The Horse 2020/21

-Analyse the response of our expert

-Read the documents he's sent us and evaluate what we can use for our project.

In this post we've finished this Assignment: 

ASSIGNMENT:

• Find two examples of businesses that are “going circular”.
• Give a one-sentence description, and indicate which part of the butterfly diagram they belong to.
• Provide a link to a website or video if possible

We decided to write about the Cosmetic companys Lush and The Bodyshop.

1. Lush, UK cosmetic company. All the bottles are made by 100% recycled plastic and after you use the product you give them back the bottle to be recycle again and you can also get some discount doing this. I'm sure that it circular process (recycle stage of the diagram) really happen.

2. The body shop: Buys plastic from Hasiru Dala to give an income to the local trash collectors.

   using more plant-based and recycled plastic (rather than oil-based plastics) and helping people around the world to reuse, repurpose and recycle. currently more than 68% of their Bottles can be recycled. Also you can

   return all your empty tubs, tubes, jars and pots in store for them to recycle and repurpose. S it aswell belongs to the recycle stage of the diagram.

   ( Sustainable Packaging | The Body Shop®)

Tonia&Chiara

What is the city of Zurich planning to do to reduce CO2 emissions from transport?

Which of the following suggestions are the best possible ideas to reduce CO2 emissions:

To make a part of the city car-free or to ban certain vehicles like other cities already do?

Minimising the amount of parking so that people use public transport more?

Is reducing the speed limit a good alternative solution?

Do you think there are other options that would be a good solution?

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

The linear Economy

In this post we are not really going into circular economy. We are focusing on the opposite of circualr economy, the linear economy. 

The main goal of circular economy is to reuse and recycle the materials of a product, whereas linear economy does not take care of the environment like that. Linear economy simply produces products with certain materials and does not resue them. 

How resources are increasingly difficult to extract / linear economy

With mining and digging we are able to collect important materials and goods from way underground. The goal is to make good use of these, so to make good and practical materials with a lucrative price out of them. But what is the problem with linear economy like this?

A linear Economy relies on cheap energy, cheap materials and cheap credit to get the throughput. Which means, that the companies can make ends meet with their costs of production and people who work in these companies. Sadly, the environment which we extract the materials from, is not being taken care of.

We need an economic system that does help the environment. September 2008 taught us things, when the financial system was collapsing. This crisis turned the economy upside down.

The Linear Economy is not working very well. There are three reasons for this:

• Resources like fossil fuels, food and water are increasingly hard to get.
• Biodiversity is in decline worldwide. Yet ecological services provided by the natural world seem to be taken for granted.
• The financial system almost crashed the entire economy.

   

   

Why is it difficult for companies to be innovative

The competition is so high and intense, that it has become more and more difficult for companies to sell their products. It has become critical for companies to male good profits or even survive. The other side is that customers cant be easily persuaded to buy a certain product that offer fair trade or other environmental friendly.

• Real wages have been stagnant or falling for several decades.
• This has resulted in intense competition among companies selling products and services, and in an unfavorable market position for environmentally or socially benign products (these often cost more).
• The 3 billion new customers entering the market in the next 20 to 30 years will put an enormous pressure on the resource base if we continue along our current, linear ways.

So this is what we got so far concerning linear economy. We hope that we would show the difference between circular economy and linear economy in a simple way. We are happy to read your comments. :) 

Sincerely 

Chiara & Tonia 

It is week two of our research concerning circular Economy. We would like to share our newest information and facts.

What is circular economy?

The Circular Economy System Diagram, also known as the 'Butterfly Diagram', represents flows of products and materials in the Circular Economy.

The diagram starts from the current Linear Economy, depicted as the central, downwards flow from materials extraction and manufacturing at the top to incineration and landfill at the bottom. In the Circular Economy, resources are used, but not used up.

Why we need circular Economy

To limit the extraction of raw materials and reduce the production of waste

In the post war era, we could have things and pay later which lead to a massive boom. The fact, that this system is not there anymore is proof, that we change economy.

By applying suitable strategies to products, components and materials during use and after the end of a lifecycle, resources are kept in the system.

Cycles in Circular Economy

In a circular system, technical and biological nutrients, or materials, are retained in continuous loops. The circular flow of these nutrients is represented by the loops on either side: green for biological and blue for technical nutrients.

Biological materials can be safely returned to the biosphere and add value to the environment, once they have gone through one or more use cycles. These materials include food, natural fibres and bio-based materials, such as wood.

Technical materials cannot be returned to the biosphere. These materials should continuously cycle through the system so that their value can be (re)captured. These materials include plastics, metals and synthetic chemicals.

Scroll through the slides below to explore the Butterfly Diagram in detail. The Butterfly Diagram is the backbone of this course. In the coming episodes, you'll be introduced in more detail to the different loops.

Industrial Ecology

• Industrial Ecology is concerned with the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems.
• Industrial Ecology and the Circular Economy share similar goals and principles.

This is our latest research. We would also like to make futher investigations concerning the linear economy. Thank you for showing interest in our research. We hope you could learn something useful. 

Sincerely

Chiara & Tonia

Finish the overview. Mail to Christian Huber, specialist from the city of Zurich to ask if I can send him my ideas. 

- I finished de overview and wrote to Mr. Huber 

In Progress 

Goals

Today we have an interview with Mister Nagel. We hope that he can answer all our questions, so we can use them for our project.
An other goal is that we find other informations, which we can use, from researches on the internet.
At the end of the lesson we are going to summarize what we did and achieved.

Achievements

Our interview was very successful. Mr. Nagel answered our questions detailed, so we can use every single question and answer.
We also did some researches.

In conclusion we achieved our goals for today!

Sandra, Joelle and Anabel

Today we have the same goals as last week and try to get as far as possible:

• Collaboration?
• Continue research
• Write questions for a possible interview and find an interview partner
  
  

Kamanya & Karishma

We want to put together some knowledge which we have read last week and today. 
We want to make a detailed timetable as well.

A couple of interesting links on combating CO2 in cities. These I found. They are very interesting to read and contain a lot of important information. 

CO2 development Zurich

 Text about a diesel ban

Also very interesting is the report from the city of Zurich "Stadtverkehr 2025" (City traffic 2025) where you can find important statistics and starting points all around the topic of traffic in the city of Zurich. 

Report "Stadtverkehr 2025" 

Iain and I have sent an e-mail to KEZO. We asked if we could do an Interview and film several scenes about the recycling procedure of PET-bottles. We are now waiting for an answer.