Circularity – accelerating sustainable consumption and production: UNEP’s reflections

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am honored and delighted to be here today. 

I especially want to thank Nabil Nasr, our long-time partner and expert in the International Resource Panel, for the opportunity to share UNEP’s perspectives at this important conference. And to our other long-term partners, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation: thank you.

For those not familiar with the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP is the global authority on the environment with the mission to inspire, inform, and enable nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations. 

Science guides our work.

And the science tells us that the health of the planet is increasingly deteriorating, threatening our collective well-being and that of future generations.

Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, the International Resource Panel highlight that unsustainable patterns of consumption and production drive the interconnected crises we face, both planetary (land degradation, climate, extreme heat, droughts, nature loss) and social (inequality, conflict, ill health, poverty). 

Ladies and gentlemen, transforming unsustainable consumption and production is not easy. As custodians of SDG 12, we know.  According to 2023 data, less than 30% of targets of SDG 12 are on track and about the same share have actually stagnated or regressed. 

Patterns of consumption and production are inherently connected with our lifestyles and our economic systems.

The political pushback or inertia on changing these systems is steep. The interests that keep production and consumption patterns are powerful. But these patterns create excessive resource extraction, excessive emissions, excessive waste and pollution. We increasingly face limits to our collective well-being from the degrading capacity of the environmental sinks and planetary boundaries. 

The IRP in 2024 reported that “high-income countries consume six times more materials and contribute ten times more to climate impacts than low-income countries.” The consumption differential among nations suggests that some countries need to radically reduce their material footprint, while others may even need to grow it.  A rebalancing between the over-consumers and the under-consumers requires a different international political economy. But such a rebalancing has implications for economies and bottom lines, for jobs and skills, for politics. 

Herein lies the sweet spot that circularity can fill between the different compulsions.

The three circular economy principles – eliminating waste and pollution, circulating products and materials, and regenerating nature – are win-wins for governments and enterprises for more jobs and extended markets, enabling growth to improve lives but with less resource use and environmental impact. The circular economy could unlock $4.5 trillion of economic growth and create six million new jobs, many of which will be in developing countries and will support further industrialization through activities like recycling, repair, rent and remanufacture. But they also create options for more secure material access and availability within countries.

The IRP has been a key influence in UNEP’s engagement with unsustainable natural resource and material use since its establishment in 2007. Through the work of experts like Nabil Nasr and Janez Potocnik and others in the IRP, and the very good partnerships with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the European Union and many other countries, UNEP has, for the last decade, been increasingly involved with circularity as an approach to accelerate sustainable consumption and production and, hence, a healthier planet. 

Currently, UNEP works to support circularity and resource efficiency in five sectors which have a high impact on the planet, and through it, on our well-being: plastics, mining, electronics, textiles, buildings and construction. We focus on eight circular actions: refuse, reduce, repair, refurbish, remanufacture, repurpose and recycle, framed within a context of redesigning the system and the product.

UNEP’s work seeks to address key aspects of the current path dependencies:  of the linear models of planned obsolescence that incentivize short product lives and more waste; of public procurement practices which favor the cheapest goods; of pricing goods without internalizing hidden costs of emissions, nature loss and pollution; of frequently low quality goods that are not worth repairing, become waste soon and require the purchase of a new good; of producer responsibility for the waste generated; and of consumption choices and their consequences that arise from a lack of consumer information. 

More specifically, it works through policy instruments, knowledge exchange and capacity support, leveraging public and private finance for desired change.

On plastics: 

UNEP’s focus is on product design and other policy approaches which promote circularity, such as Extended Producer Responsibility, coupled with strong waste management, as seen in the INC negotiations towards a legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution across the life cycle.

On electronics and electronic waste in dump sites: 

E-waste is the world’s fastest-growing domestic waste stream. Dumps with e-waste are increasingly an issue to health and safety. UNEP works through a focus on product design and Extended Producer Responsibility schemes for electronics.

On textiles and fashion: 

UNEP works through incentivizing shifts in consumption patterns, innovative circular business models, including shared platforms, more efficient practices and infrastructure investment, and policy dialogues.

On building and construction:

UNEP supports action through developing building energy codes aligned with zero-emissions building, increasing retrofitting and using energy-efficient appliances, and on cooling through passive cooling measures, higher-energy efficiency standards of cooling equipment, and a faster phase down of climate-warming refrigerants. Alliances and pledges help scale efforts.

UNEP will be working on critical energy transition minerals to bend the demand curve.

The demand for critical minerals is high and continues to rise in all IEA scenarios; it almost triples by 2030, quadruples by 2040 and rises sixfold by 2050 to respond to a 1.5-degree scenario. According to the IEA, “a successful scale-up of recycling can lower the need for new mining activity by 25‑40% by 2050”. But recycling alone cannot address the problem and has limits.

UNEP works with and learns from many organizations, such as the EMF who have been a key partner and from whom we have learned a lot on circularity, especially through our work on plastics. And the WBCSD, ICLEI, and many others. We work to scale up circular action globally, through the Global Alliance on Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency through partnership with the World Circular Economy Forum (WCEF), through regional initiatives, including the African Circular Economy Alliance and the Circular Economy Coalition of Latin America and the Caribbean. These engagements help inform and influence the arguments for a circular economy at intergovernmental fora such as the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA), the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF), and the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and through resolutions enhance the mandate to work on these issues. 

Political appetite for circularity is indeed growing.

Since 2016, 71 new national circular economy calls to action, roadmaps and operational strategies have been launched. It is a compelling economic logic that links business and consumers with sustainability values. Despite this enhanced engagement, the circularity of our economies is not increasing. World circularity is about 8%. The Circularity Gap 2024 reports that despite an increased engagement globally with circular approaches, material consumption has, in fact, increased rather than declined over the years 2018-2023. The challenges are known and are important to address. To name a few: circular products still cannot compete with conventional alternatives; access to capital and finance to design and scale up circular innovations is tough; lack of transparency in supply chains and the lack of information on availability, quality and location of circular materials, is a hindrance to scale and trade. Research suggests that the acceptance of consumers of circular solutions has hindered the diffusion of circular business models.

To conclude, issue areas that we think need more attention to enhance circularity as accelerators of sustainable consumption and production are:

One: circularity may not reach its full potential unless there is a just and inclusive transition which engages with skills, jobs, trade and development pathways of countries. The G20 Presidency of Brazil and the G20 Presidency of South Africa show that countries have different perspectives and priorities when addressing circular economy. It is important to have everyone on board and drive shared leadership and solidarity.

Two: benefit sharing from value retained is politically key to the uptake and participation in circular models. For example, benefit sharing arrangements from circular and value retention models in the extractives sector must recognize also those who owned the mineral in the first place, and the local community that shared in the burdens of the original mining. This is also true for producing countries in other sectors, such as in textiles. 

Three: more research on consumption behavior – not on how consumers drive circularity but how it is received, adopted and diffused by consumers. It is not clear to us if circular economic models alone can get us off the consumerism and material use that is overwhelming the planet. As seen in the context of energy efficiency, circular efficiencies may result in more demand and greater material use. On a different note, in the current situation,  where consumers find themselves with reduced purchasing power in the context of the multiple challenges, there could perhaps be more user centeredness  in co-creating and designing circular solutions that could lead to/incentivize a greater preference for durability over the cheap and the disposable, for becoming rather owning, for valuing the old over the new. 

Four: frugal innovations need more attention, as we have argued during the Indian Presidency of the G20, to address the imbalance in consumption but through radical business models. Creating positive aspiration narratives around frugal innovations while making them circular in design and environmentally friendly can help steer consumers at the bottom of the pyramid of consumption to access goods and services they aspire to while being sustainable. This could be, for example, around cooling, food, housing, lighting and mobility, key human needs.

Five: finally, we need more political and social citizen movements, especially involving the youth, to engage with consumerism, with ideas of efficiency and sufficiency. But also, with policy makers and the political. Social movements can become forces and can contribute to “tipping points” for circular consumption and production.

I very much look forward to listening and learning from you. 

Thank you