When it comes to inspiring speakers Gunter Pauli is one of the people who manage to combine science, business, sustainability, and ethics; all in one presentation talking about new way of thinking about economy. At the end of last year I had the opportunity to attend his public lecture at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands on the theory of ‘Blue Economy’. The main idea behind the blue economy is that value has to be created in the vicinity of locally available resources, without their exhaustion. The business model behind this strategy is based on design of products and services that combine several benefits through bundling of diversity of sustainability oriented innovations. Creating various cash flows is fundamental for their successful implementation. This allows businesses to respond to multiple stresses and challenges that are occurring within the society. Building up social capital and creating new jobs in the process through use of natural environment without its depletion are the main goals of the work conducted by Gunter Pauli as he is not only a professor of economics but also an innovative entrepreneur.
The first example he used in his speech to illustrate his theory impressed me for several reasons. First of all it relates to agriculture and food, secondly it came from Italy, and thirdly it has a deep social impact on its environment. The example concerned a shrub which we normally consider a weed, namely thistle. On the first sight a useless plant that has to be terminated by farmers just like any other weed. On the island of Sardinia this weed occupies approximately 70 thousand hectares of agricultural land due to its abandonment by local farmers who saw a brighter future in island`s tourism industry and who were encouraged, by EU Common Agricultural Policy, not to farm anymore. At the same time due to high prices of petroleum the Italian petrochemical industry has been in crises and as consequence refineries and plants are closing down. Sardinia used to be an important production location for the Italian energy and petrochemicals industries but due to the high production costs the refinery of Porto Torres in the northern part of the island had to be closed. This meant loss of jobs and capital in a place which has been economically disadvantaged for years. By thinking out of the box and by applying the blue economy concept Novamont, Italian start-up which has over a thousand patents in bio-plastics, has offered the owners of the plant (ENI) a partnership and a way out. Through an injection of about 700 different new patents it allowed the refinery to start using a local resource that has been considered a weed. Novamont suggested that thistles can be used for production of thistle oil that is used as raw input for production of bio plastics, lubricants, elastomers, and herbicides. The 70 thousand hectares of abandoned land produce 360 thousand tons of thistles, which allowed 80% of the refinery infrastructure to stay in use. Besides the production process creates
20 thousand tons of thistle leftovers that have been introduced as animal feed into the local food system. The switch to this ‘new’ animal feed helped to reduce the costs for local livestock keepers by 2/3. An unforeseen side effect has been the fact that local women of Porto Torres have approached the initiative with the request to use some of the leftovers from the thistle flowers with which they make a variety of local Sardinian cheese. The enzymes of the thistle flowers help to create a particular maturation process of this cheese. The production of thistle oil produces 2 tons of flower leftovers annually that in future will be used in scaling up of local cheese production. This way the initiative was able to keep and create new jobs. A different generation of farmers is developing in the area of Porto Torres, land is in use, animal husbandry is back, petroleum is substituted by ‘weed’, local environment underwent a clean-up, and the local economy is re-industrialized and reinvigorated.
According to prof. Gunter Pauli local economy can generate more money than global market. In fact, it breeds a strong multiplier effect. His idea is not about closing the production loops where materials can be reused. The focus of any innovation should be on generating more value by creating the multiplier effects through capitalizing on growth in the economy by using what is locally available. The entrepreneur in Gunter Pauli tells him that this is taking the petrochemical industry into the new world of bio-refineries and is changing the paradigm of the entire industry. Also it is an opportunity for re-launch of agriculture without subsidies. His prediction is that in the next two to three years; at least another 25 petrochemical plants will have to close down in Europe. This should not be seen as yet another threat but as an opportunity to innovate.
