Developing the circular economy in Scotland: resource flows, behaviours, and skills
Project Lead
Challenges
Scotland has ambitious targets to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2045. As part of this, the Scottish Government is working towards a suite of targets tackling waste generation and disposal by 2025, with a longer-term vision to move towards a circular economy for the benefit of the environment, the economy, and communities.
Circular economy principles involve a transition from a linear ‘take, make and dispose’ model of consumption to a more circular model which emphasises material flows, recovery of resources and components, and valorisation of waste products. In the circular economy, our approach to consumption would need to be characterised by new behaviours (of individuals, households and businesses) focusing on reducing the volumes of resources consumed, by instead reusing items, repairing instead of replacing items, refurbishing or remanufacturing to create new products and recycling what remains.
Moving towards a circular economy requires a broad cultural shift in how consumers and businesses think about and act concerning the consumption and disposal of materials and products. This requires more strategic evidence to support policymakers in promoting behaviour change, the development of new business and lifestyle models, and a further understanding of the wider workforce skills that will be necessary to support the circular economy transition.
Questions
- What influences the likelihood of consumers adopting circular economy practices, how can elements of successful behaviour change programmes elsewhere be transferred to the circular economy and can these be best communicated to different demographics and protected characteristics?
- Where do opportunities for new types of jobs exist, both geographically and sectorally?
- What is the scale of opportunity in different sectors and regions, and how might this link to the wider rural economy?
Solutions
This project will focus on the cultural and behavioural aspects underpinning the transition to a circular economy. We are developing our understanding of the individual, social and material factors associated with behaviours and choices salient to the circular economy transition in individual, household and business and organisation contexts across Scotland.
Framework for understanding behaviours and simulating future scenarios
We are exploring different interventions and policy scenarios that would be required to produce the necessary changes in environmental behaviour. This involves creating a comprehensive theoretical framework of the underpinning social scientific foundations and using these insights to inform the development of a model. This model is being used to explore the effects of scenarios involving changes to individual, household, and business behaviours on resource flows and other relevant outcomes. The model is running Simulations that incorporate social behaviours and summaries of resource flow into combined models and is being used to investigate the effects of scenarios involving changes to individual, household, and business behaviours on resource flows and other relevant outcomes.
Everyday household behaviours
We are investigating the factors affecting the uptake of circular economy behaviours amongst individuals and households. Relevant behaviours might include renting or purchasing products and services from businesses adopting circular principles, prioritising products with a long lifespan, changing everyday consumption practices, buying second-hand or refurbished items, repairing, reusing and repurposing items, and selling for reuse.
Organisational behaviours
Building on the existing work of Zero Waste Scotland, we investigate motivations and barriers to adopting circular economy practices. Key considerations are where opportunities for new types of jobs exist, why types of skills are needed, and what training may be necessary for people and businesses to develop the skills to transition to a more circular economy. We also consider the importance of the workplace as an important context for everyday life, as many people spent a lot of time at the workplace, which makes it a potentially important intervention context for influencing individual action.
Assessing scenarios combining different intervention options
We are assessing scenarios combining different intervention options to identify potential actions to support the transition to a more circular economy, to different resource flows. We are evaluating different combinations of circular economy intervention measures and prioritising resource flows relating to selected consumer products and construction, particularly to the housing sector. We prioritise resource flows relating to selected consumer products and construction, particularly for the housing sector.
Overall, this ambitious project provides strategic evidence to support policymakers in promoting behaviour change, developing new business and lifestyle models, and understanding the wider workforce skills that will be necessary to support the circular economy transition.
Project Partners
Progress
Our research team has come together effectively in Year 1, working towards building in-depth knowledge of what was a new subject area for many of us. We have proactively engaged with stakeholders and practitioners, including colleagues from Zero Waste Scotland, Circular Communities Scotland, the private sector, academia, and local authorities (as well as Scottish Government policy makers) to align the focus of our strategic research on everyday circular behaviours in the household and organisational/business contexts.
Building a theoretical framework for understanding behaviours and embedding this theoretical approach within social simulation models
The project team have all undergone basic training in social simulation using the software, netlogo (an agent-based modelling platform). It was decided that this was a preferable approach to simply handing over the modelling work entirely to a technical expert. The models need to be continually iterated (by the research team and stakeholders), to ensure that the information being included in the models is a plausible representation of the phenomenon under investigation. Ultimately these models will be used to test future policy scenarios under different combinations of assumptions when assessing scenarios combining different intervention options.
Developing an understanding of individual and household circular behaviours
We have established the extent of available secondary survey data to examine circular behaviours and proposed a module for the European Social Survey (ESS) focussing specifically on this. Whilst the module was ultimately not approved for inclusion in the ESS, the work that was included in the proposal will form an important aspect of the survey development work for Year 2 of this project.
Developing an understanding of organisational behaviour
This work package investigates the motivations and barriers associated with adopting circular behaviours from the perspective of different organisations, including both businesses and the public sector. The first year has been focussed on developing and piloting the methods for the work to be carried out in Year 2 and ensuring that the ethics review is complete.
Assessing scenarios combining different intervention options
This work package focusses on assessing future scenarios combining different policy options designed to accelerate the uptake of circular behaviours. Following discussion with the project advisory group, we have agreed on the scope of the product focus and have completed an international review of problem products - which has been made available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) website. In Year 2 we need to focus considerable effort on defining the outcome indicator(s) associated with each model, and any data requirements that may be needed to calibrate the models in relation to these indicators.
An overarching aim for the project is to include an open science approach across the project, for which we have thus far focussed on training the team on open science principles and establishing a presence on the OSF website.
Related Projects
The aim of this RD is to assess the environmental sustainability of different sectors of the rural economy and identify trade-offs and opportunities for the production and use of bio-materials in a circular economy. The key drivers for this research are policies for the circular economy and zero waste domains.
- Land Use
- Circular Economy & Waste
- 2016-2022