In 1976, Walter Stahel and Geneviève Reday-Mulvey wrote a report for the European Commission at the Battelle Institute in Geneva that later became the book "Jobs for Tomorrow", the first scientific report on the circular economy. Almost 50 years later, the two authors meet again near Geneva and look back on where the idea of repairing instead of replacing came from, why it was pushed aside for a generation and what it needs today. A conversation with two pioneers of the circular economy, in French with English subtitles.
They show
- Why the circular economy stays invisible: nobody advertises it in a football stadium
- How the financialisation of the 1980s and 1990s pushed these ideas aside for a whole generation
- Why a thesis that seems obvious today had to be proven with hard numbers back then
- Why a broken fridge gets replaced instead of repaired when the electrician has to come from across town
- The one sentence Walter Stahel gives every student: "Enjoy the use of what you have and take care"
