125 Walter R Stahel: signs of circular progress

Professor Walter R Stahel is widely acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of what is now known as the circular economy.

Catherine Weetman says: I first heard Walter speak at an circular economy event in London, back in 2015, and then had the opportunity to work with him as on the SFB for the Circular Economy Alliance. We wrote a paper together on Intelligent Decentralisation, one of the concepts he introduced in his latest book, The Circular Economy: A Users Guide.

Walter describes himself as An architect by training, an industrial analyst by compassion, and a researcher in risk management to earn an exciting living.

These days, his is a keynote speaker and author on sustainability and circular economy and says he has always been interested in what he does not know.

Walter is the founder and director of the Product-Life Institute in Switzerland, founded in 1982 and now Europe’s oldest sustainability-based consultancy and think tank.

With over 500 publications since 1975, he holds a number of visiting professor and lecturing roles, and a long list of awards and advisory roles, including being a Full Member of the Club of Rome.

Walter sees the circular economy as a ‘changer of the globalised industrial game’, creating societal resilience and providing protection against disruptive events. Walter created the idea of the performance economy, as a way of extending the concepts of the circular economy, and says that many of the opportunities are either untapped, or criticised by those who benefit from the Rentier Economy. If you want to know more about the problems of the rentier economy, have a listen back to ep 119 with Ken Webster.

Walter summarised his main concepts in Nature magazine a while ago, and I’ve included a link in the shownotes.

As Walter has been pioneering these concepts for almost 50 years, I was keen to hear how he views things now, where he sees signs of progress, and how we can help accelerate the shift towards circular strategies.

We talk about the business case for the circular economy, and Walter highlights some of the aspects that are often missed, especially for the future value of materials. We discuss the opportunities offered by platforms, digital twins and passports for products and materials, and why we need better ways to assess the remaining life of expensive products and components.

We discuss the need to shift from a mindset of owning to using, and the need to change how we frame things for customers and businesses. Walter describes how we might rethink designs to minimise risks and liabilities, and how caring for our things opens up lots of interesting career opportunities, especially for young people.