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Education, Science and Technology

Circular economy and sustainability

Iceclog: Profitable shift to Circular Economy for Manufacturers ...

The industrial revolution and the rise of a capitalistic society have, in a short period of time, changed our planet and our lives. Overconsumption stands at the foundation of modern society and has brought along climate change and its string of environmental hazards and social issues. Overpopulation and growing demand for goods result in mind-boggling volumes of waste as well as air, soil and water pollution with high negative impacts on human and ecosystem health.

A circular economy works quite differently. Products and services in a circular economy are designed in a way that allows them to be reused, either in the biological or technical cycles. All products are manufactured in a way so they can be disassembled and materials will either be broken down by nature or returned to production. Biological material therefore consists of non-toxic, clean feeds and technical materials are designed to be a resource to be used industrially again. The goal is to throw nothing away and to reduce the need for purchasing new commodities, while production and transportation is best achieved with renewable energy.

The circular economy is a markedly different way to do business, forcing companies to rethink everything from how to design and manufacture products to their relationships with customers. One of the biggest differences is the customer’s role. The focus is no longer on consumption, but instead on the use of a function. This places different demands on the business community to build long-term relationships in their business models. The advantage is that companies benefit from each other’s success in this cascade of different cycles.

It also brings new opportunities in infrastructure, energy and production in their adaption to fit the circular economy model. Some business models are easier than others to begin with, such as the leasing of products instead of buying (everything from jeans to trucks), companies which collect and renovate their own products and then sell them in the store in a separate department or peer-to-peer models. Companies will find new ways to extend the life of products or components, to find value in the waste, or the design of circular use.

In the end it is all about encouraging the next generations to think and design in a sustainable way as well as using circular business systems to build a better future.

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Research Paper

DIGITAL MARKETING: A WAY FORWARD

COVID-19 pandemic is a Humongous problem for companies everywhere, and it’s practically impossible to ignore the issue – it has changed the way business is executed everywhere.

Many owners and work managers are failing to shift the regular marketing strategies to a digital marketing (The new normal)

They are overlooking the situation because perhaps they have hope that some sudden turn of events towards normalcy will occur in the times of chaos. 

 Whatever may be the cause but this inability to adapt will cause grave concerns to the economic survival of the company.

Whereas, many organizations that have shown great adaptability by appointing digital marketing.

·       The impact – COVID: 19 on Businesses

There is no business which lies unaffected by the pandemic, worst sufferers are startups that do not have the capital or reserves to keep the struggle on and companies that relied completely on physical interactions, like salons, clothing stores, and yoga studios.

Accustomed to growth incitation by customer referrals and their awesome service reputations, they have experienced a very high revenue loss that their impulse reaction has been to cut marketing costs rather than exploring new and more effective options.

In turn, this unaccustomed reaction has had a detrimental ‘trickle’ effect on larger B2B companies work as providers to these smaller businesses.

Every business, be it your neighborhood departmental store or an enormous multinational firm, can benefit from digital marketing. Customers still need the products and services as much as ever—what these companies need to do is change the way they reach their target audiences. Even if a small enterprise doesn’t have an online page or portal (one in four do not have), it’s not very late to join in the businesses that are thriving online.

  1. Coming to – HOW TO?

It’s time for the affected businesses to make the transition from a fortress store to a digital provider by contacting their customers, reviving unused online assets like websites and social media profiles, and pedaling full speed ahead.

 

Contacting customers

The first step is to commence a dialogue between business and customers and carrying it forward. For companies that never collected email addresses, created a database, or engaged on a regular basis to their followers, it’s time now to do so.

Announce COVID-19 changes in an existing newsletter. 

Companies with an existing newsletter can convey to its subscribers about any corona virus-related changes in the next edition. Send out a newsletter to let your customers know how your business is reacting to the pandemic 

Boosting the company website Sorting businesses with SEO marketing

Coronavirus is changing the way that consumers shop. Approximately 47% of shoppers have stated that they are avoiding malls and shopping centers.

On the contrary note, SEO is undergoing a strong rise, with many brands reporting a significant hike in their organic search visibility from January to March 2020. 

It is evident it’s time to invest in, not to cut back on, SEO. It is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies, it’s also delivering results.

 

Shifting daily operations online

There are very few organizations that cannot make the transition of their daily operations. Credit to video conferencing applications like Zoom, Skype, and many other executives and managers can communicate and impart instructions to staff and hold client meetings from anywhere. 

· Sales teams can take orders and reservations and provide services to customers via email, chat, or video. They no longer have to commute; they can even start work early leaving customers with longer support hours.

· Services that were previously delivered in person are surprisingly amenable to video presentations. Clients can pay online and receive a video link to live sessions.

Staff education also plays an important role in a successful transition—and this is time to enhance your team’s skills?

Online courses are highly cost-efficient, and teams can learn new skills that enable them to support each other whenever one department is down or facing issues. Courses on digital marketing are available on how it works and how to make the most out of all the opportunities.

·       The biggest question-What are my business benefits?

Many businesses are cutting costs on their marketing efforts due to COVID-19, but what they should really be doing is grabbing advantage of the new opportunities that are rising.

This emphasis on digital marketing is not something that they’ll want to slow down on once the lockdown ends. Online shopping is going to stop no-time soon, and most companies will find those web-based interactions to be convenient than in-person meetings.

Stores will reopen but alongside newly adopted ways of selling and engaging with customers.

While digital marketing may be regarded right now as an emergency plan, but by the time this is over, everyone will likely realize that it’s more than a temporary measure rather than a sustainable one. So GO DIGITAL AND BE FUTURE READY

Research Paper

RECESSION AFTER CORONA

The global economy will contract by 3% this year as countries around the world shrink at the fastest pace in decades, the International Monetary Fund says. The IMF described the global decline as the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It said the pandemic had plunged the world into a “crisis like no other”. The Fund added that a prolonged outbreak would test the ability of governments and central banks to control the crisis. Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s chief economist, said the crisis could knock $9 trillion (£7.2 trillion) off global GDP over the next two years.

An economic consequence of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the first major sign of the coronavirus recession was the 2020 stock market crash on 20 February. IMF projects suggest that the coronavirus recession will be the most severe global economic downturn since the Great Depression, and that it will be “far worse” than the Great Recession of 2009. The United Nations (UN) predicted in April 2020 that global unemployment will wipe out 6.7 per cent of working hours globally in the second quarter of 2020—equivalent to 195 million full-time workers. In western nations, unemployment is expected to be at around 10%, with more severely affected nations from the COVID-19 pandemic having higher unemployment rates. The developing world is also being affected by a drop in remittances.

The recession saw the collapse of the price of oil triggered by the 2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war, the collapse of tourism, the hospitality industry, the energy industry and a significant downturn in consumer activity in comparison to the previous decade. Global stock markets crashed around 20 to 30% during late February and March 2020, respectively. During the crash, global stock markets made unprecedented and volatile swings, mainly due to extreme uncertainty in the markets.

2019 Global Economic Slowdown

During 2019, the IMF reported that the world economy was going through a “synchronized slowdown”, which entered into its slowest pace since the Great Financial Crisis. ‘Cracks’ were showing in the consumer market as global markets began to suffer through a ‘sharp deterioration’ of manufacturing activity.  Global growth was believed to have peaked in 2017, when the world’s total industrial output began to start a sustained decline in early 2018. The IMF blamed ‘heightened trade and geopolitical tensions’ as the main reason for the slowdown, citing Brexit and the China–United States trade war as primary reasons for slowdown in 2019, while other economists blamed liquidity issues.

In April 2019, the U.S yield curve inverted, which sparked fears of a 2020 recession across the world. The inverted yield curve and trade war fears prompted a sell-off in global stock markets during March 2019, which prompted more fears that a recession was imminent. Rising debt levels in the European Union and the United States had always been a concern for economists. However, in 2019, that concern was heightened during the economic slowdown, and economists began warning of a ‘debt bomb’ occurring during the next economic crisis. Debt in 2019 was 50% higher than that during the height of the Great Financial Crisis.  Economists have argued that this increased debt is what led to debt defaults in economies and businesses across the world during the recession. The first signs of trouble leading up to the recession occurred in September 2019, when the US Federal Reserve began intervening in the role of investor to provide funds in the repo markets; the overnight repo rate spiked above 6% during that time, which would play a crucial factor in triggering the events that led up to the crash.

Sino-American Trade War

The China–United States trade war occurred during 2018 to early 2020, and caused significant damage across global economies. President Donald Trump in 2018 began setting tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the goal of forcing it to make changes to what the U.S. says are “unfair trade practices”. Among those trade practices and their effects are the growing trade deficit, the alleged theft of intellectual property, and the alleged forced transfer of American technology to China.

In the United States, the trade war brought struggles for farmers and manufacturers and higher prices for consumers, which resulted in the U.S manufacturing industry entering into a ‘mild recession’ during 2019. In other countries it has also caused economic damage, including violent protests in Chile and Ecuador due to transport and energy price surges, though some countries have benefited from increased manufacturing to fill the gaps. It has also led to stock market instability. The governments of several countries, including China and the United States, have taken steps to address some of the damage caused by deterioration in China–United States relations and tit-for-tat tariffs. During the recession, the downturn of consumerism and manufacturing from the trade war is believed to have inflated the economic crisis

Financial Crisis

The global stock market crash began on 20 February 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, global markets, banks and businesses were all facing crises not seen since the Great Depression in 1929.

From 24 to 28 February, stock markets worldwide reported their largest one-week declines since the 2008 financial crisis, thus entering a correction. Global markets into early March became extremely volatile, with large swings occurring in global markets. On 9 March, most global markets reported severe contractions, mainly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and oil price war between Russia and the OPEC countries led by Saudi Arabia. This became colloquially known as Black Monday I, and at the time was the worst drop since the Great Recession in 2008.

Three days after Black Monday I there was another drop, Black Thursday, where stocks across Europe and North America fell more than 9%. Wall Street experienced its largest single-day percentage drop since Black Monday in 1987, and the FTSE MIB of the Borsa Italiana fell nearly 17%, becoming the worst-hit market during Black Thursday. Despite a temporary rally on 13 March (with markets posting their best day since 2008), all three Wall Street indexes fell more than 12% when markets re-opened on 16 March. During this time, one benchmark stock market index in all G7 countries and 14 of the G20 countries had been declared to be in Bear markets.

Conclusion

With the lockdown still in hand and the consistent fall in economy, it seems we have a tough time ahead. The recession, as predicted by the various agencies across the word, is going to be very hash upon us. A lot of people are going to lose their jobs with nowhere to go. Companies may go bankrupt and entire nations will be in debts. We all have no choice but to face the crisis.

“This too shall pass.”