How digital infrastructure can accelerate circular transitions
To achieve a circular economy there needs to be a shift in how our digital ecosystem aligns with sustainability objectives
(Image credit: Unsplash)
The problem: Circular transitions and digital public infrastructure are not effectively aligned.
Why it matters: Better aligning circularity and digital public infrastructure can strengthen long-term transition planning while diversifying potential early opportunities for public sector circular offerings.
The solution: Develop an international consortium of best-in-class solutions to enable national and municipal governments to better experiment with aligned digital and circular solutions.
Among the many strategies being developed for sustainable transitions, the circular economy has achieved large-scale acceptance among both public sector and private sector players.
There is a need for a broader global conversation on the next generation of digital public infrastructure for circularity and sustainability.
National circular strategies have been emerging in the last 30 years, pushing economic thinking past recycling towards alternative production and consumption models. Private sector strategies have emerged to capitalise on the need for sustainability by driving alternative strategies for product engagement, such as an expanding set of rental options and product as a service.
Yet among these strategies are a number of critical challenges creating slowdowns and bottlenecks for driving circular transitions. Attention is often rightfully directed towards the limitations of existing recyclability infrastructure in effectively and efficiently managing a diverse range of products. Focus is likewise on the mixed incentives around firms and consumers to maintain products, send them back, or perform the actions that would allow products to keep circulating at high value in an economy.
But behind these challenges is another major issue - the circular economy has an information problem.
The information problem
To effectively circulate products in an economy, there needs to be an improved ecosystem of logistics, circular service providers (such as repair and refurbishment) and products designed for circularity. But designing products for circularity often has a stop-gap in clarifying who and how different actors can take on circular service provision for that product - particularly, when products are being exported rather than retained locally.
There is no common mechanism to know where materials are, how to repair and refurbish the materials in a product, how to retain value in those materials to circulate, where the best end-of-life care is for those materials, what the quality and status of those materials are - in effect, many of the key questions for the circular economy cannot be answered because no one has the appropriate data. And those that do have the data often retain it.
In response, demands have emerged for a digital product passport – a singular digital identifier to help consolidate this information. But product passport demands are emerging across different sectors, different materials, different countries, yielding an immediate lack of standardisation and harmonisation – which can be increased as countries need to build additional data sharing and data policy harmonisation approaches.
To achieve a circular economy, there needs to be a fundamental change in how digital infrastructure and materials align towards national sustainability objectives. But multiple proposals exist to frame how public sector support for digitalisation can drive sustainability and circularity. Likewise, data is not the entire story - repaircafe, a global ecosystem of repair communities, notes a further tacit knowledge dimension - the conditions of repairing something are a skilled enterprise, requiring both knowledge and experience. Purely sharing data will not address the knowledge gap facing circularity, which expands the scope of the information problem.
The landscape
The current circular platform, digital service, and digital infrastructure landscape remains relatively small - and dominated by the private sector. But key initiatives have already emerged, predominantly within Europe, for public sector platforms to help mediate between those looking for circular services and those providing circular services. The Wales Repair Directory emerges as a key example.
Potential government approaches to circular services and information
Digital product passports
Maturity level: low
A human- and machine-readable register of information tied to a product on its features and history
example: EU digital product passport
Repair index
Maturity level: low to moderate
An index providing government-mandated information on the repairability of a product
example: Repairability index for France
Repair service identification and matching
Maturity level: moderate
A matching platform connecting repair capable actors with consumers in need of repair services
example: Wales Repair Directory
Material databases
Maturity level: moderate
A dedicated, searchable database of product or material information
example: Dynamic materials database
Waste valorisation and resale
Maturity level: moderate
A platform for waste and byproduct listing and purchase
example: Leroma
Industrial symbiosis platforms
Maturity level: moderate to high
A platform for integrating cluster or industrial park actors to exchange in materials, byproducts and equipment
example: ENEA
National and local governments facing immediate questions of how to improve circularity and materials management must face the additional question of what kinds of digital infrastructure and online tools may be needed to help this mission.
Alternative models
But fundamentally, the circular economy faces a directionality challenge alongside its information problems. There are multiple, alternative, viable routes through which the circular economy can progress - and these routes have not been settled on. This means fundamentally that early infrastructure decisions can bias the long-term progression of circular strategy and infrastructure development. Currently, this is being biassed towards private gain and away from public benefit.
In the context of digitalisation, these routes are being shaped through tensions around private sector or public sector provision of key digital infrastructure – such as IDs. The tension between public and private sector provision also yields a further debate over whether this infrastructure is open or closed, whether the data can be accessed or under what conditions, what the governance looks like.
While small scale public and municipal platforms can play a key role in addressing the information challenges facing the circular economy, there is a need for a broader global conversation on the next generation of digital public infrastructure for circularity and sustainability. Settling early experimentation within this broader debate can help align the short-term demands facing immediate circular service provision with better thinking on the future of a joint circular and digital transition.
