Comments on: Selling the circular

By: Henry

Henry — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 09:19:14 +0000

Tom, I would say that shareholder interest can easily be short-term even if there are claims to take a longer-term view. In simple terms that is because if a company doesn’t succeed in the short-term, its longer-term possibilities are likely to be seriously constrained – apart from anything hedge funds may get in a position to call the shots. And of course there is a lot of pressure in the short-term. As to shareholder interest beyond the financial, there may be some but the metrics and pressures tend to focus on the financial. There are exceptions but they are limited in number and some are struggling to maintain a long-term perspective e.g. Unilever and Danone.

This not to say we shouldn’t build on the changing understanding and motivations of business people. These are also essential for attempts to promote institutional change away from the shareholder-dominated model. But we must seek to focus there energy in that direction rather than some broad idea of long-term wider prespective that has not supporting institutional structure so is unlikely to survive.

By: Henry

Henry — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 09:09:48 +0000

In reply to Guy Dauncey. Quite possibly, Guy. However i have focussed in this article on how circular purposed might be embedded in economic systems as opposed to Government having to force it from the outside, which often is not every effective as regulations are gamed etc.

By: Guy Dauncey

Guy Dauncey — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 18:06:04 +0000

Some thoughts! These efforts need to be accelerated, perhaps
• Through the use of Circular Economy Scorecards for every product-line?
• Through a Circular Economy Accountability Act that would require larger companies to measure their wastes, and report on measures being taken by themselves and their domestic supply chains to increase the Circular Economy Score for each product, as Scotland is doing?
• Through Right to Repair legislation?
• Through landfill bans on more products and harsher penalties for dumping?
• Through the imposition of a Circular Economy Tax on every single product, graded according to its circular economy score, in effect applying Extended Producer Responsibility across the entire economy? Products that are easy to repair, re-use and recycle would pay a lower or no tax and the revenues would be used to pay for each product’s recycling or composting.

By: Tom Levitt

Tom Levitt — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 09:19:16 +0000

The article is timely and to the point but it includes an unhelpful generalisation… the assumption that shareholder interest is a) only financial and b) short term. The world has just passed a tipping point: half of all investment today is climate sensitive, and that’s because investors have realised that investment in carbon no longer makes any sense in the long term. We all know that’s true for environmental reasons but the fact that it is now recognised as true from a financial point of view is something to celebrate and build upon. And carbon is only the tip of the (melting) iceberg! Long term investment is the key to shifting the mainstream economy onto a more sustainable footing. Meanwhile, from a circular point of view, designers are increasingly creating modular and other circular designs and Patagonia runs the largest chain of clothing repair shops in America. Things are happening…

By: David Harold Chester

David Harold Chester — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 12:28:11 +0000

I don’t understand why pluralism has to be encouraged. As it grows it make the subject of economics more difficult to understand, because a student has a harder choice of what to study and he/she cannot be expected to cover all of them. Also this matter of choosing means that some choices will not be as useful as others. Along with pluralism we need sets of subjects to be categorized being the best to study, which are most basic, less basic and not basic at all, so that the effect of the pluralism is not on increasing the diversity and reduced depth of what our students can take in.