The ways waste is collected in Ghana, disposed of in Chicago and managed by the bubble-tea industry in Singapore provide windows onto how inclusive circular economies can work around the world.

Finding policy solutions to put such economic models into action was the task for the graduate students and Ph.D. candidates from 16 universities who took part in the Harris School of Public Policy’s 2021 Inter-Policy School Summit (IPSS).

For this fifth annual student-led IPSS, Harris collaborated with first-time partner PYXERA Global on what PYXERA described as “a living laboratory for regenerative and inclusive circular economy policy creation.” Weeks of work led to five student policy papers on projects now under way or nearly so and a two-day IPSS virtual event in March.

How can we build a circular economy and a more sustainable way of life?

That event kicked off on Friday, March 5. John Holm, PYXERA’s vice president of strategic initiatives, was the host/moderator and listed the “multiple crises that we’re currently dealing with on our planet Earth.” Those included inequitable economic systems, climate change, the crushing amount of plastic waste and, according to a Scientific American article he cited, the less than 60 years of farming remaining if soil degradation continues.

“There are solutions,” Holm said. “But without policy none of this is going to work.” 

Harris’ policy expertise coupled with the fact that the IPSS launched in 2017 as the world’s first and only student-run policy conference attracted PYXERA, Holm said.

“This is not just a science project. The work that [students] do can have an impact." – John Holm

“I think they got excited about that,” he added, and that excitement showed in their engagement and in the solutions they proposed to help move the world away from its linear “take-make-dispose” economic model, which sidelines marginalized communities, particularly indigenous people.

“This generation of students,” Holm added, “has to save the world. We’ve got about a 15-year clock to set this straight.”

The 2021 IPSS zeroed in on the circular economy model that, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, designs out waste and pollution, keeps products and materials in use and regenerates natural systems. Previous Summits focused on: the intersecting challenges of city resiliency and climate change (2020); climate change and national security (2019); the intersection of cybersecurity and trade (2018); and Amazon deforestation (2017).

“Policy is at the forefront of what we’re looking to do,” Holm said of PYXERA, which tackles global challenges by uniting public, private and social sectors. With Harris’ IPSS, he said, “we saw an opportunity to say ‘Wait a second. Let’s take all the geographies that we have in the world right now that we’re actively working in or our partners are working in and then target policy and get ahead of the curve.’ ” 

This year, IPSS partnered with PYXERA Global.

Ways to get ahead were front and center during the Summit. Keynote speaker John Elkington, an author, entrepreneur and founder of the global sustainability movement, discussed urban trends, opportunities for regenerative capitalism and such policy sea changes as the European Green Deal.  After the keynote, Holm led a discussion with Elkington and Dr. Garry Cooper, CEO and co-founder of Chicago-based Rheaply, a circular economy startup.

“The  current [economic] model is not working and it’s not up for debate,” Cooper said. “There’s literally no number that we can get to that shows that we should continue this linear economic model when there’s a much, much, much better solution.”

The difference between a circular economy and a linear economy, in one graphic.

Elkington noted that the challenge is how to come up with solutions that are integrated and inclusive and “not just softly, gently inclusive but radically inclusive.” 

Panels followed spotlighting Ghana and how its waste collectors can play a role, and profit from, integrating trash, particularly single-use plastic, back into the economy. Attention turned next to the United States’ tribal nations and tribes and how their wisdom on and experience with regenerative practices can be an example. Wrapping up Friday’s events was a panel on Chicago and its circular city efforts. All three topics were explored further in the policy papers that students worked on with industry and policy mentors.

On Saturday, March 6, students pitched their proposals.

 “We had 25 participants who were broken up into five teams present the work they had done from the past six weeks to six judges,” said Ersilia Melchiorre, MPP Class of 2021, who was co-executive director of the IPSS along with Charity Coleman, also a member of the MPP Class of 2021.

Judges did not rank the proposals, but provided feedback to help sharpen ideas, Melchiorre said. Judges were Holm, Susan Ruffo, senior adviser at The Circulate Initiative; Jonathan Pereira, executive director at Plant Chicago; Chandar van der Zande, cities consultant at Metabolic; Ana Fraisse-Tilden, who works on strategic initiatives at PYXERA; and Lauren Phipps, director and senior analyst on circular economy at GreenBiz.

Papers looked at issues including the plastic waste problem in Nome, Alaska, and the impact that has on native communities. Recommendations included a call for a native-owned and operated plastic conversion cooperative that would turn single-use plastic waste into bricks and pallets. The Circular Chicago Team looked at how to align existing infrastructure to achieve sustainable and equitable economic outcomes in a city that, despite many initiatives, has waste diversion rates among the lowest relative to other jurisdictions. The Ghana Group explored ways to boost that nation's recycling rate while improving the health and livelihoods of its lowest-income citizens.

Papers also dug into problems in Prague and Singapore. For the Prague report, students homed in on the city’s construction industry, which they said is the biggest contributor to municipal waste. The goal there is reuse of construction materials to reduce waste. 

In Singapore, the question was how to navigate both a big plastic waste problem and shrinking landfill capacity. A solution was adopting a “regulatory sandbox”  for the bubble tea industry to test plastic-waste-cutting initiatives and regulations. Straws are a necessity for drinking the popular bubble tea and currently most are plastic. 

“Every single one of these projects … could potentially be leveraged,” Holm said. “That’s just a really cool opportunity.”