The Role of Circular Supply Chains in the Circular Economy
The circular economy is gathering momentum: In the future this model could, for example, mean that smartphones will not be sold and consumed anymore, but companies like Apple and Samsung will then keep scarce resources and sell a smartphone service to users instead of a product to consumers. These users will then be required to bring back the phone after a specified amount of time. California Management Review has now published a special issue on the circular economy. Several of the articles of that special issue refer to supply chains and supply chain management; and several of the authors have published in SCM journals before. This indicates that “supply chain thinking” and “circular thinking” are increasingly stimulating each other. I would even go so far to say that the 21st century’s supply chain management has to shift from linear to circular. This also has implications for our research. What we might need to re-think is whether the “chain” in “supply chain management” is still the right expression.
Rethinking the Future of Plastics
Today’s economy is a plastics economy, as most of our global supply chains contain plastics. A report, published by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, is titled The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics. Herein it becomes evident that linear supply chains need to become circular: “The circular economy is gaining growing attention as a potential way for our society to increase prosperity, while reducing demands on finite raw materials and minimising negative externalities. Such a transition requires a systemic approach, which entails moving beyond incremental improvements to the existing model as well as developing new collaboration mechanisms.” The report “explores the intersection of these two themes, for plastics and plastic packaging in particular: how can collaboration along the extended global plastic packaging production and after-use value chain, as well as with governments and NGOs, achieve systemic change to overcome stalemates in today’s plastics economy in order to move to a more circular model?”
Shifting from “Linear Thinking” towards “Circular Thinking”
Shifting from “company thinking” to “supply chain thinking” has successfully replaced the system managers had in mind when making their decisions. This shift has put some of the parts of what has formerly been considered the company’s unmanageable environment into their unit of analysis. A supply chain, however, is per definition linear. In the age of sustainability, we might thus need to go one step further and shift from “linear thinking” towards “circular thinking”. The circular economy (or closed-loop supply chain) could replace the linear system by a circular system in the minds of decision makers. This is illustrated in a video released by the European Commission.
Can Supply Chains Become Truly Sustainable?
Our world is in crisis! Ten years ago, Time Magazine featured the headline: “Be Worried. Be Very Worried.” (about global warming). But things only got worse since. Leaked TTIP documents point to a race to the bottom in ecological standards between the EU and the U.S. New NASA figures show that April 2016 was the seventh month in a row that broke global temperature records and NOAA data show that “[t]he globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2015 was the highest among all years since record keeping began in 1880”. A second aspect of the sustainability debate relates to resource scarcity: Some metals might soon be in short supply. However, many companies have unsustainable business models in place. For example, Apple expects an iPhone to be replaced after just three years. Is there any hope? In their new JSCM article, Montabon et al. (2016) describe an ecologically-dominant logic which could help companies to develop sustainable business models. A must-read!
Montabon, F., Pagell, M., & Wu, Z. (2016). Making Sustainability Sustainable. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 52 (2), 11-27 https://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12103
Do We Really Need a New Smart Phone Every Two Years?
We all know about natural resource scarcity. However, as brand companies make consumers believe they need a new smart phone every two years, today’s global supply chains are responsible for incredibly large amounts of electronic waste. A new United Nations University report, titled The Global E-waste Monitor – 2014, details e-waste generation by region. The total amount of e-waste generated in 2014 is 41.8 million metric tonnes (Mt) and it is forecasted to increase to 50 Mt in 2018. This e-waste comprises 12.8 Mt of small equipment (e.g., toasters, video cameras), 11.8 Mt of large equipment (e.g., washing machines, photovoltaic panels), 7.0 Mt of cooling and freezing equipment, 6.3 Mt of screens, 3.0 Mt of small IT (e.g., mobile phones, computers), and 1.0 Mt of lamps. With 32% of the world’s total, the United States (7.1 Mt) and China (6.0 Mt) are responsible for most of the e-waste overall. The top per capita producers, however, are Norway (28.3 kg), Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, and the United Kingdom.
Baldé, C.P., Wang, F., Kuehr, R., Huisman, J. (2015). The Global E-waste Monitor – 2014. United Nations University, IAS – SCYCLE, Bonn, Germany
The Story of a Fair Mouse
If you believe that today’s post is about little rodents that behave equitably, then you have most probably not heard about NagerIT’s project to build fair computer mice. (Although the German term “nager” translates literally as “rodent”.) NagerIT took supply chain transparency to an extreme, disclosing the entire supply chain of their Fair Mouse (pdf) on their website, thereby highlighting suppliers with unknown details on working conditions. The Fair Mouse project reveals how difficult it can be to produce a product that is 100% fair: NagerIT admit that they stay with “the problem of the mining of the metals (except solder tin) and the assembly of the remaining components, which [they] still can not obtain from alternative (fair) suppliers”. However, a good start has already been made. The story of the Fair Mouse is, of course, a little like the story of the Fairphone, recently presented here by its founder.
A Moral Revision of Electronic Supply Chains (Guest Post by Bas van Abel, Fairphone)
To make the supply chain more transparent, Fairphone opens up the entire system to understand what shapes our economy. I am happy to share the following guest post by Bas van Abel, CEO and founder of Fairphone. Thank you for contributing to my blog.
Business practices in the supply chains of the electronics industry are in urgent need of moral revision. What do we know about the production of complex electronic devices and the people who make them? By making a phone, Fairphone wants to uncover and expose each link in the supply chain and step-by-step make interventions to improve the way things are made. Instead of hiding behind the complexity of the supply chain, Fairphone wants to unveil the problems associated with the smartphone production like poor labor conditions, the use of conflict minerals and the rise in electronic waste. To do so, we are searching for solutions by engaging in partnerships to come with alternatives to current models. In the first Fairphone that will be released in December 2013, conflict-free tin and tantalum from the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been integrated in the manufacturing of the phone, but that’s only a first step. By growing a movement of people who can share best practices and by creating a platform for discussion, Fairphone aims to raise the bar for the industry meanwhile giving people a choice for fairer electronics.
Bas has a background in interaction design and is an active member of the Maker Movement. He supports open design principles. He has set up projects such as the Waag Society’s Fablab and the Instructables restaurant (an open source restaurant). He is co-editor of the book “Open Design Now”.
Full Product Transparency (Guest Post by Ramon Arratia, Interface)
In his new book, Full Product Transparency, sustainability pioneer Ramon Arratia argues that we have to move from corporate to product sustainability. I am happy that Ramon followed my invitation to contribute to my blog:
The conventional approach to exercising corporate responsibility in a company’s supply chain is to draft a company supplier standard and then audit for compliance using that document. Positive and usually well-intentioned, the impact is inherently limited by the narrow scope of the dialogue and the teacher–student nature of the relationship. The typical 700 questions questionnaire sent to suppliers usually asks meaningless things such as: “Does your organisation have an environmental policy in place?” Or: “Does your organisation have an environmental management system (EMS) in place?” This is just bureaucracy for the sake of it, taking lots of time from both parts and adding little transformative value to the real environmental impacts of the products. The ideal question for suppliers is: “Send me the environmental product declaration (EPD) of your product and your plan to radically improve it”. After all, you are not buying the whole company. Besides, around 80% of the environmental impacts of products are not in the manufacturer’s realms but in their supply chain.
Ramon Arratia is a sustainability director at Interface and has previously been employed in similar roles at Vodafone and Ericsson. Interface is the winner of the International Green Awards 2012. Ramon is also a blogger of Cut the Fluff.
How Repairable is the iPhone 5?
In an age of resource scarcity, electronic supply chains should not produce goods that are fast-moving, hardly recyclable, and barely repairable. To evaluate the iPhone 5’s repairability, iFixit has now provided a look inside the device.
