Sustainability

Reading time: 24 min

Whether complex or not, it is certain that the circular economy has come to stay. As Carolina Ibáñez, Repsol Environmental Development Manager, said: “The circular economy is already not a trend, it is a reality. Society is involved in it and society itself is what is increasingly demanding a change of model, to be more sustainable, more circular.” In the case of cities, this complexity is obvious if we think about the variations in existing cities. As Ángel Fernández Homar, chairman of the board of the Circular Economy Foundation, said, “Every city has an idiosyncrasy. One in the north of Spain is not the same as one in the south. Nor is a city of one million inhabitants and one with fewer.” Other parameters are added to this, such as the layout of the city (whether it is very old or recent), the terrain, or some determining factor like the involvement of the public, companies, and the administration.

That is why, without there being a perfect recipe that can be applied to all cities, there is another solution that María del Mar Borrego-Marín, professor of Applied Economics at the University of Seville, defines as the theory of the “7 R’s”. What is it?

The centers of many big cities are being redesigned to accommodate this new mobility. In Spain, Barcelona is seeking to reorganize the city by limiting motorized traffic and giving the space to pedestrians and bike lanes, which have increased by 72% since 2015. Other cities like Madrid are restricting access to less polluting vehicles. The same trend is being followed in capitals like London, Berlin, Paris, and Copenhagen even though, in many of them, this type of new mobility “requires a redesign of the cities and this is not always completely doable since often the city has been built in a very specific way and there are limitations,” said David Blanco, a professor in the Department of Financial Economics and Accounting of the University of Burgos.

The limitations are fewer when expanding a city. According to Carrillo, to create ideal circular cities, redesign policies must be directed towards regulating durability and the possibilities of reusing, updating, and repairing all urban elements. In other words, for redesign to be inevitable and for it to focus on ensuring the other R’s.

• New draft bill. The most recent initiative in this area came from the Council of Ministers, which, this June, adopted the draft bill for the Prevention of Losses and Food Waste, which establishes that, if there is excess food, first, an attempt must be made to channel it for human consumption by donating it to food banks and, if this is not possible, it must be transformed into other products such as juices or jams. If this option is also not viable, it must be used for animal feed and, in the last instance, for making industrial sub-products and being recycled to obtain compost or fuels.
• Bitter oranges as biogas in Seville. The capital city of Andalusia has around 50,000 street orange trees that produce bitter oranges, a fruit that has no definitive reuse and is sent directly to landfill. With the idea of giving this raw material the longest possible useful life, the city has decided to turn its juice into biogas and, with this energy, to guarantee the energy self-sufficiency of its treatment plants and fuel city buses. And this is not all: the organic waste is turned into compost for the fields.
• The water M-40 freeway in Madrid. The Spanish capital has created a circular system of underground pipes that distributes treated water for reuse in irrigating green areas and cleaning the streets and drains.
• Excess hydroalcoholic gel. Non-profit organizations like Fundacion Valora try to prevent products from ending up in the garbage. This institution specifically provides institutions and care centers with excess products of all kinds. Among the materials available currently are 100 cordless phones and more than 100 cases of bottles of hydroalcoholic gel. Since 2014, they have received donations from more than 700 companies and have recovered around 3.5 million articles from 600 organizations.

“It is a question of using our resources as much as we can, trying to repair what breaks, extending the useful life of products,” explained the Repsol Environmental Development manager. “For example, if an electrical appliance breaks down, why not first try to fix it, see if we can repair it, before throwing it away or buying a new one? This would also apply to reducing food waste.” In order to be as efficient as possible when repairing or replacing, the chairman of the board of the Circular Economy Foundation says that the ideal solution is not always to reuse or repair, and gives the example of an electrical appliance that has low energy efficiency: “It is necessary to know what is offering me quality and appropriate environmental consumption,” he explains.

This context is where initiatives based on the circular economy come into play, like Reutilizak, which provides devices to schools, cooperatives, social organizations, and socially vulnerable families. The project has recovered 2,800 computers and collaborates with companies like Metro de Madrid and IBM.

The same can be done with the technology used by government departments. La Casa Azul is a company in Almeria that has taken 2,000 computers from public bodies. They check and format them, and expand the memory so that they can continue operating.

Now, in Taiwan, this same researcher has built a nine-story structure using 1.5 million plastic bottles, which he collected in only two weeks. At the same time, researchers at the University of Tokyo created a construction material similar to cement entirely from food waste, such as banana and orange peels, onions, tea leaves, ground coffee, pumpkins, and seaweed.

Although on a smaller scale, cities in Spain are also following the trend of recovering materials. This is the case of the city council of Zarautz (Gipuzkoa), which has created a children’s playground manufactured using recycled plastic, and Molder Disnova, a company in Valencia, that uses rice husks to make slides and swing seats.

Palencia uses picnic benches and tables made from recycled polymer In its street furniture and La Rioja uses road signs created using discarded tires, which, according to the Directorate General of Traffic magazine, are more ecological, economical, and safe because, by being manufactured with light, elastic materials, with no corners or sharp edges, they cause less injury in the case of an accident.

Recycling will be successful, says Borrego-Marín, if it is thought of as an intermediate step in the circular economy process and not as the end. The link to the other R’s is undeniable. For example, with the redesign of products and cities, as, with only a small percentage of any mixed material, recycling is impossible.

Carrillo agrees with the idea that in Europe only 12% of the material resources used for new production, from recycling and recovery, while the remaining 88% “involves newly extracting raw materials, a good part of them imported”. However, Borrego-Marín defends the fact that the new PERTEs (Strategic Projects for Economic Recovery and Transformation) make waste management “almost an obligation”.

The aim of the project is to have circularity. Some of the seven R’s are found in initiatives like the sewing workshops that give a second life to unused fishing nets, using all parts of the fish, and even the building in the port of San Sebastian in which they are located, which was provided by the Basque government and which includes a hydrothermal system that uses the thermal energy of the sea. They are also working on a project for photovoltaic panels that, when placed on the roof, will be capable of generating a good part of the electricity that they consume. Because of all of these projects, in 2022, this restaurant received one of the Sol Sostenible #AlimentosdEspaña awards that the Repsol Guide gives out in order to publicize the efforts of the restaurant sector and its decision to adopt environmentally responsible practices.

_{Publiished in El País}