Dr. Matt Tucker and Gary Miciunas explore how circular economy principles are reshaping facility management, and why organizational culture is key to making it work.
In this podcast episode, Dr. Matt Tucker, Director of Research for IFMA, and Gary Miciunas, founder of ChiefCircularityOfficer.com, discuss the significance of the circular economy in the facility management industry. They explain the need to shift economic models to mimic natural systems, focusing on reducing waste and rethinking ownership and operational practices. They also highlight practical implementations of circular economy principles. As well as examine the role of organizational culture in adopting these practices and the importance of collaborative efforts across supply chains.
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Gary Miciunas: [00:00:00] I'd like to say that in the circular economy, there's no hiding in place called away and in nature there's no waste. So we need to shift this economic model that mimics how nature works, and this applies to all sectors, especially how we design and manage the built environment as an operating system.
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Started today. Matt Tucker IFMA's director of Research, sits down with Gary Miciunas, the founder of Chief circularity officer.com, to discuss the significance of the circular economy in FM and examine the role of organizational culture in adopting these practices. [00:01:00] Now let's get into it.
Dr. Matt Tucker: Okay, welcome to this podcast on the role of the circular economy and facility management. So my name is Matt Tucker. I am the director of research for ifma.
Gary Miciunas: And I'm Gary Miciunas. I'm the founder of chief circularity officer.com and a member of the WE Community and ifma Emerging Topics Working Group from a couple years back.
Dr. Matt Tucker: Wonderful. So both Gary and I have a mutual interest in the circular economy, and we hope that we can give you a bit of an insight to where our brains are currently at, on, on this topic and how it relates to the facility management industry. So I think first of all, Gary, it'd be interesting to hear your perspective on what brought you are obviously from the other side of the pond in the States.
So what brought you here to ifma World Workplace Europe?
Gary Miciunas: Yeah, [00:02:00] it was an act, actually it was a conversation with some of our European friends who attended World Workplace in San Antonio.
I think it was over a couple of drinks. So I was highly encouraged and here we are. So I think this event is important for this discussion because in different parts of the world. We're approaching going about circular economy in different ways, and yet we have so much to learn from each other about what works and why in, in these very different contexts.
Yeah.
Dr. Matt Tucker: Excellent. So in case anybody listening to this or watching this isn't familiar with the term circular economy what does that mean to you in simple terms?
Gary Miciunas: Well, it's, I think it's about a mind shift and there's different ways to think about that. But the analogies I've heard is, you know, it's a shift in our view of how the world works, and it's a shift from the idea that the economy works like the machine.
Operating outside of nature to the idea that the economy works more like, nature works and how living systems operate. This [00:03:00] mechanistic approach of how we make stuff we think we need to own, and then how we use those things. And then once we're done using them, how we throw them away after one use cycle is no longer sustainable.
I'd like to say that in the circular economy, there's no hiding in place called away and in nature there's no waste. So we need to shift this economic model that mimics how nature works, and this applies to all sectors, especially how we design and manage the built environment as an operating system.
Dr. Matt Tucker: Excellent. Great. This really resonated with me last year and, I conducted a research project for ifma on the role of the circular economy within fm. And the report was published in October last year. I'll just maybe provide people watching this with a few of the takeaways for that and what prompted IFMA to really look at this.
The main takeaway I would say, and this was a light bulb moment for me last year, was that [00:04:00] facility management and facility managers, they embody the notion of circularity because that is what they do. They. Maintain things and they repair things. So by its very nature of the practical role of facility management, we are embodying circularity.
What I found quite shocking though, is the fact that. We don't really see that connection within the industry, and we're certainly not talking about it. So the idea of that report was to take some of those general concepts of circular economy that you've mentioned, and apply it to the facility management industry.
And I would say in addition to what you've said about the concepts of circular economy, probably the big thing that stood out in the report. For me in terms of what circular economy is that ability to design out waste from the beginning. And if we put that in the context of facilities or the wider built environment that's [00:05:00] thinking about all of the assets that we have within our buildings and our facilities, and how each component could actually be designed out from the cradle to the grave or the cradle again.
And trying to shift the mindset, as you said, from waste being something that we throw away to waste having a value. Right. And actually not having it at all. And then we can prolong everything as long as we can and hopefully then regenerate the natural ecosystem at the same time. Yeah.
Gary Miciunas: Well, man, I was in your audience when you made that presentation about the circular FM report, and I saw that light bulb coming off in people's heads about how natural connection is to what FM operates.
What are some practical examples of Circular FM that came out of that report?
Dr. Matt Tucker: Yeah. Thank you. That's an interesting one because the challenge with this is we say these words, circular economy and circular fm, and, you know, the same thing happens with sustainability. They can be quite [00:06:00] abstract terms and it's often difficult for people to, to, you know, tangibly resonate with it.
So the report tries to provide some practical examples. I'll give you a couple of them just to just. Just so people can visualize it. First one would be carpets, for example, right? So the carpet industry is historically an extremely dirty pollutive in industry. It very much went through a huge mind shift in the nineties.
A company in the US interface who had a visionary leader, Ray Anderson who had a vision to really transform the company into a sustainable company. And just a really simple example of something that he initiated within interface was to take a conventional carpet roll and create carpet tiles, which we're all very familiar with now within the FM industry.
But then. Not really a commonplace thing. The reason why that is circular is that if we damage or, [00:07:00] you know, spill coffee on part of a carpet, rather than pulling up the whole roll, we can now just take out the individual tiles. So we've decompartmentalize that particular asset and yeah we've essentially designed out that waste.
So it's minimal waste that is now produced and that can be replaced. So the majority of that carpet then stays as it is and it stays within that loop. Another example is the fact that we are now looking at very different business models of how we. Own and operate our buildings. And this, you know, we keep going back to this word mindset that we are gonna see in the next five, 10 years.
Real shifts in mindset about building ownership and asset ownership and taking good practices from the IT community in terms of, you know, software as a service, for example. And that idea of everything as a service being [00:08:00] applied to our buildings and our assets. So a great example in the report is about cooling as a service.
And taking you know, companies like, care in Singapore, they will provide a cooling as a service model for you. So they will purchase your cooling system from you. They will replace it if it needs replacing, and they will run it as efficiently and productively as they possibly can.
Why is that a benefit to the facility manager? Because it takes away that maintenance. They're having something highly efficient and cost efficient, and the reason why that's circular is because. That company is the specialist with that particular asset. So all of the physical infrastructure for those systems are within their supply chain.
And if they have to take out your cooling system and replace it with another one, they keep the existing. System in the loop if it's still reliable, and they'll use it as a standby machine within their portfolio of other buildings that they [00:09:00] have. So they're just a couple of examples.
Gary Miciunas: No, I love those examples.
Especially the difference between ownership and use. Yeah. And then we can do a whole nother podcast about circular buildings and what that means. Absolutely. But the whole idea that an owner may not own all aspects or all parts of the building, for example. They might procure the facade or the envelope as a service, and some companies going to maintain that material of a higher quality for a longer time, and when it needs to be replaced, they'll take it back.
How do you ensure that, how you finance that, how you de-risk that is a whole nother way of thinking
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Dr. Matt Tucker: And, yeah. You know, we go back to mindset again. How we finance that is gonna be the real. The real challenge within the sort of corporate real estate world of how we're shifting from, you know, a traditional CapEx mentality to an OPEX mentality because we no longer necessarily own those capital assets.
So how are we gonna shift that? Financial structure that we're so used to. So yeah. Really interesting. Well, hopefully that gives a bit of a context to, to the sort of the concept of circular economy and some examples. I just wanted to shift focus a little bit because I think you are taking a really interesting perspective about circular economy, looking at the issue of culture, organizational culture, and cultural differences. So can you maybe elaborate a little [00:11:00] bit on how cultural differences impact the adoption of circular economy practices?
Across different organizations?
Gary Miciunas: Right? Yeah. So I would argue it's not so much about regional differences and regional cultures that are defined geographically as it has been looked at traditionally, but it's more about organizational differences.
'cause what we see is organizations in various geographies they all have the technical wherewithal and the technical know-how. To know how to do these circular economy practices, and yet what we see is that these initiatives fail because what's lacking is the connection to cultural values. So culture driven initiatives backed by the technology, you know, to achieve those objectives is really the focus.
And organizations are more likely to be successful in adopting circular economy when they can integrate technical and cultural aspects. And it's not so much [00:12:00] related to regional differences as to organizational differences in that way.
Dr. Matt Tucker: So I find this fascinating because it goes back to, again, I'm repeating myself, but it goes back to that mindset and how organizational culture is very difficult to change.
And, but it is possible. So I just wondered from your research what. Or if there are particular cultural frameworks that you've looked at and how relevant they are to us understanding this issue?
Gary Miciunas: Yeah. Well, historically there's cultural frameworks that talk about, again, beginning with regional or country differences.
And there's models that get in into different dimensions. What I found is that beyond those traditional models, as circular economy becomes more popularized, we now have hundreds of definitions of what a circular economy is. And we have different levels of analysis from the region and cities approach of countries, you know, to more of a industrial sector approach, or what they call in industrial symbiosis as to how.
Enterprises [00:13:00] relate to each other. Then there's the enterprise itself, and then there's the products and services, which are called circular, that organization makes. So you take those four levels and you take those hundreds of definitions and suddenly we have a complexity of understanding what we're talking about with 500 variations.
What I tried to do is look for models that really simplify this. There's two that I'll mention one is called the Cultures Framework developed by Janet Stevenson in her book called Culture and Sustainability, and she talks about culture being comprised of similar patterns across a group of people and how they think, what they do.
And what they have, and it really gets down into rephrasing that as to what are their motivators in terms of their norms and values and beliefs. What are their activities in terms of routine behaviors? And habits, in some cases, sometimes bad habits, sometimes good habits. And then what is the materiality that they end up with in terms of artifacts, tools, technology, [00:14:00] and things and objects that are used in the culture?
In the way that it behaves. So that really simplifies it. And then you, then she adds what are the external influences. And I'll talk more about that from regulatory influences to marketing influences. The second framework is the idea that cultures are not static, they're dynamic. And that they evolve. So we need to understand how to evolve a culture from a linear mindset to a circular mindset. And this other framework is the work of adaptive cultures and they have a framework that talks about moving from a compliance culture, which really, as we see all the regulations in the European Union of CSRD and other things, even in the USA, we have the SEC regulations, which are not so stringent, but compliance is one stage of evolution where you're basically following the rules, you know, to, to the published standards, even though the standards are.
You know, really different from each other. And I'd say coloring within the lines. If we go back to our kindergarten days [00:15:00] to an op, very opposite end of the spectrum, which is a co-creation culture. And there it's more disruptive, but in a positive way. And it's coloring outside the lines. It's not so much breaking the rules, but redefining the rules.
And those rules are how partners work together. Different enterprises support each other. Even like in an industrial symbiosis model, how the waste of one organization can become the resources of another on the same campus. We're seeing that happening in different projects. So, yeah, a couple frameworks that I think.
Are more spoken in plain English rather than, you know, some grander theories, which gets into a lot of nuances.
Dr. Matt Tucker: Well, I'm really excited to see your presentation later on and it links very nicely to what my future plans are with ifma. And. I will be producing a sequel report to the report which came out last year on the Circular Economy, where it relates a lot to the cultural differences that you were talking about [00:16:00] in terms of how facility management.
Needs to collaborate and connect with the different organizational functions with within our organizations. For example, finance, hr, procurement marketing it and how they all need to work together. To be able to achieve a circular transition. So, that will be coming out later this year.
If I could end, Gary, with just asking you one final question. If you could give one piece of advice to FM professionals. Looking to start their circular economy journey what would that be? It's a difficult question 'cause I'm narrowing it down, but is there any particular things you would say to them to how to start?
Gary Miciunas: One of the takeaways is that no organization can achieve this alone. The shift from linear to circular economic thinking. So each organization needs to engage its entire supply chain. You mentioned procurement, you know, the procurement, specifications need to talk about circular concepts and expect those [00:17:00] things from suppliers. But that dialogue has to be about a whole nother way of thinking about production consumption, what we consume, what we use, and what we do with it when we're done. What that costs in terms of premiums for flexibility that you talked about in terms of changing financial ideas, but all the strategic partners and all the suppliers along with.
The sponsoring organization just needs to fundamentally rethink the business model and the practices based on these circular principles. So again, a simple answer is don't try to do this alone. You won't get very far.
Dr. Matt Tucker: Yeah. Well, I wanna thank you, Gary, for joining me today, for this podcast. I hope that's given people an insight to this concept of circular economy and how it relates to the facility management profession and a little sneak preview of maybe some of the future thinking of where we're going with this. So, yeah, that's a wrap.
Gary Miciunas: Well, thanks Matt.
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