How sustainable procurement drive a circular economy

hi francis it’s great to talk to you

i remember in a presentation that you

did you showed an image of 4.75 planets

and that depicted how many planets we

would need a year if

every country consumed the way canadians

did and you’re doing a lot of incredible

work

to change that so tell me more about it

sure well you’re absolutely right

uh if everybody was as wasteful as

canadians

we would need 4.75 planets to support

them

but of course we don’t have 4.75 planets

so that’s why we need to be thinking

about the circular economy

and in particular what’s wasteful is

when we

when we use the linear economy which is

how our system works

today so we dig something out of the

ground and

our extractive industries of farming and

mining

are responsible for 50 percent of the

world’s greenhouse gas emissions

and 80 percent of the species lost so we

dig this stuff out of the ground last

year was a hundred

billion tons of material we make

something out of it and we use it in

some cases for a very short period of

time like a plastic stir stick

and then we throw it back in a hole in

the ground and that’s very wasteful with

all those greenhouse gas emissions and

species impacts

um so what we’re trying to do is move to

a circular economy where if we dig

something out of the ground

we make something with it that lasts a

long time we use it for as long as

possible

before we eventually take it back and

recycle and put everything that was in

it

back into circulation again 100 billion

tons of materials wasted a year

and that’s a under the linear economy

which is very unsustainable

how else could the circular economy help

to fight climate change

well if you take an example of an

average pc if you can give

you know somebody buys a brand new pc

and they keep it for four years let’s

say

if they could give that pc two years of

extra life that would decrease the

carbon footprint by 30 percent

now that’s pretty cool doesn’t you have

to keep an older pc but there are lots

of people who could use a secondhand

or gently refurbished computer or any

other product

i use that example because we have the

footprint data but any other product

that you use

uh if you can keep it for longer keep it

in use as long as possible then make

sure it gets recycled responsibly we

canadians are really good at wish wish

cycling which is

hmm i’ve used this and i think it should

be recyclable but i’m not sure i’m going

to put it in the recycling bin anyway

and what you do is you ruin that batch

of recyclables so be very very sure

before you put something in the

recycling bin that is recyclable

um so how can a business like hp adopt

the

circular economy so we’ve made a

commitment to go entirely circular

and what we’re going to do is a whole

bunch of things and it starts with

design

designing your products to be offered as

a service

to be upgraded

to last longer to be more durable and

then when they do come back to make sure

that they are 100

recyclable but then you have to offer

the services that go with that so

changing from

selling products to selling services and

that sounds easy to do but it takes a

bit of

a bit of a a rethink of how you’re

running your business and then of course

we’ve made some commitments like uh 30

post consumer recycled plastics

across our entire product portfolio by

2025 which is a big deal

so how has unit hp after adopting a

circular economy

enable hp and its customers to

reduce its carbon footprint well

customers expect us to just take care of

it for them they don’t want to have to

think about this so

if you can come up with something like

instant ink which is a consumer home

printing solution for ink printing you

sign up to a subscription service so you

never have to go to the store again to

get your ink

you the the printer orders it when

you’re getting low it gets shipped to

you automatically in less packaging

uh in bigger cartridges and there’s a

bag in there for you to return the empty

ones to us so we can put those back into

our plastics recycling process and they

can keep going around so

when it’s easy for the customer and

cheaper

and more convenient and better for the

business and has a lower carbon

footprint that is the sweet spot for the

circular economy so we need to be

thinking about

maximum utilization of materials uh as

well as that end of life peace and

recycling that

canadians love so much what challenges

do you think business will need to

overcome

to attack the circular economy or to

go into a sustainable procurement

um so it is the procurement is the

signal into the marketplace

and today that is largely missing in

canada

for some reason i don’t really know why

canadians are doing a lot less

even though we think of ourselves as

being a more sustainable country we’re

doing a lot less in the procurement end

of things and

given that we only have 10 years to fix

or get climate change climate

catastrophe

under under control this is a

very critical lever that we have that

we’re not using to really address this

issue so

really focusing on how much carbon

you’re bringing in

to your organization how much you use

and then what you can do to mitigate

that

and how do you think an individual

consumer like myself can actually

contribute to

help businesses um adopt a circular

economy

or you know using a

sustainable procurement so it is about

thinking

the value the total value when you’re

buying something every dollar you spend

sends a signal into the marketplace and

it’s very tempting to buy

cheap disposable items but at the end of

the day

uh in my head i think of cheap

ultra convenient climate catastrophe

that’s how i think of it

and we laugh about it but that’s really

what you know that’s

buying with the cheapest thing we can

buy today

has led to a linear economy which is how

we’ve gotten into the mess that we’re in

i mean it’s not the only reason but it

it sends all the wrong signals to

anybody who’s making something so if we

want something that’s durable

repairable longer lasting we have to be

prepared to think about

buying it as a service which you know

will uh ease that

that price potential price increase but

uh thinking about all parts of the

product life cycle too not just

oh we get it in the door and we don’t

worry about what happens to it you know

technology is a very good example of

that because

we need to be concerned about data

privacy as well as environmental impacts

of

uh ender first life products