No, not a new year’s resolution about being satisfied reducing the number of doughnuts I consume in 2024. More of a post-holiday treat that brings together some of what I have been reading (and re-reading) about Doughnut Economics, sufficiency, and frugal value.
Establishing conceptual underpinnings for the Circularity Foundation has introduced me to several interesting authors, including Carina Millstone (who wrote Frugal Value: Designing Business for a Crowded Planet), Nancy Bocken (co-author of several articles about the circular economy, e.g. The Sufficiency-Based Circular Economy: An Analysis of 150 Companies), and now Kate Raworth.
Brief descriptions of a range of circular concepts can be found on the Circularity Foundation’s https://www.circularityfoundation.org.uk/concepts/ webpage.
Enter the Doughnut
The following excerpts from Kate Raworth’s instant classic Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist are shared with the intention of encouraging you to read the whole book to benefit from Kate’s fuller critique of traditional economics (what Carina describes as the ‘legacy economy’) and from the context Kate provides for understanding and appreciating the circular economy’s potential (and limitations).
A critique coupled with a mission (from page 25):
“For over 70 years economics has been fixated on GDP, or national output, as its primary measure of progress. That fixation has been used to justify extreme inequalities of income and wealth coupled with unprecedented destruction of the living world. For the twenty-first century a far bigger goal is needed: meeting the human rights of every person within the means of our life-giving planet.”
A reference to the circular economy (from page 29):
“This century needs economic thinking that unleashes regenerative design in order to create a circular—not linear—economy and to restore humans as full participants in Earth’s cyclical processes of life.”
Kate’s rallying call for systemic change (from page 156):
“Today’s economy is divisive and degenerative by default. Tomorrow’s economy must be distributive and regenerative by design. An economy that is distributive by design is one whose dynamics tend to disperse and circulate value as it is created, rather than concentrating it in ever-fewer hands. An economy that is regenerative by design is one in which people become full participants in regenerating Earth’s life-giving cycles so that we thrive within planetary boundaries.”
Observations about the shortcomings of a ‘business-as-usual’ approach to the circular economy (from pages 222-229):
“…the notion of a truly circular economy belongs with the fantasy of perpetual motion machines: a more accurate name would be the cyclical economy. No industrial loop can recapture and reuse 100% of its materials…Corporate interest in forging ‘circular advantage’ is growing fast, and companies leading the pack have adopted a niche set of circular economy techniques such as: aiming for zero-waste manufacturing; selling services instead of products (like computer printing services instead of printers); and recovering their own-brand goods – ranging from tractors to laptops – for refurbishment and resale. These are excellent strategies for efficient resource reuse and they can be highly profitable too…The trouble is, they just do not go far enough, and there is a clear reason why. Shaped to fit in with existing corporate interests, circular economy strategies to date have typically been: top down, driven by large corporations; in-house, with companies seeking to establish control over their used products; opaque, thanks to patented materials and proprietary technologies; and fragmented into disconnected parts, within and across industries. That is by no means a strong foundation for building a regenerative, let alone distributive, industrial ecosystem…Regenerative industrial design can only be fully realised if it is underpinned by regenerative economic design.”
As these excerpts show, Kate is an advocate for an ‘open source’, regenerative and redistributive circular – or ‘cyclical’ – economy. She recognises the shortcomings and limitations associated with attempts to establish a more circular economy that challenges the ‘business as usual’ economic model that devalues the environment whilst ignoring the urgent need for greater fairness for all human beings.
Enough already!
Might the notion of ‘sufficiency’ have something to offer in this respect? Nancy Bocken and her colleagues certainly seem to think so.
As Nancy Bocken, Laura Niessen and Samuel W. Short wrote in The Sufficiency-Based Circular Economy: An Analysis of 150 Companies an ‘open access’ article published by Frontiers in Sustainability in May 2022:
“…the concept of ‘sufficiency’ is inadequately represented in the current circular economy discourse and innovations, and this may be undermining real progress…In this article, we position sufficiency as the missing link in the Circular Economy transition and discourse. The increasing pressure of human activity on the climate and biodiversity, and the limited potential for circular economy to address the endless growth in demand for materials and energy, require a refocus on a sufficiency-based circular economy, where consumption avoidance is prioritized over strategies such as recycling”.
The study’s authors cite a 2021 article by Anne Velenturf et al (entitled ‘Rethinking Economic Theory and Practice for a Sustainable Circular Economy’) stating:
“Circular economy may well be at an important crossroad: it can continue to propose incremental changes to resource flows, leaving the wider, unsustainable, economic system unchanged, or it can join a transformative movement toward a sustainable circular society”.
Under the sub-heading “Sufficiency in the Wider Circular Economy Transition” Nancy and her colleagues make the point that:
“The Circular Economy has been presented as a future paradigm effectively combining resource savings and economic growth. However, critics have argued that meeting human needs while minimizing environmental impact would be a better goal than achieving material circularity (Allwood, 2014; Zink and Geyer, 2017). In response to this critique, recent work by Bocken and Short (2021) introduced a framework to position the circular economy in relation to broader perspectives on a sustainable society (Figure 2)”.
“…As shown in Figure 2, a Sufficiency-based Circular Economy is also not the last step in business transformation toward real sustainability. For a sustainable future, business practices will need to be regenerative and contribute positively to society and the environment, leaving the environment (and society) in a better state than before, to undo the environmental degradation of the past century (Hahn and Tampe, 2021)…In practice, this means introducing policy and regulation that shift economic growth and wealth accumulation objectives toward delivering a thriving environment and society, and redefine the parameters under which business operates, rather than simply leaving it to deregulated ‘market forces’ to deliver the needed change. While the circular economy has put us on a different pathway to innovation beyond efficiencies and cost-savings, and will be a core part of any future sustainable system, this perspective is inadequate on its own to have a radical impact on environmental issues, when interpreted in a narrow way.”
This clearly resonates with both Kate and Carina’s calls to action.
Efficiency + Sufficiency = Frugality
In Frugal Value, Carina describes the shift from ‘legacy’ to ‘frugal’ products as requiring both resource-efficient (‘resource-sparing’, ‘nature-inspired’, and ‘user-centred’) and resource-sufficient (‘long-lived’, and ‘shareable’) products, i.e. products “that use minimal amount of resource per unit, and contribute to resource use reduction overall (as well as minimising the impacts on sinks and regulation associated with resource use)”.
As Carina explains (from page 56):
“Shareable products reduce the need for duplicate objects now; long-lived objects reduce the need for duplicates over time.”
System-level changes for the better
Kate’s call is succinctly explained at https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/
“Humanity’s 21st century challenge is to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet. In other words, to ensure that no one falls short on life’s essentials (from food and housing to healthcare and political voice), while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, on which we fundamentally depend – such as a stable climate, fertile soils, and a protective ozone layer. The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries is a playfully serious approach to framing that challenge, and it acts as a compass for human progress this century.”
Carina concludes her book by pointing to three key system-level changes needed to make frugal value (i.e. combining efficiency and sufficiency) possible:
- Move away from an economy of distance to an economy of proximity (“…companies must cease to be itinerant, following cost-saving opportunities, and must instead become anchored in their locality”).
- Move away from a growth-reliant economy dominated by one form of organisation, the external shareholder-owned for-profit company, to a plural economy, where multiple organisational forms co-exist, flourish and support degrowth.
- Change how resources are used in economic activity, and how their associated planetary impacts are determined, allocated, and valued.
Where does this leave us?
Something I draw from this discourse is that whilst greater efficiency and indeed a more circular economy are to be welcomed, they are not enough to bring us to the sweet spot of the Doughnut where all people’s needs are met without exceeding planetary boundaries. While greater sufficiency would help, ‘market forces’ cannot be trusted to deliver the desired outcomes.
As Nancy and her colleagues put it, there is an urgent need for policies and regulations “that shift economic growth and wealth accumulation objectives toward delivering a thriving environment and society, and redefine the parameters under which business operates, rather than simply leaving it to deregulated ‘market forces’ to deliver the needed change”.
This comes across as a vital message to bring with us into 2024, alongside a hope that the forthcoming UK general election might result in greater support for the sorts of policies and regulations that can help bring about a ‘flourishing’ that puts ‘societal and environmental well-being above profit’ (as per Figure 2, above), allowing the great potential of the circular economy to be fulfilled.