An Ordinary Human’s Guide To…. The Circular Economy

Eh up, Time to crack out the Financial Times then……..

It may sound scary and like you’ve ended up on the wrong blog, but rest assured that understanding this new approach to the way we live our lives will be fundamental in shifting to a more sustainable society 💰💲💰

This series hopes to break down key sustainable terms and ideas to make them more accessible for everyone to understand and use to make change. If you are already are familiar with these ideas, refresh your mind and use your knowledge, but if this is new to you, read on and learn!

To start off, visualise a circle. Got it? This seems easier already…..

A circle has no end and is a continuous shape. This is what we try to reflect in a system known as The Circular Economy, a way of preventing waste by keeping materials in use through recycling. This approach mimics nature: Plants and animals use each other during their lifetimes, then their nutrients are reused when they die through the soil to be made into new life. Currently, we can be said to be using a Linear Economy, where we as humans “take, make and dispose” of materials. For instance, what would you do if your phone broke? Buy a new one? This is an example of an item being made for one particular use, disposed of as waste, then replaced by a completely new product. This system is incredibly wasteful – in direct forms as landfill and also in terms of wasted economic capital (e.g. the money and resources used to make that product are thrown away, with no value or benefits after use). The Circular Economy, as promoted by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, seeks to: design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use and regenerate natural systems. You can find out about this idea in more depth at What is a Circular Economy? | Ellen MacArthur Foundation (I especially recommend watching the video as a great introduction to the topic https://youtu.be/zCRKvDyyHmI)

So if you don’t work at Wall Street, how can you make a difference? Firstly, if you do run your own business or are involved in a business, no matter how big, can you look at redesigning your system to reduce waste and make your company more circular. Becoming circular not only reduces waste but may help profits if you conserve as much of the materials and previous waste-products as possible. However, when looking at our sustainable lifestyles at home, take some time to consider how you could make the way you live more circular. Could you create new items of clothing out of old ones, upcycle furniture or compost food waste? Although our familiar idea of household recycling is really important, see where else recycling could take place in terms of use, design or place. This approach is as much about lifestyle as it is about business, so do a little research and see where it could be applied to your own lifestyle.

The Circular Economy is a big and complex idea, so for more information, check out these resources:

• WRAP and the circular economy | WRAP UK
• What Is the circular economy? (ellenmacarthurfoundation.org)
• The key elements of the circular economy – Circle Economy (circle-economy.com)

Hopefully this was useful in introducing some people to this idea. While this post is only a brief explanation of the idea, hopefully it is enough to make you think about how you might currently create waste on a personal scale and how you could introduce more circularity into your life🟠