¿Qué sigue para la economía circular en 2026? (11)

[00:00:00.000] - Seb Egerton-Read Welcome back to Circular Snapshots. I'm Seb, and we've got a good one this month. Coming up, EV Batteries and why end of life is actually the beginning of an industrial opportunity, a new Ellen MacArthur Foundation report on bio-based materials and the policy gap that's been holding them back, and a major piece of research on circular economy jobs, who's doing them, and why so many of them aren't good enough yet. Then, four quick headlines on Scotland, Europe's critical minerals, fashion policy, and flexible packaging. Let's go.

[00:00:36.000] - Seb Egerton-Read The World Economic Forum has published a piece making the argument that recycling of EV batteries is not a waste management challenge. It's an industrial opportunity. The World Resources Institute projects 20.5 million tonnes of retired EV batteries globally by 2040.

[00:00:53.720] - Seb Egerton-Read The piece says that today, 20-30% of retired batteries in China are handled through unregulated channels. In the UK, 90% of used EV batteries are going unprocessed. Inside those batteries, lithium, nickel, cobalt, the same critical minerals governments are scrambling to secure. The IEA estimates battery recycling could cut demand for newly mined lithium and nickel by 25% and cobalt by 40% by 2050.

[00:01:22.740] - Seb Egerton-Read None of this happens automatically. It requires circular design baked in from the start, not retrofitted once batteries start retiring at scale. The EU's battery booster, launched this month with €1.5 billion in support, puts material recovery at the center. The EV battery recycling market is projected to reach €91 billion by 2034.

[00:01:45.740] - Seb Egerton-Read For more on this topic and the importance of the circular economy to critical minerals more generally, check out episode 207 of this podcast, where our very own Lou caught up with Wen-Yu on this topic. We'll play you a quick teaser now.

[00:01:59.260] - Wen-Yu Weng If something can make us profit and do good, wouldn't we have done that already? From a material perspective, it's not that you just give up on fossil fuels, or you use less fossil fuels. There are other trade-offs. While you're using less fossil fuels, you're using more of other things.

[00:02:13.780] - Wen-Yu Weng IEA often found that people are very receptive and open to this idea that we can innovate our way out of a linear economy through technology. But they're not so good with accepting that when it comes to behaviors or changing the commercial model.

[00:02:28.420] - Seb Egerton-Read The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has published a new report, Circular by Nature, a policy agenda for bio-based materials. Wood, paper, natural fibers, rubber, leather, fundamental to construction, furniture, fashion, and automotive, but not yet connected to circular economy policy. The problem, circular economy policy treats bio-based materials mainly as substitutes for plastic. Bio-based materials policy treats them as commodities to extract and convert energy.

[00:02:56.460] - Seb Egerton-Read Neither captures the economic value of keeping them in use through repair, reuse, and recycling. Value is being lost. Progress on climate and biodiversity is being limited. The report proposes five policy pillars to fix this and makes a particularly strong economic argument for the producing countries in the Global South, where a circular approach means more value captured domestically, not exported as low-margin commodities.

[00:03:24.620] - Seb Egerton-Read In two weeks, we'll be covering this topic in more detail on the podcast, and we'll be joined by Gui from the Foundation's Brazil office and Beto, who's the CEO of FARFARM. Do tune into that one in a couple of weeks time.

[00:03:37.660] - Seb Egerton-Read The IFC, and a group of multilateral development banks, published a joint note this month on circular economy jobs. The headline 121 -142 million people worldwide already work in circular activities, around 5-5.8% of global non-agricultural employment. Nearly half are in repair and maintenance, and the opportunity is already here. It's just not glamorous.

[00:04:03.900] - Seb Egerton-Read But over 74 million of those workers are in the informal economy. No contracts, no safety protections. The circular economy already employs a lot of people. It just doesn't employ them well enough yet. The barriers are structural, and the note is honest about them. Virgin material price advantages, underdeveloped repair markets, and skill gaps.

[00:04:25.360] - Seb Egerton-Read The ask is simple. Treat circular job creation like any serious economic development program. The note backs this up with concrete case studies. Serbia's recycling infrastructure, Swappie's smartphone refurbishing platform, and Moove's ride-hailing drivers in Nigeria. This isn't altruism. It's an economic strategy.

[00:04:48.260] - Seb Egerton-Read Time for some quick headlines. Zero Waste Scotland has published its most comprehensive material flow accounts to date. Scotland requires 200 million tonnes of material inputs in 2020, 37 tonnes per person, and 43% of all materials, including two-thirds of critical raw materials, come from overseas. A stark picture of resource dependency and a clear evidence base for Scotland's circular economy strategy.

[00:05:19.580] - Seb Egerton-Read Next up, a four-year Horizon Europe project called FutuRaM has found that Europe is sitting on significant stockpiles of lithium, cobalt, and rare earths, locked in its own waste streams. Most isn't being recovered. Devices go to gray markets, get stockpiled in homes, or leave the region before refiners can access them. FutuRaM is treating urban waste like mining deposits and giving policymakers the data to act on it as the Critical Raw Materials Act tightens.

[00:05:51.380] - Seb Egerton-Read Switching up to fashion, and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has published a report called The New Bottom Line, focusing on policy fixes for the fashion industry. The report makes the case for three policy levers to make resale and repair commercially viable, reduce VAT on second-hand transactions, lower labor taxes on repair, and implement ambitious EPR, so producers pay more of the true cost of linear production. The economics are fixable. The question is political will.

[00:06:24.380] - Seb Egerton-Read Finally, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation sat down with Unilever and PepsiCo to talk about switching small format flexible packaging to paper. The honest takeaway is genuinely hard. Every second, 25,000 items of flexible packaging enters the ocean. Paper is the solution most people agree on, but local economics, technical constraints, and scale make it far more complicated than it sounds. Worth keeping an eye on that story as it develops.

[00:06:55.160] - Seb Egerton-Read That's June. The industrial opportunity of recycling EV batteries, the opportunity to connect bio-based material policies across circular economy and the biodiversity and climate agenda, and the importance of up-leveling circular economy jobs.

[00:07:10.360] - Seb Egerton-Read Thanks for listening to this episode of The Circular Economy Show. We'll put all the links to the articles and news that we reference in the show notes. Do join us next time. We'll be talking about the infrastructure gap and how to fill it with collaborative action across industries.