Circular economy in the Russian Federation

3 Circular economy in the Russian Federation

Alexander Alexandrovich Startsev, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Professor of the International University of Fundamental Studies, Oxford Educational Network, Director of the International Centre for Assisting the Implementation of UNIDO Programmes and Projects at the Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology (Technical University), President of the North-Western International Cleaner Production Centre, International Expert of UNIDO

The basis for the development of the circular economy is the Environmental Security Strategy of the Russian Federation for the Period up to 2025 (Decree of the President of the RF dated 19.04.2017 No. 176).

The Environmental Security Strategy of the RF sets tasks, among which are:

• efficient use of natural resources;
• increasing the level of utilization of production and consumption waste;
• developing a system of effective management of production and consumption waste;
• creating a utilization industry, including the reuse of such waste;
• stimulating the introduction of best available technologies and a number of other tasks.

The Strategy contains a description of the environmental situation in the country, provides statistical indicators on waste and on water, air and soil quality, and gives an assessment of the existence of a real threat to the environmental security of Russia.

As a possible prospect for the development of the circular economy, it is indicated that as a result of past economic and other activities in Russia:

• more than 30 billion tonnes of production and consumption waste have been accumulated;
• approximately 7.22 billion tonnes of production and consumption waste are generated annually;
• waste of hazard classes 3–5 accounts for about 415 million tonnes;
• of this, approximately 70 million tonnes are municipal solid waste;
• the quantity of waste that is not drawn into secondary economic circulation, but is placed in dumps and landfills, is growing.

All these negative factors lead to the withdrawal of productive agricultural land from circulation and to the chemical pollution of soil, groundwater and air (especially when waste dumps burn).

Currently, more than 80 waste-processing plants operate in Russia, yet their capacity utilization is only 30–40 per cent due to a lack of raw materials. The waste recycling rate averages 5–7 per cent, which is absolutely unacceptable. Aimed at changing this situation is the National Project “Ecology”, launched in Russia in 2019.

Within the framework of this project, it is planned to build 200 waste-processing plants in the country by 2024, and this requires organizing the separate collection of waste, which will serve as raw material for these plants.

In 2020, the plans have already been adjusted. Within the framework of the “waste reform” project, it is planned to build or reconstruct 868 “waste” facilities, 700 of which are new. Among these facilities will be:

• 148 waste incineration enterprises with a total capacity of 4.3 million tonnes per year (the cost of their infrastructure is at least 101 billion roubles (1.3 billion euros));
• 351 landfills built or modernized (costs – a minimum of 115 billion roubles (1.5 billion euros));
• 355 sorting stations created (costs – 201 billion roubles (2.7 billion euros));
• 25 waste incineration plants to be built by an alliance of state corporations – “Rostec”, “Rosatom” and VEB.RF – for 600 billion roubles (8 billion euros).

Russian legislation is mainly aimed at waste disposal, namely at storage and burial, or contains the most general provisions on its utilization and processing.

The model of a closed-loop economy as applied to waste utilization is defined as follows:

• use of waste for the manufacture of goods (products);
• performance of work and provision of services, including the reuse of waste for its direct purpose (recycling);
• return of waste to the production cycle after appropriate preparation (regeneration);
• extraction of useful components from waste for their reuse (recuperation).

Thus, the transition to a circular economy in Russia is mainly associated with waste utilization, since over the past 30 years the issue of waste utilization has turned into a paramount and extremely painful problem, especially for large cities.

The use of other business models of the circular economy is observed to a significantly lesser extent. These business models are oriented towards imitating European companies.

For instance, in our country, the online services Blablacar and “Delimobil” are actively used.

The company IKEA, whose shopping centres are located in large cities of Russia, accepts old furniture, textiles (towels, bed linen and bathrobes) and children's changing tables and cots, utilizes them and gives a new life to things.

A new life to old things is also given by the company H&M.

Below are three examples of an approach to the circular economy developed by Russian specialists.

First example. In Saint Petersburg in 2011 (under low tariffs – unfavourable conditions), the association “Avtopark Spetstrans No. 1” for the first time in the country built and commissioned an automated waste-sorting complex (AMSK) operating on the principles of resource conservation. The capacity of the AMSK is 100 thousand tonnes of waste per year. The new complex made it possible, through the mechanical processing of TKO, to enrich the main raw-material streams. Subsequently, production sections were organized for the utilization of these raw-material streams, and for the first time in Russia several types of alternative fuel (RDF), technogenic soils, secondary raw materials and commercial products were obtained. This became the first experience in Russia of supplying RDF to cement plants. Then, jointly with an industrial partner from Saint Petersburg, a state-of-the-art boiler house using “green” fuel was built.

This useful experience in 2020 received digital development, also in Saint Petersburg at a new production site. For the first time in Russian practice, the company “Avtopark Spetstrans No. 1” implemented a technology of robotic sorting of waste with a capacity of 150 thousand tonnes per year. In the autumn of 2020, in the south of the city, in the Obukhovo industrial zone, a production line controlled by artificial intelligence began operating. In addition to sorting household waste, the production of alternative fuel from waste has been established. The depth of processing is 70–75 per cent.

Alternative RDF fuel will be used to replace natural gas or coal at cement plants and TETs. In addition, a system has been built for wrapping inert sorting residues (they account for no more than 30 per cent) in a special film for safe disposal. Such briquettes contain neither methane nor leachate.

In 2021–2022, it is planned to increase the capacity of the complex (up to 300 thousand tonnes), to build and commission workshops for the deep processing of plastic and glass, and to expand the production of the fuel fraction RDF (spent fuel) and SRF (solid recovered fuel).

Second example. Everyone who is familiar with the process of desalinating seawater and groundwater knows well the difficult-to-solve problem of utilizing salt as a hazardous waste that is formed in large quantities.

In Saint Petersburg, specialists of the company “TVELL”, guided by the principles of the circular economy, developed and patented (March 2008) a formulation for ultra-high-strength composite concrete. The working name of the composite is magnesia-mineral-salt composition (MMSK). The technology is not only an effective method for utilizing salt waste, but also an excellent building material. Super-concrete based on MMSK is resistant to seawater and can be used in the construction of marine and port structures and reclaimed territories. Furthermore, into an MMSK matrix one can “pack” and safely store highly toxic chemical and even low-level liquid radioactive waste. The corresponding tests have been conducted.

Third example. A Russian academician has developed a unique technology for manufacturing Polarsol heat exchangers. The technology is an environmentally clean and economically viable solution for the purposes of heat recuperation. The universal Polarsol technology makes it possible to use simultaneously solar thermal energy, the thermal energy of air, water and earth, as well as wastewater (low-grade heat).

Polarsol makes it possible to easily convert thermal energy into cold (relevant for hot regions and summer months in the Northern Hemisphere of the planet), closing the circulation loop of heat/cold in industrial and residential premises. This is the cheapest kW·h of heat/cold in the world: with an expenditure of 1 kW of electrical energy, the output is on the order of 5–6 kW of heat/cold. In Russia, a production facility using this technology is being built in the city of Lipetsk.

It should be noted that all three of these examples emerged, unfortunately, not thanks to institutional support, but despite existing conditions.

The transition to a circular economy in Russia is hindered by existing barriers. Three groups of such barriers can be identified.

First group: institutional barriers

• Unfavourable monetary, credit and tax policy.
• The national currency (the rouble) is not an investment currency.
• Foreign investments are unavailable, including because of the sanctions regime.
• The established development institutions (various funds, agencies and state-participated corporations) work ineffectively towards the tasks of the circular economy.
• Budget revenues are falling against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic (the plan for 2021 is 18.8 trillion roubles, or 209 billion euros; this is less than in Belgium – 236 billion euros).
• Gross domestic product (GDP) is not the indicator needed for the dynamic development of the circular economy. Built into its structure is a drive towards unlimited growth rather than environmentally sustainable development and limits in accordance with the three axioms of the “green” economy.

Second group: natural-science barriers

• The main blind spot in modern science comprises questions about how ecosystems undisturbed by humans – forests, wetlands, tundra, oceans – are organized, how life in them continued without interruption, and how the environment remained suitable for life over hundreds of millions of years.
• The natural-science foundations of the stability of life in the biosphere do not serve as a guide to action for politicians and economic managers (the failure of the decisions of all international UN summits on environment and sustainable development – Rio-1992, Johannesburg-2002, Rio+20 – is evident).
• The balance between the technosphere and the biosphere disrupted by civilization (the observed signs of climate change – abnormal weather phenomena, floods, droughts, forest fires, hurricanes, which have become more frequent in recent years) cannot be corrected solely by implementing the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.
• Since the adoption in 2001 of the international Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), the situation with the chemical load on the environment has worsened manyfold (more than 160 million individual chemical substances and compounds alone have already been synthesized in the world, the use of which leads to the large-scale destruction of the homeostasis of biological species, that is, to irreversible processes undermining the stability of the diversity of life).
• The absence of adequate indicators of environmentally sustainable development, including comprehensive ones similar to a “well-being index” (for preserving sufficient volumes of wild nature and organizing normal human life activity in urban environments).
• Fundamental discoveries in global ecology: the “Theory of Biotic Regulation of the Environment and Climate” (1995) and the “Theory of the Forest Biotic Pump of Atmospheric Moisture from Ocean to Land” (2005), made by Saint Petersburg scientists (V. G. Gorshkov and A. M. Makarieva), are undeservedly perceived by world science as contradicting the established mainstream.

Third group: worldview and psychological barriers

• Nature is the measure of all things, and not man, as is customary in the interpretation of anthropocentrism – the dominant feature of the super-ideology of modernism.
• The laws of functioning of the biosphere are primary, and ignoring them when drawing up development plans for regions, countries and at the global level is impossible.
• Scientific and technological progress (STP) is unacceptable for achieving the stability of life (in nature and the cosmos there is no progress, but rather the cyclicality of processes). What we call STP is limited by the bounds of the permissible economic capacity of the biosphere; consequently, one cannot give free rein and funding to the realization of just any technical ideas that come into the heads of creatives.
• The goal of economic entities operating for the sake of maximum profit extraction (sustainable growth at any cost, even if “after us, the deluge”) is erroneous. Instead, the orientation must be towards creating a necessary and sufficient social product with a minimal anthropogenic load on the environment.
• Individualism, competition, disunity and crowding each other out of the goods and services market are poor motivation for developing a circular economy. Needed instead are: interdisciplinary cooperation, collaboration, joint research and development work, and artel economic management (each person's responsibility for the common cause and equality of participation without wage-levelling in incomes).

Thus, under the conditions of the unfolding collapse of the old world order, the growing systemic crisis of industrial society – which has reached its “limits to growth” – and humanity's transit into an information society, the principles of the circular economy that took shape over the past decade must change.

It will not be possible to get by with only a rapid and fundamental transformation of production and consumption systems. The problem is much more serious. What is at stake is the survival of civilization in the twenty-first century. And the key question that must be answered is: how should the climate agenda be properly defined?

During the plenary session of the seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club (22.10.2020), the head of the Russian state stated very vividly: “This problem requires real action and much greater attention. It has long ceased to be a sphere of abstract scientific interest and affects virtually every inhabitant of the Earth. ...Surely we do not want the climate on Earth to approach the conditions of Venus with its lifeless, scorched surface? Let me remind you that here on Earth it is around 14 degrees Celsius, while on Venus it is 462 degrees Celsius.”

Let us recall the three most important axioms of the theory of the “green” economy:

• 1) all natural processes occurring in the biosphere that ensure the stability of life are interconnected, and any anthropogenic interference by man in nature disrupts these processes (the balance between the technosphere and the biosphere);
• 2) it is impossible to infinitely expand the sphere of anthropogenic human influence within the finite living space of the biosphere;
• 3) it is impossible to demand the satisfaction of infinitely growing human needs under conditions of finite biosphere resources.

The main point here is the following: pristine nature is a higher legal subject in relation to man. The complexity of the mechanism of biotic regulation of the environment and climate exceeds the complexity of modern civilization by many orders of magnitude.

Priorities for the circular economy under conditions of climate change

1. A comprehensive approach to solving the problems of mitigating the consequences of and adapting to climate change. This means not only measures to combat anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, but also the restoration and protection of natural ecosystems (above all, indigenous forests with their biodiversity). Further destruction of wild nature can rapidly lead to climate collapse regardless of the burning of fossil fuels.
2. Building a system to ensure chemical safety in view of the extreme chemical load on the environment and population, which leads to the destruction of the homeostasis of biological species, negatively affecting the maintenance of conditions for the stability of life.
3. Eliminating the consequences of environmental damage previously inflicted on nature (forests, soil, wetlands, rivers, lakes, seas, oceans). Retaining measures to combat chemical pollution on the environmental agenda as an important component of environmental protection policy.

Proposed practical actions:

a) identify and legislatively establish a new category of forests – climate- and water-regulating forests (forest territories undisturbed or slightly disturbed by economic activity that perform a climate- and water-regulating function), to which the concept of a renewable resource is inapplicable. (It will take some 200 years at least for a natural forest of the same kind to grow back on the site of a felled or burned one, with the revival of its inherent biodiversity and functional mechanism for maintaining the stability of life);

b) develop a strategy for the development of the timber industry complex taking into account the fundamental distinction between climate-protective forests, which are subject exclusively to protection and monitoring and are completely withdrawn from any economic activity, and operational forests as a renewable resource;

c) apply the instruments of the circular economy in the forestry and woodworking industries exclusively in operational forests (forests already disturbed by economic activity and intensively created forest plantations). Create technologies for the artificial and combined cultivation of forest plantations (following the example of Sweden and Finland) to extract maximum economic return, including through intensive forestry based on state-of-the-art biotechnologies;

d) make wide use of nature-like technologies in the circular economy. In doing so, the emphasis must be placed on assessing the stabilizing potential and preserving natural ecosystems. It is important to preserve an appropriate volume of such ecosystems so that their capacity is sufficient to maintain the environment in a state suitable for life in general and for human life in particular;

e) jointly use, within the mechanism of the circular economy, “green” finance not subject to sanctions (“green” bonds, “green” cryptocurrency, “green” loans and accounts), including the placement of “green” bonds on the financial markets of the EU and the EAEU.

Conclusions

Russia, with its preserved natural ecosystems, should without exaggeration be considered an environmental donor and a guarantor of climate stability across the entire territory of Eurasia as 1/6 of the Earth's land surface. Russia is a scientific leader in the field of environmental stability research (the homeland of the concepts of biotic regulation of the environment and climate and of the forest biotic pump of atmospheric moisture).

The Eurasian boreal forest belt (more than 7 thousand km – from Scandinavia to Kamchatka) does not recognize state borders and operates (drawing atmospheric fresh water from the ocean onto the land), maintaining the diversity of life across the territory of Western Europe, Central Asia and China to the same degree as in Russia.

In this connection, it appears important, specifically together with Russia, to launch in-depth international cooperation along the lines of strategic multidisciplinary analysis of the interaction between the biosphere and the technosphere, and research into the mechanisms of maintaining the stability of boreal forests.

Scientific data accumulated over 30 years in Russia testify that the natural environment, especially pristine (climate-regulating) forests with their ecosystems – a unique natural mechanism for providing civilization with fresh water and maintaining life on land – has lost its stability and is rapidly being destroyed.

It is necessary to restore the disrupted balance between the technosphere and the biosphere; then, within the resulting “green” corridor, our civilization will be able to develop indefinitely, using “clean” technologies and improving the principles of the circular economy.