A "Buy Canadian" attitude that supports the country's economy goes hand in hand with sustainability, the Circular Innovation Council says as part of its annual Circular Economy Month campaign.

As the ongoing trade dispute between Canada and the U.S. has spurred an emphasis on domestic production and building resiliency in Canada’s economy, the council is highlighting how circular principles can support the economy and the environment.

Those principles are reusing, reducing, recycling, repairing and sharing materials and products.

“We know that the circular economy has benefits beyond the environment in terms of delivering economic resiliency and sustainable economic growth,” Jo-Anne St. Godard, the executive director of the Circular Innovation Council, said in an interview with Sustainable Biz Canada.

It is a largely untapped opportunity that could unlock billions of dollars in economic gain for Canada, the organization says. Its research has found only nine per cent of the Canadian economy falls under a circular model, which means Canada has “a 91 per cent opportunity to do better,” St. Godard said.

Canada's opportunities from circularity

One opportunity is from eliminating avoidable food waste. Approximately $58-billion worth of potentially edible food is wasted per year in Canada, according to organization Second Harvest, which is lost revenue for businesses. Another is phasing out single-use plastics, which could generate billions of dollars in revenue and create approximately 42,000 jobs in the circular economy sector by 2030.

Buying Canadian goods shortens supply chains, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, St. Godard said. If the goods were made in a province powered by clean electricity, it addresses the pollution from production, which is a larger source of carbon emissions than the transportation.

This year, the Circular Innovation Council is putting the spotlight on business models that optimize the use of local products and services. For example, the platforms that let people share cars, bicycles and household goods.

Such an approach means consuming fewer resources and generating less waste, St. Godard said.

Canadian companies operating in the sharing economy include:

• Friendlier, a Guelph-based company that provides restaurants with reusable food and beverage containers and incentivizes customers to return them for reuse;
• firms ReturnBear, Suppli and Reusables.com which offer reusable packaging for deliveries;
• Partage Club, a Montreal-based firm that allows neighbours to share household goods, sports equipment and tools; and
• Toronto-based Bird, which manages a fleet of thousands of rideshare electric bikes and electric scooters in Canadian cities.

Other Canadian businesses singled out by the Circular Innovation Council for their sustainability include PLAEX for its building materials made from recycled plastics, furniture remanufacturer Envirotech, and grocery package recycler Circulr.

Some firms based outside of Canada that operate in the country’s circular economy space are:

• Too Good To Go, which partners with businesses to sell surplus food at a discount; and
• ecoATM, which operates kiosks where people can drop off their old smartphones to be recycled or reused.

Policies critical to supporting circularity

St. Godard said governments can stimulate the Canadian circular economy with procurement policies that prioritize domestic players.

“Those policies are so important because they create backstops and minimum regulatory atmospheres,” she said. “It moves the market en masse to employ different behaviours.”

Companies can take the initiative by lobbying for the removal of barriers. Ikea, for example, advocated for the end of the second-hand tax on resold goods to encourage the reuse of products.

Individuals can play a key role with their purchases to tell the market that circularity is in demand, St. Godard said.