So at first I will tell you this. I’m Jos and I’m working on research in circular economy and automotive sector and would like to know your point of view. If you accept, I am going to record our conversation, transcribe it and put it put the transcription with a pseudonym, not with your real name in a repository of text documents that will be used for the research. If you do this and you change your mind later and no longer want to participate, get in touch with us and we will immediately remove your interview from the repository. I’m leaving you an information sheet with contact information, so I hope you are agree.
Yes. Yes. Yes, I do. I do agree. So the first.
Question, can you define a circular economy in your own words?
Yes. Circular economy. That’s basically when you think of how you make things. So you do not just extract, produce and dispose, but you make them in a way that you would extract, produce and then use repair and then go into a circle before you at some stage, then finally dispose or dispose parts of it. Okay.
Thank you. How did you become interested in the circular economy, ideas and practices?
Well, I studied sociology and I had modules on environment, so I have always been interested in environmental issues. And so at some stage I read books about circular economy. That’s why.
In your opinion, can a circular economy be implemented in individual sectors or industries?
It could. It could, yes. But there has to be. What do you call it? The will to the what do you call it? I’m lacking the word in English.
To be willing to do that.
Yes, they have to be willing to do it. But I think it’s possible if you want to.
And how what the way.
I think you have to change the whole way you approach the economy. You you have to think not only of how you produce and sell it, but you have to think of the whole life cycle of the product. And that’s not so easy. That’s not in our that’s not what what we do now.
So the thing the circular economy already exists in the car industry, for example.
Um, well with the old cars there is a second hand car market. That’s true. A car does not just get thrown away, but in the end it’s also just. Yeah, it’s, it’s disposed of. So I’m not sure that probably you could recycle more of the of whatever is inside the car. So I’m a little bit a little bit of circular economy but not 100%.
What do you think how they can play it in the car industry?
Are you now that The thing is, now they want to push electric cars. And I think I think there’s not the right approach to electric cars. Not yet, you know, because it’s brand new. But even though it’s brand new, they have not thought of circular economy, in my opinion, because the batteries I mean, I know very little, but the batteries, it’s the same. They produced they they will have a certain lifespan. And then what have they thought about what they’re going to do with the batteries? So in my opinion, no, there is no circular economy, even not in the new cars.
Do you own currently a car?
Not anymore, no.
But are you making car share, for example, or car rentals or something like that?
No, not once in a while. Every, I don’t know, two years if really? Really? I don’t know. Maybe on a holiday for two days. But otherwise, no, I, I cycle and I walk and I take public transport.