‘Focus on circular economy’

Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus on Friday said the circular economy and social stock market will lead to a new civilisation.
"Instead of greed-driven stock market, there will be social market and instead of current wasteful economy, there will be circular economy," he said at a panel discussion on the last day of the 9th Global Social Business Summit.
The two-day summit concluded at Autostadt Wolfsburg in Germany on Friday.
Prof Yunus believed that reversing the current course of the economic activities is essential for a new future.
"It is not just some tinkering but fully redesign and restructure of the system is a must," he added.
According to him, every crisis brings new opportunity and people have to utilise it.
In this connection, Mr Yunus advised Volkswagen Group to turn itself into a social business or at least 'B Corp' to recover its image crisis.
The German car giant has come under criticism as it admitted cheating emissions tests in the United States three years back.
'B Corp' is a global certification for maintaining highest standards of verified social, environmental and financial performance with transparency by any corporation or business entity.
Expressing grave concern over widespread plastic pollution and its dangerous effects on human beings as well as mother nature, Prof Yunus urged all to come ahead to contain pollution. He believed that social business model can effectively contribute in this regard.
He said only 10 big rivers in the world are now absorbing 90 per cent of plastic pollution across the globe and by controlling the rivers, this pollution can be reduced.
Dr Simeon Ries of Enodo, a Frankfurt-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), told the FE on the sidelines of the conference that linear model of development ended with resource extraction, production and consumption.
"But non-linear approach calls better production process with reuse and recycling of resources which leads to circular economy," he added.
"Our resources are not unlimited but we are not adequately focusing on the circular economy," he continued, adding that western world needs to acknowledge the fact and take actions.
The circular economy framework stresses keeping resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them whilst in use, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of each service life.
Ashraful Hassan, managing director of Grameen Distribution Ltd, said transformation to the circular economy has a cost initially.
"There is a shortage of skilled manpower for green production and financing is also a challenge," he added while speaking at a session.
Both Dr Ries and Mr Ashraf were of the view that social business model can be an effective tool to promote the circular economy.
Developed by Muhammad Yunus, the social business model asks to do business to address some social problems.
But investors are not allowed to take dividend from the profit generated through the business. Only original investment can be taken back while profit has to reinvest to expand the business.
The theme of this year's global social business summit was 'Building a New Civilisation' while the main topics for discussion and debate were 'Plastic & Circular Economy', 'Mobility', 'Solidarity', 'Sports & Social Business' and 'Food & Its Value'.
Hans Reitz, head of the global social business summit, urged all to continue their efforts to expand the social business movement.
The two-day summit was associated with two other events - academia conference and young challengers' meeting- which took place at the same venue on Tuesday and Wednesday.

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