Final June, I had the chance to go to the magical nation of Iceland to see its local weather tech and clear power amenities. (I used to be invited by Inexperienced By Iceland, which kindly footed the invoice.) What I discovered that week was extra holistic: a philosophy of sources and capitalism that captures the spirit of sustainability.
I’ve been fascinated by Iceland as I prepare for Circularity 23, a GreenBiz occasion that convenes leaders to rethink our extractive, linear methods and transfer in direction of a round economic system.
The idea of “circularity” is each apparent and profound. It’s preserving molecules in circulation for so long as potential, remodeling the way in which we consider “waste” and difficult producers to think about what occurs to merchandise after they land within the fingers of shoppers. In our disposable, client, capitalist society, this appears revolutionary.
But if you happen to take the smallest of steps again, it appears absurd that firms wouldn’t have to think about the influence of their inputs and outputs. Not solely does that forego duties of externalities, it is also leaving potential new useful resource streams on the desk.
The Icelandic case research: a geothermal useful resource park
HS Orka is the biggest and solely privately owned power firm in Iceland. It operates the nation’s third largest geothermal plant, Reykjanes, with 174 megawatts of put in capability.
Past producing power, the corporate’s acknowledged purpose is to “maximize the utilization of the geothermal fluid” — in different phrases, repurpose its waste to create new worth. The philosophy: One firm’s output is one other firm’s enter.
Ten firms are clustered in HS Orka’s Useful resource Park, utilizing geothermal byproducts in their very own operations. Amongst these utilizing sources from HS Orka’s plant:
- The Blue Lagoon, an expansive spa that makes use of electrical energy, scorching water, geothermal brine, steam and CO2 from the geothermal operations to create a facility that draws 1.3 million guests a yr. It additionally makes use of the silica and minerals geothermal byproducts for skincare merchandise.
- Orf Genetics, a biotech firm that grows barley in a high-tech greenhouse to develop a plant-based progress issue for cosmetics and cell-cultured meat. The corporate makes use of crushed volcanic rock, electrical energy and water from Reykjanes.
- Stolt Sea Farm, which makes use of heat, lava-filtered sea water to boost the famed sole fish, which it sells to eating places in North America and Europe
- Haustak and Laugafiskur, two fish processing firms that use thermal power and steam from the ability plant to dry fish offcuts to show right into a protein supply for African markets.
- Carbon Recycling Worldwide, which makes use of the ability plant’s carbon dioxide, electrical energy and water to make methanol from geothermal byproducts.
HS Orka actively courts inexperienced and sustainable firms to find near the geothermal facility, boasting to be a “one cease store” for energy, infrastructure and sources.
The rise of commercial symbiosis
Clustering industrial growth shut collectively shouldn’t be a brand new thought. There are at present shut to twenty,000 industrial parks all over the world, together with about 380 in the US, in line with a 2021 research within the journal Sources, Conservation and Recycling. However the thought of a neighborhood of companies finding shut to at least one one other and collaborating to realize enhanced environmental, financial and social efficiency, often known as an eco-industrial park, is much less widespread, with an estimated 250 examples globally.
The United Nations Industrial Improvement Group (UNIDO) is aiming to alter that by means of its contribution to the Sustainable Improvement Objectives. UNIDO dubs the work industrial symbiosis “a way by which firms can acquire a aggressive benefit by means of the bodily change of supplies, power, water and by-products, thereby fostering inclusive and sustainable growth.”
The work to formalize that is comparatively new. UNIDO’s framework was launched in 2016, adopted by the primary joint worldwide framework in 2018.
The idea, nevertheless, shouldn’t be new. HS Orka, for instance, began its work in 1974, attracting the primary co-location firm in 1983. And the thought of utilizing sources to their full potential is apparent, if one agrees sources are finite and planetary boundaries exist. It’s so simple as First Nations folks utilizing each a part of the buffalo or Vikings utilizing each a part of the reindeer. The concept that we wouldn’t look at each waste stream as a possible enter should be an aberration of the second of capitalism, the place scale is valued and externalities ignored.
Overthinking circularity
Pondering again to Iceland, I’m struck by how apparent it appeared to the crew at HS Orka to search out companions for its waste streams. Every new firm that co-locates, it identified, is a brand new income stream for HS Orka and strengthens the native economic system.
Once I tried to ask questions from my U.S.-centric perspective — Isn’t it exhausting to search out firms? Isn’t it costly to combine? Does it decelerate operations? — I used to be met with clean stares.
I really like the Circularity convention as a result of it’s a smorgasbord of tales comparable to HS Orka. It is filled with organizations attempting to do the sane factor — take into account their impacts holistically and get sensible about addressing them. But I’m additionally struck by how unusual our markets have grow to be. We’ve gotten so distant from working in methods which can be logical; we have to get collectively to widen our aperture to do issues which can be typically apparent.
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