At the heart of the circular economy lies the notion that we tend not to value a lot of the things that are, in fact, of great value. Whether it’s placing a value on materials that we currently call waste, or valuing taking care of your elderly mother, we need to rethink how we value everyday material and immaterial resources. As long as we don’t value these things, they don’t really “count” within the economy – and that’s where we’re going wrong. In that sense, I’m happy that our circular strategy links to the doughnut economy, because that has really helped us to consider the social aspect of circularity. It’s a little bit too easy to get boxed into only thinking about the physical materials and not throwing anything away. But if you don’t bring in the social aspect, there’s really no point.
I find the topic of “true pricing” extremely interesting in this context. It makes us ask questions like, what is the value of fresh, clean air? What is the price of physical interaction or close contact with your friends? Or access to outdoor, green spaces? We don’t always value these things within the traditional economy, but they’re so valuable. During these crisis/lockdown times, we have started to value what we have a lot more, I think. It just shows: if you think about the issue differently – and break down silos as well – you can “do a lot more with less”.
The strategy runs from 2020 – 2025, what initial steps are happening at the moment to get it started?
We have a broad innovation and execution programme already happening, with over 200 “projects” going on across different municipal departments and organisations in and around the city. We are also targetting different geographical scales to achieve our circular goals. We are looking at where and how the three value chains – food and organic waste, consumer goods, and the built environment – are interrelated in the city and using the instruments we have in the Municipality to make different areas more circular. For example, if you look at the Amsterdam harbour, you can work on organic waste, but also products and buildings. You get three for the price of one, so to speak.
What is really great about both the strategy and the program is that it’s a real collaboration between all the departments in the city and our external partners. The process of getting to the strategy was actually even more important than the final document because it involved the whole Municipality. All the different departments and external urban stakeholders are now implementing actions. This is a strong starting point because it really lays the basis to make circularity “the new normal”.
We will also be monitoring everyone’s activities closely to see how we are progressing. The execution programme is only for two years so that we can review how everything is going mid-way through. We’re aiming to achieve our ambitions by 2025, and to do this, we need to be able to adapt quickly and accelerate or alter some plans as we go along.
