The first promotion of the ESSEC Circular Economy chair pitches to its sponsors

Circular Economy is now perfectly identified as a way out of the contradictions of our society, careful to perpetuate its industry, attached to secure supply chains and concerned with repairing environmental damage. For example, this is what Virginijus Sinkevi?ius, European Commissioner for the Environment, says: "We need to have products that are sustainable, repairable, recyclable and manufactured with this in mind. The circular economy must become the norm. It is good for the climate, for energy savings, for consumers and it is the future of our society."1

ESSEC's Circular Economy chair was created in 2021 to help managers of today and tomorrow to understand the issues and practices of this essential element of the energy transition. Under the aegis of prestigious sponsors, L'Oréal, EssilorLuxottica and Bouygues, the first promotion benefited from high-level teaching, but above all from the sharing of experience by pioneers of the circular economy.

On Wednesday, March 30 2022, six teams of three to four students each competed to defend their work in front of a panel of judges made up of some of France's top circular experts. The competition was a great success, and everyone emphasized the commitment of the ESSEC Circular Economy chair students and the operational quality of their thinking.

A half-day that demonstrates the fruitfulness of the applied Circular Economy

If the jury, composed of Diane Simiu, Deputy to the General Commissioner for Sustainable Development at the French Ministry of Ecological Transition and Solidarity, Véronique Riotton, President of the National Council for the Circular Economy, Ga?tane Lemarchand, circular economy consultant at Circul'R, Emmanuelle Ledoux, Director of the National Institute for the Circular Economy, Elena Dimichino, Director of CSR at EssilorLuxottica, Yaral Jamali Elo, in charge of Circular Economy at Bouygues Construction, Jean-Michel Buf, Vice-President of the National Council for Circular Economy, Jean-Marc Boursier, President of Alpa Capital, and Jo?l Tronchon, Director of Sustainable Development Europe at L'Oréal, chose to distinguish the project to reduce the volume and impact of waste in the contact lens value chain; they especially emphasized the depth and operational scope of the six projects it had to choose from.

Though the students of the first promotion of the ESSEC Circular Economy chair did not have an easy task, as they were asked to come up with innovative solutions to six very concrete challenges posed by the chair's three sponsoring companies respectively. The teams had at their disposal the resources of Circular Economy and the careful support from the companies. With a single imperative: to propose a credible, operational solution that meets the challenges at hand.

The first team worked to reduce the amount of make-up packaging that is discarded without being recycled. Accompanied by L'Oréal, the team studied a two-pronged approach, aiming to create real replenishment stations in the distribution circuit and to provide consumers with containers dedicated to the collection of empty packaging.

The second team in the running, which won the award at the end of the presentations, proposed to track down the waste from the manufacture of EssilorLuxottica contact lenses. The solution combines eco-design of the lenses, the development of reuse and the creation of an ecosystem for the recovery of products at the end of their life, extended to other players.??

The third project aimed to apply the principles of Circular Economy to building construction. The students were challenged by Bouygues Construction and came up with some amazing ideas, such as a building with a reversible function, shared spaces, and demountable buildings.

The fourth team proposed nothing less than circularizing the use of L'Oréal hair straighteners. The students brilliantly explored two dimensions to bring their vision of perpetual straightening to fruition: digitalization and the use of metaverse!

The fifth project to be presented was the development of a change management methodology at Colas, aimed at convincing the teams to reuse the asphalt removed from the pavements being repaired. The students were pedagogical!?

Finally, the last team in the competition looked at the best way to appeal to independent opticians in the environmental responsibility approach promoted by EssilorLuxottica. Or how the “Responsible Optician” label can help recruit new customers by reducing damage to the planet!??

The ESSEC Circular Economy chair facilitates the handover between the pioneers and the new generation of players

Brilliantly illustrated by students, there is a broad consensus on the ability of Circular Economy to facilitate the transition from a world cut off from its roots to a decarbonized and cleaner economic system. On the European scale, for example, the Commission estimates that the creation of new recycling capacity, and especially the establishment of an ecosystem of repair, maintenance, and second-hand sales, "should lead to the creation of 30 to 200 times more jobs than landfilling and incineration."1

By enabling the relocation of activities, creating many others, avoiding sudden failures, and sparking unlikely partnerships, Circular Economy is a new way of approaching the creation of goods and services, of which the reduction of the carbon footprint is ultimately only the consequence. Moreover, many players, companies, associations, and organizations, are carrying out projects and are working to create the conditions for their development on an industrial scale. Pioneers have already succeeded in creating prosperous new economic models.

In this effervescence, which sees younger generations eager to topple old models without delay, the need for mature theoretical foundations and efficient methodologies is obvious. Circular Economy is innovation, it is industry, it is commerce, it is marketing: and all of this cannot be improvised, or else the potential will be insufficiently exploited, and the most generous ideas will not be followed through.

Therefore, ESSEC has created the Circular Economy Chair with the ambition of contributing to the emergence of an "open international ecosystem of companies, start-ups and institutions", with collective know-how and the ability to act as a network to sustainably enter this new dimension. The Chair's stated objective is to train the spearheads of strategies for the immediate transformation of business models towards a more circular economy. Time is of the essence!

High-level partnerships at the source of the excellence of the training

The ESSEC Circular Economy Chair program articulates training in best practices through case studies, the creation of innovative methodologies and tools, and fundamental research. The description of new business models and the establishment of a Circular Economy observatory add to the coherence of the value proposition.

But the quality of the transmission offered by the ESSEC Circular Economy chair is due above all to the experience and commitment of its promoters. Pierre-Emmanuel Saint-Esprit, who initiated the project and is himself an ESSEC alumnus, is the co-founder of ZACK, a successful start-up in Circular Economy. His initiative received the immediate support of Stanislas de Quercize, former CEO of Cartier, who is personally committed to the development of Circular Economy. Wilfried Sand, professor of Economics, and Thierry Sibieude, pioneer of the Social Economy, supervise the pedagogical content and provide the main lectures.

The foundation of the Chair also owes much to the enthusiastic sponsorship of three major European companies, L'Oréal, EssilorLuxottica and Bouygues.

Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO of L'Oréal, emphasizes a corporate conviction that Circular Economy is "a movement based on collective intelligence and cooperation among all stakeholders".

Francesco Milleri and Paul du Saillant, respectively CEO and Deputy CEO of EssilorLuxottica, see their partnership as part of their approach, Eyes on Circularity, which envisions the planet as a world where "nothing is useless, where nothing is wasted, where we give back to the Earth everything we have taken from it".

Finally, Olivier Roussat, CEO of Bouygues, explains his company's support for the Circular Economy chair by the convergence of its ambitions, which are to support "a source of environmental and economic benefits as well as a lever for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the field of housing.”

Finally, companies that are Circular Economy experts have co-constructed this global program with ESSEC and the sponsors: ZACK, a specialist in the fight against electronic waste and now spearheading the Manutan group's move towards Circular Economy, and Circulab, a design studio that has been involved in the dissemination of circular practices for over 10 years.

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1Les échos – 31 mars 2022