How to regulate circular economy at the international level?

A set of inter­na­tion­al stan­dards is being pre­pared to pro­vide a clear def­i­n­i­tion of the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my, to set out how the tran­si­tion to this mod­el is to be made and to mea­sure its suc­cess­es. Cather­ine Chevauché is lead­ing the com­mit­tee devel­op­ing this set of ISO stan­dards to help organ­i­sa­tions make the tran­si­tion from a lin­ear to a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my. She has been work­ing for a long time on the con­tri­bu­tion to car­bon neu­tral­i­ty of indus­tri­al activ­i­ties, notably in the water and waste sec­tor, first with­in the Suez group and is now Direc­tor of Cir­cu­lar Econ­o­my at Veolia. 

In France, it was in 2018 that the French Asso­ci­a­tion for Stan­dard­i­s­a­tion (Afnor) pub­lished a first stan­dard on cir­cu­lar project man­age­ment, on an exper­i­men­tal basis. Fol­low­ing this, France pro­posed to ISO, the Inter­na­tion­al Organ­i­sa­tion for Stan­dard­i­s­a­tion, to cre­ate a tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee to draft inter­na­tion­al stan­dards on the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my. At the time, I was respon­si­ble for cli­mate and the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my at Suez and I applied to head this com­mit­tee, which was cre­at­ed in 2019. Today, 96 coun­tries and some fif­teen liai­son organ­i­sa­tions (Ellen MacArthur Foun­da­tion, Unit­ed Nations Indus­tri­al Devel­op­ment Organ­i­sa­tion, World Cus­toms Organ­i­sa­tion, etc.) are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the draft­ing of these standards.

Just as there are ISO 9000 stan­dards for prod­uct qual­i­ty, or ISO 14000 stan­dards for envi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment, we will have a series of 59000 stan­dards on the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my. The first one (59 004) will give the main prin­ci­ples that organ­i­sa­tions must inte­grate to move from the lin­ear econ­o­my (extract, man­u­fac­ture, con­sume and throw away) to the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my (avoid, repair, reuse and recy­cle): shar­ing val­ue, con­serv­ing val­ue, min­imis­ing resource extrac­tion from the envi­ron­ment, stay­ing with­in plan­e­tary lim­its, etc. And this applies to all organ­i­sa­tions, whether they belong to the pub­lic or pri­vate sec­tor, whether they are asso­ci­a­tions or companies.

Stan­dard 59 004 will pro­vide the main prin­ci­ples for mov­ing from the lin­ear econ­o­my to the cir­cu­lar economy.

A sec­ond stan­dard (59 010) will address the tran­si­tion from a lin­ear to a cir­cu­lar busi­ness mod­el, adopt­ing a part­ner­ship mind­set rather than tra­di­tion­al customer/supplier rela­tion­ships. The 59 020 series will pro­pose indi­ca­tors for mea­sur­ing and eval­u­at­ing the cir­cu­lar­i­ty of prod­ucts and organ­i­sa­tions. Final­ly, two oth­er stan­dards (59 040 and 59 014) will mod­el prod­uct sheets, which will pro­vide a bet­ter under­stand­ing of their com­po­si­tion in order to bet­ter recov­er and process sec­ondary mate­ri­als. All these dif­fer­ent stan­dards should be pub­lished in 2024.

It is essen­tial to ensure that the stan­dards are fair and rel­e­vant to all coun­tries. To do this, we rely on a bal­anced geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion of the lead­er­ship of the dif­fer­ent work­ing groups. One group is co-chaired by France and Brazil, anoth­er by Rwan­da and Japan, anoth­er by Switzer­land and Mau­ri­tius, etc. At each stage, we pro­ceed through con­sul­ta­tions and inter­me­di­ate votes. Of course, there are some­times com­pli­cat­ed arbi­tra­tions, such as on the issue of incin­er­a­tion with ener­gy recovery. 

But the com­mit­tee must act quick­ly to respond to the envi­ron­men­tal and social emer­gency. This is why we are work­ing in par­al­lel on these dif­fer­ent stan­dards, so that we can pub­lish them quick­ly and at the same time. Then we will have to look at the issues of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and mon­i­tor­ing com­pli­ance with these standards. 

No, the adop­tion of ISO stan­dards is always vol­un­tary. But in this case, we can hope that many coun­tries will take up the issue, and we hope that the same process can be set in motion at Euro­pean lev­el. In any case, this work of reflec­tion and draft­ing is already forc­ing each of the play­ers to ask them­selves these ques­tions, to realise the impact of their activ­i­ty on the envi­ron­ment with­out for­get­ting its soci­etal impact, and, I hope, to act in a more respon­si­ble manner.

Marina Julienne