A Circular Economy: Cancelling the word ‘Waste’

I wanted to write up a simple walk-through of the Circular Economy, without all of the jargon and sound bites that often come with it. I’m aware the very term ‘Circular Economy’ is likely to go over many heads but I truly believe it’s the solution to many of the global sustainability challenges we’re facing and by the looks of things, so do many world leaders and CEOs. We’re learning more about its potential each and every day and like any new economic system, it could fall back into insignificance. However, I just don’t think it will! I’ve studied the CE for a while now, in a critical way and the downfalls are mainly suggestive of a system in its toddler stage, rather than a lack of potential.

So what is a ‘Circular Economy’? To understand this, we must first look at the type of economy we were living in pre-Covid-19 and will continue to live in, unless necessary, widespread changes are made. It was known as the ‘Linear Economy’, characterised by the straight line process of materials flows; from extracting from the ground, to production/manufacturing, to the customer, and finally to the bin. Described by some as the ‘Cradle to Grave’ model. Figure 1. illustrates this movement beautifully. It’s a one way ticket to landfill.