet the quintupling of demand for critical minerals just by mining more. speaker-0: It's interesting. We you know, we we kind of wondered whether the the the the cop would be about downstream stuff, which is it's you kinda move to that, you default almost that when you talk about waste. But in fact, we've been pleasantly surprised how upstream and sophisticated the arguments have been around the arguments that EMF and you just articulated that that materials circular economy for materials is needed to help that energy transition as you move from fossil to to metals and minerals. So d have you found that? Have you found that's been a change in terms from speaker-1: you speaker-0: earlier? speaker-1: I think, yeah, when I first heard about zero waste being on the agenda, obviously there's a big focus on methane emissions because they're such potent gases and you can actually, you know, have an impact in the shortest amount of time but we also need to bring them down as a result. And that takes you to the food space which takes you to the sort of landfill space and like you've got to reduce, you've got to reduce the amount of organics going to landfill to tackle the methane so that's an obvious focus area and I was nervous that maybe the whole attention would stay there. the connection to climate is super strong but could the discussion also go upstream? And I think we... are we all at the halfway meeting in Istanbul in June? speaker-0: I won't. speaker-1: You were, yes. And that's where started to have conversations with people about like could we embrace zero waste and use the circular economy framing at the same time to sort of pull it up and make sure that we were talking about the upstream part. And yeah, me too. I'm really glad that it hasn't just stuck there. So you can go to meetings that are very specifically about the methane reduction and the landfill question. Great. You can also find lots of discussions about the other sectors and the action that they would need to take if they were implemented. sector for me. speaker-0: Yeah, no, I think we've we've found that as well. And and and even some of the people we've interviewed were all kind of really impressed by that. There it's so such you know considerable profile of that upstream action. so that's all very positive. but I guess there's the other thing that's slightly n n not niggles away at us, 'cause this is all really exciting and very purposeful. But there's a kind of negotiation happening somewhere else on the campus. You know, you're very aware of it. I mean obviously. Yesterday was the Leaders' Day and half the other building was shut off. And today. And today, I say and today. So this is all good and the action agenda all good. But I guess there's I guess it'd be interesting to know your own thoughts on role and how do we yeah, how do we influence the other bit of what's happening here? Or how do we make sure that Yeah, there's a sense that unless there's something specific around the circle economy cemented into the the negotiated decision making process that's happening. that's really the goal. That's r what we really want. Yeah, obviously we want action on the ground and all the the great stuff that's happening, but it would be great if we So are you in the room? Are you in there as EMF making sure that There's something being written into that final communique that's gonna absolutely nail the circular economy. speaker-1: Great question. There are past COPs where I have sometimes felt like it was great that we were talking about the circular economy in the country pavilions, but that felt very disconnected from what was happening in the negotiation rooms. And sometimes I question, you know, what really is the value of doing, having those side events? I think we've caught moving into, I mean, most of the Paris architecture has all been negotiated. They are still negotiating about different things like the future of the mitigation work. the Just Transition work, the loss of damage fund, the finances work, but the core architecture from Paris has all been agreed. And that is, I think, partly why they talk about the COP itself being more of an implementation COP now. And that, I think, means that the focus on the action agenda has really risen. Before it was like you need to give a space for non-parties, as in not the government voices, to be contributing, but it was the lesser space. And maybe I'm being too optimistic. but I do think the two spaces are becoming more level and the momentum in the action agenda as the governments are looking for implementation, the more they understand the implementation that is being showcased in the action agenda, the more that then does actually have the potential to link back to the negotiations. I think that's one thing, those two things are a little bit more equal now rather than one is the major and the other one is just the little sibling somewhere. speaker-0: I that's really so you'd think there's a chance then that so we were we were talking earlier on, so the big the big t Turkish Turkey's like suggested target is the thirty five by thirty five, which is about electrification. Not necessarily renewables but electrification. and and y you think that's got a a reasonably good chance of of getting in the what's it called, the cover agreement. speaker-1: the cover decision. speaker-0: Cover decision. but what about the waste aspects? So there's a couple of targets there, isn't it? Let me start again. So what about the circular economy aspects? speaker-1: Well, you were saying like how does, you know, are we in the room? think, so I think the discussions in the Prominence are hell of known. As in, I mean we could be in the room as an observer, but like really it's parties negotiating with parties. But the parties are coming into these side events, right? And then, you know, I was talking to one of the delegations, I they're big delegations that countries send, right? And so there are people that, in those delegations, who are aware of the circular economy piece, they are themselves not the climate negotiator. and I do think there's We haven't quite got to the climate negotiators being on the circular economy brief, but I do think it's strengthening all the time. And then to your question about, so the presidency has announced all these targets, they put them on the table and they want other countries to coalesce around them and support them. I think the electrification one probably... I'm on the outside, but my reading is I do think that there's gonna be support for the 35 by 35 on electrification. partly because it builds on, it's in the energy area, which is an agreed discussion area, and it builds on previous text, like the first global stock take agreed that we should triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency. You can position the electrification target within that, and as part of delivering that. The first global stock take had one paragraph that mentioned that we need to look at production and consumption, including circular economy. speaker-0: That's right. speaker-1: Back at COP28 and 2023, but it's not as articulated or elaborated. So the jump from that paragraph to then the two proposed targets, one on halving global waste growth by 2035 and one on achieving 15 % global material circulation by 2035, it's not as much of a... That's quite a jump from that one paragraph back then. So do you think the focus quite naturally has been on the electrification target? I do think there's not as much focus in the negotiations on those two circular economy ones, so I'm not going to predict right now how much we'll see that reflected in the covered decision. speaker-0: So people that we were talking to yesterday, Lisa actually from Circle Australia was was kind of putting a lot of her hope in Comp thirty-two. And then like so this is the start of a process where we we build on that over the next and speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: yeah. And and and just to say actually that I've been you know, the people I've bumped into who are who are not from the circular economy and waste space but from the more traditional decarbonisation. So you know, government officials, as soon as I've mentioned this move from for the transition, the energy transition, and the importance of materials, they they get it. It's starting to become like you know, I've been surprised, it's not like But it doesn't seem this is new information to them, they're totally on board with that. speaker-1: And I think that's why we're so excited about being able to bring some of the work we're doing on critical minerals because it's a brilliant material that bridges the two sectors, right? We need a circular economy on critical minerals and also because it's part of delivering the energy transition, right? If you just want to focus on we need to deliver the energy transition, it will get you back to we've got to do something about the materials, we've got to look at critical minerals, how are we going to meet the demand, which is in some... Yeah, it's a good bridge topic. because there's plenty of other materials that we need to talk about, for example, we need to go circular on textiles, that is less obvious how that delivers the energy transition, right? Whereas critical minerals is part of the living. speaker-0: I can't remember who it was, one of the guests we had at the podcast was reminded us or suddenly pointed out that you'll come to COP and all the leaders will turn up. But the leaders, you know, and their immediate advisers won't know very much about the circular economy. You know. So it was about we had a I think we had a a conversation around dialogue and and stuff. And and that's t that's true, isn't it? I mean at the end of the day they're not experts in the circular economy. But what you're painting is a very The kind of route to that, isn't it? It's like we're out here in the pavilions talking about circular economy, demonstrating that impossible with the numbers and then there's there's these teams, these country teams are out here and then they feed in and then they feed into the the actual climate advisors who are then the people who are advising the leaders. And that's that's the route, isn't it? That's the way I mean yeah, and it's it's not all just gonna happen this way. speaker-1: Good night. speaker-0: Yeah. Or it'll happen. COP thirty two, COP thirty three. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's just weird. But but but I guess I gonna I was just gonna but I th I you've clarified, yeah, that's that osmosis I like that. But I guess I'm thinking, what can we do in the meantime? You know, can't wait till COP thirty two, you know, to start again. So what what do people do? All these organisations that have been, you know, into circle economy, you know, Dr. Circulaire, all these sort of people, you know, what can we all be doing? There must be a message that we say, you know, how do you talk to these people? I guess that's the point. What what could we all be doing to make sure that they come even more prepared next time round? speaker-1: various things but I think the I don't think there'll be nothing coming out of this cop on such a economy like I do like you know when I said I don't know how far they'll get with such economy in the cover decisions that's on the negotiation part but earlier I mentioned the action agenda and then they are setting up like the way that the action agenda is structured until now such economy could be part of it but it wasn't very visible it was quite hidden now they were they're sort of creating this mechanism to try and highlight sector economy across all the different actions that taking place, which it's a mechanism to shine a spotlight on actions, but I do think that's really important because if there is no spotlight on it, people simply are not going to understand it and they're not going to get a sense of what can be done. So I do think there will be some, there are some positives coming out and we'll see how far they get on their targets. speaker-0: be involved in you know the The Istanbul platform and the zero waste districts seems to me to be you know, there's there's an opportunity there for that to fill the gap around maybe a global transition broker if you like. But you know, it's it's there, so we should probably try and support it somehow. I wonder if if if if you feel it will be an open thing or if it'll be a kind of closed thing and we're not quite sure what it looks like and how we get involved. Because I suppose that's a danger, isn't it? speaker-1: Yeah, I bit less about the... Well, I know roughly what... I know what they're proposing on the districts. The platform, the Istanbul platform, I think, the way I've understood it is actually it's a website, I think. And it will be very open. And you can... In the meeting that I was just in, they were sort of genuinely saying people should approach it. So I think it should be an Exactly, an open mechanism. And I think... Yeah, there's a climate world. there's a circular economy world and those two worlds need to talk to each other better right one thing around circular economy is like I think the climate negotiators want to know ever more about the emissions reduction so there's like a data element that the circular economy world and the climate world need to figure out together because some aid is a lag between projects and knowing the emissions and then there's also an accounting issue speaker-0: thank you so much Miranda, that was brilliant. speaker-1: Thank you very much. speaker-0: Right. okay, so we're here with well you you introduce yourself, Jean. Yeah, I'm Jean Bion, I'm associate director at Circulaire, and we used to work together at Re London. Yes we did, yeah. so I worked for five years at Re London on food and food waste mainly and a lot of working with SMEs. And now I work with Circulaire with is a consultancy. it's been set up about ten years ago now. like a big player in France on circular economy. And we do three main things. We do consultancy, so work with cities, companies, organizations, on how to like decide roadmaps, implement project on circular economy, reuse, repair, remanufacturing, etc. so it's consultancy arm, we have the kind of trainings, we do a lot of awareness raising, some e-learnings with the same kind of stakeholders. And the third bit is coalitions. So we develop coalitions of kind of often competitors coming together and like the public sector as well towards common goals to implement circular economies so we have one for example on reuse of packaging in the cosmetic sectors so you have competing brands carpable working together to develop a common infrastructure to common to develop common methodologies and and and kind of they they understand that to implement reuse but to work like as a with with with the sector rather than on your own. So we have a lot on reuse, we have some on circular finance with banks, we have one on like indicators of circular economy. So yeah we we kind of really like this idea of working together toward the common goal. And you you're on the so t tell them tell me about your role on the European stakeholder yeah so I so I personally I do a lot of work on finance a circular finance and on public policies and we work At the French level, we work with ministries, with local authorities to help them like either develop some programs or develop the strategies. And we work more and more at the European level now because a lot is being developed at at the moment on circular economy with the Circular Economy Act coming hopefully next month. I don't know, it's changing a bit like every day now. It was supposed to be the 18th of November, or supposed to be the 10th of November, it was supposed to be the 18th of November, now it's supposed to be in December, in December. Anyway, so we work at European level, and one of the ways to do that is to we we are part of the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform. and that's an initiative that was created by the European Commission and the European Economic and Social Committee with this idea that basically if you want like circular economy to happen you need to kind of link the practice practitioners with the lawmakers. So they really wanted to get like people from the unions, from the NGOs to bring like their requests, their needs, their best practices. So the platform is really about that. It's kind of about getting all these practitioners, the stakeholders to come together, bring the best practices, their requests and and and and help like the European Commission to develop the the laws. And it sounds like I'll pass over to it in a minute but we we interviewed Ladia for our our podcast series and she kind of turned t switched us on to transition brokers as a as a concept. It sounds like We I realised that Re London was a transition broker. You you you realised that Zero Race Scotland was a transition broker. We're all transition broker We're all transition brokers exactly. And you're doing exactly the same. It sounds very similar. and it's quite nice to have a okay, that's what I am, that's what our organization is. Do you kind of lean into that? Yeah, definitely. And we s we sp we spoke about it a lot with Lady as and and and we and what makes a good transition broker, like what like what works when you're a transition broker, why do you need one? And the kind of thing we we say that you need a Trusted party. So when you have like competitors working together, it's not easy for them, it's not natural for competing companies to say, okay, let's sit around the table. And if they don't have someone they trust to be the facilitator, it's difficult to who is doing the effort. So I think that's kind of how our main role is to like facilitate the discussion, bring like the rhythm and all these things, and then they bring the content and they bring the the the the effort. So definitely a transition broker. And one thing we see as well is then we can make the link between the the the the practitioners and the public authorities. So so you you take like whatever comes out of these coalitions and you feed into the so the the platform or the ministries because they're really interested in in everything that comes out of this discussion. speaker-1: Yeah. So there's a lot in there. I mean I've been fascinated and I really want to hear more about the organisation and the role and what's happening in France. I guess to bring it back to the reason we're here, we're in COP, we're still here. so I guess why are you here? What what specific have you got a specific role or specific specific focus at this moment in time? being speaker-0: here? Yeah I mean I think a bit the same than you we we saw like circular economy will be the key topic at COP and we thought okay it's a great like opportunity to to go and showcase some of the work we are doing. We have a project actually in in Turkey with a bank a public development bank called TSKB and they just launched a credit line of 150 million euros to finance circular economy projects speaker-1: In Turkey or speaker-0: And this is financed by the the French agency of development. And basically we are helping the the bank develop the tools, the strategies to also like raise awareness, train them on circular economy so they can find good projects. so we have quite a lot of work going on in in Turkey through this project. So that's one of the reasons, that's one project we want to showcase. And then yeah more broadly showcase the work on coalitions. So we were part of six or seven panels with a French pavilion, with a Spanish pavilion, with Turkish pavilion. so that's why we're here. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So just sub building that because In fact you're on many panels. that's what the experience for us has been that there's a lot here. Yeah. You know, would it's great to be part you know the to have the circle economy and zero waste on the agenda but it's actually it's the profile's amazing. You know, there's so much there's so much. It's not just we thought, well I mean to some extent, you know, the when we were doing the podcast speaking to people and then finding out the kind of layout of COP, we thought it would just be the zero waste pavilion. That was where everything was gonna be. but actually I think I've spent more time on other other pavilions, other country different countries pavilions and you just Coast Turkey have got one. So how what you know you know what's your feeling? Is this just a great positive experience that it's just arrived and the scale of the debate, discussion, dialogue amongst people. speaker-0: Yeah, I mean I'm not part of the negotiation. I mean I'm like a as you were we're kind of following trying to understand a bit what's really useful is inspiration, it's like understanding what's being done in other countries, is like kind of maybe see how we can collaborate more, like and and and that's definitely something we want to do. We work a lot in France but like you can do so much right in one country you need to work with like other countries of the value chains etc. So it's all about like yeah collaboration and and inspiration I would say. We I mean we're we we we've kind of speaker-1: We've come. speaker-0: And then orientated ourselves. I now feel like a little bit more grounded and I'm like, okay, so where how can I get involved in the negotiation? So we've got we might hopefully get an interview with someone from Italy and they seem to be a bit more switched on and we're gonna talk to Miranda in a bit just to understand because it would be nice to kind of go to a meeting that wasn't just an event, that was actually a discussion that might be linked to another thing that you know that fed through to the actual cover, what is it called? The cover of cover decision. Which is, you know, that would be interesting, wouldn't it? Have you have you got any aspirations in that direction or no? We were saying, look, we're not working. We haven't got we haven't actually got a full time job. Everyone else like you have got a full time job and you've probably got objectives. Do you have objectives for the car? No, yeah, no, I was just saying the objective is more being under pavilion kind of speak with different people rather than be I'm interested personally and and and and it's really fascinating to see what's going on but professionally I don't really have an objective in in following or in trying to influence things. But it's great to be here because there's lots of it seems like there's a big community of of of ways of circular economy. You know we we used to work together, we've we bumped into rap colleagues, we bumped into colleagues from Circular economy are here as well. Circle economy or we're we're gonna talk to Hilda hopefully you know so that it just feels it feels a bit like a big get together doesn't it speaker-1: So just finally because remember early on in our series we interviewed Ailey McLeod, who was the Scottish government climate minister at the time of Paris. And one of the things that we she talked about was the simply being a cop and with other people and getting that energy speaker-0: people. speaker-1: part of that collaboration, particularly at Paris at that time, that really well inspired her, but also really helped her. you went back in to Scotland to you know that you know in terms of thinking about policy, engaging with people and stuff like that. And I guess I was just interested how's this gonna impact, do you think, on your work, your your organisation when you get back? I mean speaker-0: Yeah again some more collaborations with some people I met I don't know maybe I met a lot of people so I don't know how many will turn into actual collaboration but but that's that's the whole the whole idea. And again inspiration. I think we're on the Spanish Pavilion before there was someone from IKEA, someone from UNED and and someone from the a bank and and just like kind of sharing some some the things we're doing and we're doing a lot of work on finance and this person was working for a bank in Spain and like sharing some tips. So I think it's just really useful. to share like different ideas and and and be inspired by them. speaker-1: Yeah. Right. Thank you. And speaker-0: Thanks, Sean. Thank you.