I’m just and I’m working on research in circular economy and automotive sector. And I would like to know your point of view. If you accept, I’m going to record our conversation, transcribe it and put to transcription with the pseudonym, not 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 and no longer want to participate, get in touch with us and we will immediately remove your interview from the repository. I give you information sheet with contact information, so please tell me your first name and that you agree.
Laetitia. It’s my name and I agree.
Thank you. Laetitia. So the first question, can you define a circular economy in your own words?
It’s an economy that would allow to use to, to I’m sorry, I’m losing my my words in English. It’s an economy that would allow us to take less resources out of the earth and to really reuse things that are already here living and. Yeah, kind of reincarnation. Yeah.
Uh, do you participate in a circular economy yourself in any aspect of your life?
Yeah. On a professional way, I am developing materials for automotive containing up to 35 or even 68% of post-consumer recycled. So it’s typically based on waste from the yellow garbage that everybody in the street is is sorting. And on my personal life, I’m yeah, I’m used to buy all my shoes second hand like these ones all my shoes are second. Lance It’s a good thing for the shopping budget and it’s also a good thing for the Earth and a lot of things that, yeah, I’m using second hand or recycling by repairing myself, going to things like this.
How did you become interested in circular economy ideas and practices?
In fact, I think it’s really linked to my values. I’ve been raised like this really close to the nature and with a profound sense of, uh, yeah, justice. For me. It’s not fair that just few peoples are exploiting and harvesting other resources from the earth and not doing it without any conscience and not being aware of what we are doing and that the earth we only have one. It’s a bit like this.
In your opinion, can a circular economy be implemented in individual sectors or industries?
What do you mean by individual sectors?
Just one, one sector or one industry? Not all.
No. I think it’s a mindset and I think in order that this is working, it’s also to make some pedagogy to the final user because it’s also very cultural depending on the country or not. People are used to have to have a circular mindset. A lot of culture are still with single use plastic, single use things, even single use people in some company. So no, it should be in all markets and as much as possible in all the different regions of the globe to have something fair. Also, because if we have some rules in the business for some areas it must be in other also in order to have a fair exchange and fair trade.
Do you think the circular economy already exists in the car industry?
If I think I exist, I think not so much. Not so much. Maybe in the metal. But I’m not knowledgeable in the metal. But I know in plastic not at least it has not been designed. The parts, the plastic parts have not been designed for a proper circular economy. It’s a lot of multi-material parts welded glued, so it’s absolutely not optimized for circular economy. I think it was not even in the mind of the designers before.
So do you currently own a car?
Yeah.
Which kind?
It’s in Berlin. It’s a Skoda. Octavia.
I mean, is it electric or hybrid or normal?
Mine is a plug in hybrid, and my husband has a full electric.