Our partner Antonio Rubilar spoke to Diario Financiero about the circular economy initiatives promoted by companies and the State.
With growing pressure to reduce waste and rethink production, companies and the state are promoting various circular economy initiatives. However, there are still gaps in incentives and mass adoption.
For the sixth consecutive year, Chile was the first country in the region to reach its ecological overshoot, according to the Global Footprint Network, which implies that the country has already consumed all the natural resources it can regenerate in one year. It is in this scenario that the circular economy gains strength as a model that seeks to dispose of waste before extracting new resources.
Several companies are acting accordingly, promoting the recycling, reuse or valuation of inputs and products that were previously considered waste. This is the case of Cheaf, a platform that allows supermarkets, restaurants and food stores to offer their surplus products, while their customers can redeem them at a discount of at least 50%.
The country manager of Cheaf Chile, Benjamín De Oto, emphasizes that this model gives additional days of life to food that is still in excellent condition for human consumption, mitigating the emission of greenhouse gases. It also allows businesses to valorize products that might otherwise have ended up in the garbage. In fact, according to our calculations, our supermarket partners are able to recover up to 40% of their surplus by selling it through our platform,’ he says.
From the recycling side, the general manager of Cristalerías Chile, Eduardo Carvallo, refers to the importance of glass recovery, not only as an environmentally responsible practice, but as a key source of operational sustainability. By incorporating recycled glass in our production processes, we reduce the consumption of energy and raw materials, improve our operational efficiency and reduce our emissions’, says the executive of this firm linked to Diodo Financiero.
In this sense, the Minister of the Environment, Maisa Rojas, emphasizes how the State has developed tools to promote circularity, such as the Roadmap for a Circular Chile by 2040 or the Circular Territory Program. Transitioning from a linear economy to a circular one implies a profound change in how we produce and consume in our society’, she reflects.
While Albagli Zaliasnik’s Public Law and Regulated Markets Group lead partner, Antonio Rubilar, appreciates the growing local trend of implementing circular economy principles, he believes there is still room for improvement: “There is certainly room for further incentives to be developed both for the general population and for a larger number of industries. The benefits are not clearly defined by sector and depend on multiple factors. Therefore, there is still some way to go in this area.’ he pointed out.
