secondary economy, an opposition that is not without a reminder of the same antagonistic pattern that exists in energy production. However, it is legitimate to think that the management of a flow is more complex and less flexible than that of a stock, even more so when there is significant uncertainty about the former.
To sum up, recycling research is still marked by significant gray areas. As there is now a willingness to include recycling in a comprehensive circular economy policy, together with other tools such as the reduction of primary materials (efficiency) or their reuse, it seems that we cannot simply optimize recycling procedures independently of other circular economy measures (Berlingen 2020). In this case, there is indeed a strong chance of crowding out effects between measures. The outcry over the recycling deposit measure proposed by the Secretary of State to the Minister for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition in France, Brune Poirson, for plastic bottles is a good illustration of this. This measure is contested by local authorities, which would then be deprived of the collection and resale of this waste, for which they have already invested significant amounts in recycling infrastructures. According to the environmental associations, this project would also hamper environment preservation because the deposit for reuse is in this situation more efficient than the deposit for recycling.
Another illustration is the reduction of the precious metal content of electronic cards, for reasons of cost and efficiency, which has considerably reduced the attractiveness of recycling these cards, and also of all the minor metals that accompany them (Cui and Roven 2011; Adie et al. 2016). These two examples present possible incompatibilities between circular economy measures, which require careful study of the interaction effects when several measures are launched in parallel. We must also, in each situation, favor certain forms of leverage rather than generating their use across the entire circular economy.
Finally, we can see that sobriety is still the overlooked aspect of environmental policies. Often referred to in the reports of international organizations and in the wishes of companies to make their environmental balance sheet greener, moderation is not often put into practice and rarely deployed in the field or in implementing decrees. Philippe Bihouix’s contribution (Chapter 8) explores this possibility through a combination of objectives such as ecodesign (recyclability and product durability), “moderate use of machinery” in his terms, the resizing of activities and work on the desirability of change (highlighting the gains associated with change). Using numerous examples, he describes what could be an alternative to the search for green growth, which is confronted with complexity and often leads to rebound effects. Indeed, as we have seen in Volume 1 of this book, efficiency (providing the same economic service with less material/energy) rarely results in a decrease in consumption because this is in any case outweighed by the increase in the volume of activity. Renunciation and moderation could thus intervene where efficiency fails, by cutting off at source the primary cause of the exponential increase in the consumption of natural resources. Nevertheless, as is often forgotten, sobriety is not business-friendly and the stagnation (or even decline) in the volume of activity does not go without posing problems in terms of budget balance, debt sustainability and the financing of pension systems, notwithstanding its effects in terms of employment and unemployment. These are the questions that arise at the opening of Volume 2 of this book, which is devoted to the issues at stake and, above all, to the leverage that can provide a response to the various challenges that must be taken up in order to achieve the sustainable growth mentioned in Volume 1.
I.3. References
Adie, G.U., Sun, L., Zeng, X., Zheng, L., Osibanjo, O., Li, J. (2017). Examining the evolution of metals utilized in printed circuit boards. Environmental Technology, 38(13–14), 1696–1701 [Online]. Available at: doi 10.1080/09593330.2016.1237552.
Barbier, E.B. (2011). Scarcity and Frontiers: How Economies Have Developed through Natural Resource Exploitation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Berlingen, F. (2020). Recyclage, le grand enfumage : comment l’économie circulaire est devenue l’alibi du jetable. Éditions Rue de l’échiquier, Paris.
Bihouix, P. (2019). Le bonheur était pour demain. Le Seuil, Paris.
Cui, J. and Roven, H.J. (2011). Electronic waste. In Waste, Letcher, T., Vallero, D. (eds). Academic Press, Cambridge.
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Fizaine, F. (2020). The economics of recycling rate: New insights from waste electrical and electronic equipment, Resources Policy, 67 [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2020.
Krausmann, F., Wiedenhofer, D., Lauk, C., Haas, W., Tanikawa, H., Fishman, T., Miatto, A., Schandl, H., Haberl, H. (2017). Global socioeconomic material stocks rise 23-fold over the 20th century and require half of annual resource use. PNAS, 114(8), 1880–1885.
Pitron, G. (2018). La Guerre des métaux rares : la face cachée de la transition énergétique et numérique. Les Liens qui libèrent, Paris.
Söderholm, P. (2011). Taxing virgin natural resources: Lessons from aggregates taxation in Europe. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 55, 911–922.
UNEP (2016). Global material flows and resource productivity. An assessment study of the UNEP International Resource Panel. United Nations Environment Programme, Paris.
Wiedmann, T.O., Schandl, H., Lenzen, M., Moran, D., Suh, S., West, J., Kanemoto, K. (2015). The material footprint of nations. PNAS, 112(20), 6271–6276.
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