Circular economy and bioeconomy are bets for decarbonization

Faced with the importance of decarbonizing the economy, new development models based on the integration between economic and ecological systems are emerging. Circular economy (CE) and bioeconomy are promising approaches.

circular economy

The circular economy replaces the linear economy that prevails today. The linear production system is characterized by the extraction of natural resources, processing, sale and marketing of products and, consequently, disposal after they are no longer useful.

According to the coordinator of the Production Engineering course at Cesuca Centro Universitário, Eduardo Batista, the circular economy is opposed to the linear economy, which has low sustainability in environmental terms.

“If we think about the linear economy, it has a natural season, it has a disposal. The circular economy, as the name implies, closes in on itself in which the disposal made by companies of products that are no longer used, or even waste generated in the process, are used within the economy itself as resources for other companies. So it is not simply the correct disposal of waste, it goes beyond that: it is an economy that uses disposal as its own resources”, he explains.

The circular economy plays an important role in industrial decarbonization, as Professor Eduardo Batista explains.

“In the circular economy, we have a reincorporation in the production chain of materials that have already been transformed, perhaps they will have to undergo some operation, but this will mean less use of energy for reincorporation in the production line of the company that is using the resources. That is, he is putting something that has already been transformed into your production circuit, this will require less resource station and less energy consumption for the consumption of that resource.”

Patrícia Guarnieri, PhD in production engineering from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), who did a post-doctorate in circular economy at the University of Bologna, in Italy, highlights some circular solutions that can be implemented by the industry.

“Altering the energy matrix, reducing ‘food waste’ (food waste). So you can make that food that would be wasted come back in the form of feed, in the form of other by-products and stop going to landfills. The use of cleaner technologies that reduce waste at all stages of the process. The reduction of deforestation, companies that do not practice or that do not buy raw materials from deforestation and in terms of improving transport infrastructure, we see several logistics operators putting a more modern fleet that uses sustainable fuels, such as biofuel, ethanol and biogas”, he points out.

bioeconomy

The shift from a linear economic vision based on fossil fuels to a circular economy highlights the negative impact of human action on the environment. To reduce this impact on all value chains, renewable resources and biomass consumption become increasingly necessary.

In this sense, the bioeconomy is defined as “the use of biological inputs in the production process, mainly in the agricultural and industrial sectors. This process uses renewable resources that do not generate waste in the economy”, explains economist and bioeconomy specialist Guide Nunes.

According to the specialist, the main objective of bioeconomy is to disseminate the use of biologically based products, in order to replace traditional inputs with items whose production respects ecosystems.

“The role of the bioeconomy is to encourage the use of renewable energy, including from biological inputs such as microalgae. In terms of renewable energy, Brazil already has a good accumulation, there is the issue of ethanol, we have a very clean energy composition that is hydroelectric energy, photovoltaic energy, wind energy, so Brazil has a very rich biodiversity, which is an asset. It is not only a life and natural asset, it is also an economic asset, which can generate a lot of value for society, if Brazilian society knows how to use it”, he says.

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