Women’s Forum 2018: for Estelle Brachlianoff, Veolia's Chief Operating Officer, the city of the future is circular
For 3 days the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris hosted the Women's Forum 2018. The event brought together global civil society and economic leaders around the theme "Bridging humanity for inclusive progress". Estelle Brachlianoff, Veolia's Chief Operating Officer, was a speaker in the "Designing cities and economies for the future" session.
How do we make cities more inclusive? The circular economy, which encourages the participation of citizens, social entrepreneurship, local job creation and the involvement of all the local stakeholders, is a powerful lever for inclusive growth.
"The good news is that we already have the solutions, so let's act now!” said Estelle Brachlianoff. “We can reduce CO2 emissions by 10% by deploying the circular economy solutions that already exist. The city of the future is circular. All the waste produced will be transformed into resources: sewage sludge into plastic, ice cream into biogas, rare metals from street cleaning..."
The city of the future will be inclusive
According to Estelle Brachlianoff, cities are too often designed from the point of view of infrastructures; this functional model is insufficient because city dwellers today want to "experience the city". In order to design livable and inclusive cities the users’ points of view and experiences have to be the starting point.
"“Good behaviours" are contagious: they spread through a neighbourhood. But to achieve it, clear explanations about how everyone can contribute to the sustainable city are needed. We need to think about what is practical and concrete. In the case of recycling for example, we should ideally have 10 sorting bins at home - but that’s not realistic. It would in fact be counter-productive," she added.
Women’s Forum 2018 in figures:
- 2,000 influential business, institutional and political leaders from the European Union
- 100 plenary sessions, round tables and workshops with 250 speakers
- "Discovery Connections", a creativity space in which the following themes were addressed: bridging humanity for inclusive progress, daring women, social and civic engagement, civic engagement, the power of finance, the future of work, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) for good, and Entrepreneurship.
- 10,000 active members in the Women's Forum global network
