🌀 So WTF is the Circular Economy anyway?? 🌀

Kicking things off with the basics

Hey y’all! Cas & Grace here. We’re stoked that 50(!!) of you have signed up to tag along on this journey with us so far. We want to kick things off today by discussing what we mean when we say ~the Circular Economy~. We’re going over this not only for ourselves (so we make sure we know what we’re talking about 😅), but also for those of you who are hearing about this for the first time or might need a refresher. We'll start by acknowledging that there are many different definitions of the Circular Economy but this is the one that makes the most sense to us. Please let us know in the comments if you have a different understanding or any questions!

Ok, we know you’re ready to get going…BUT WAIT! Before we define the Circular Economy, we need to take a quick detour to visit our current economic system and its issues. 

🌀 Our Current Economic System:

Currently, the predominant economic framework is…drum roll please…capitalism. The main goal of capitalism is accumulating as much capital (aka $$$) as possible in order to maximize profit. This goal is most effectively reached through a linear production and consumption model that looks a little something like this:

Let’s use an example to help us understand the linear model by following the journey of a t-shirt from design to disposal.

We begin our process with the design of our t-shirt, which includes deciding what materials it will be made out of, how it will be made, and what it will look like. Our main concern here is profit, and all design decisions will be made through this lens. We’ll choose a cheap cotton-polyester blend fabric for our design, which we will acquire by extracting the raw materials from our environment through farming cotton and refining crude oil into polyester. Our raw materials will then be sent to a factory for production, where our fabric will be cut and sewn into shirts, and dyed using a synthetic colorant.

Once finished, our t-shirt will be shipped to a store, where it will be sold to a consumer. After only a few uses our t-shirt becomes unwearable due to the cheap material ripping, and eventually finds its way into a trashcan as waste. The trash is eventually sent away to a landfill to be disposed of, where it sits “forever” slowly degrading into organic material and microplastics. Thus ends the lifecycle of this t-shirt, which was sadly doomed from the start 😢. 

This process works so well for those who profit off capitalism because it encourages the constant consumption and production of goods(which means more $$$). The framework for the linear economy was laid out in the Global North during the Industrial Revolution and at the time, it brought many benefits. Goods were mass-produced for the first time making them more accessible, allowing for industrialized countries to prosper (at least in terms of GDP). With this, populations grew and many people came out of poverty.

🌀 So…what’s the issue?

One of the biggest problems with this model is the sheer volume of resources needed to satisfy the growing demand for new products and the volume of waste created during production and after disposal. This is partly due to population increase but mostly due to the culture of consumption fostered under capitalism (a topic we have a lot of thoughts about, but for another day). To feed this consumption, it requires that we extract resources at the rate of 13 tons per person per year -  or about 13 full-grown giraffes per person per year.

Extraction is estimated to occur almost twice as fast as the regeneration of these resources, which means we are consuming raw materials at the rate of two earths, despite having just one. Linear production, overconsumption, and the mountains of toxic waste it creates have led to possibly irreversible environmental damage such as soil degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity - and this is just the tip of the iceberg! Ironically, the linear economy functions by destroying the very resources it depends on by treating them as if they are infinite (spoiler alert: they’re not). We will go into this in more detail for a later issue, but for now, suffice it to say our way of doing things isn’t working. Something big needs to change - and soon.

Luckily, there are many proposed solutions to these issues with our current linear system of production and consumption, of which the Circular Economy is one. In reality, a solution will probably take a combination of these proposals and a lot of people working on the same problem from many different angles.

Phew! Ok, now we’re back on the road after that detour, and our next stop is finally:

🌀 WTF Is the Circular Economy anyway??

In the simplest terms, the Circular Economy is an economic model with the main goal of maximizing the use of our planet’s resources by keeping the materials we have in use for as long as possible, ideally never becoming waste. In the Circular Economy, our products are designed with this intention in mind, and there are systems in place to help capture materials to be renewed for future use instead of ending up trapped in landfills as waste. Many methods can be used to keep our resources in circulation, such as reuse, sharing, composting, and recycling, among others. For now, we’ll focus on the production process, but we’ll come back to these methods in a later issue.

Let’s bring back our old friend the t-shirt, and redesign it from a circular perspective this time.

In the design phase, the main goal would be to make it easy to recover as much material as possible once we’re done using the t-shirt, so it can be renewed and used for creating new products. With this in mind, we might opt to only use recycled cotton instead of our original poly-blend, since fabrics with a blend of materials are more difficult to recycle. We could also make our shirt easy to disassemble, with decorative components made of different materials designed to be removable. During production, we would optimize how we cut our patterns to avoid creating waste from scraps, and ideally utilize renewable energy sources to power the whole operation.

Once we were ready to sell our t-shirt, we would make sure to not encourage overconsumption, but instead focus on providing a high-quality item that the consumer can use for a long time and easily mend or repurpose. Eventually, when our t-shirt is no longer usable, we would need to have a system in place for collection once the consumer is finished with it. This might look like a buy-back program, a local repository, a mail return, or a rental program. After our unusable t-shirt is collected, it will be broken down and processed into materials that are ready to be used again to create something new.

Zooming out even further, we could find ways of using the manufacturing byproducts from each step on the t-shirt’s supply chain. For example, the parts of the cotton plant that aren’t used for fabric could be composted and used as fertilizer, we could collect the scraps from production to turn into a different product, and the water waste from this process might be diverted to some nearby fields to irrigate them. The options are practically endless! 

🌀 Sounds great….let’s do it!

As consumers all over the world begin to demand circular swaps for their products, companies are beginning to get curious about incorporating circular practices into their design and production processes. While many of the necessary collection and processing systems for a true circular economy to thrive are still out of reach on a larger scale, communities are adopting these practices on a smaller scale. However, with the EU launching the Circular Economy Action Plan, global companies are being forced to build frameworks for circular systems.

As it gains popularity, circular design has become a buzzy concept in the marketing world and it is at risk of becoming just another green-washing term, like “sustainable” before it. Many companies have adopted practices they tout as circular, which are usually just recycling or buy-back schemes with good branding. Simply making a “compostable” bioplastic cup without the infrastructure to compost it isn’t really circular if it ends up in landfill or jamming up municipal composting. To truly claim circularity requires working towards a systems-level shift within infrastructure, values, design methods, and mindset toward consumption culture - all things that are hard to do in a linear economy!

Don’t get us wrong, something is better than nothing on our journey toward living within the capacity of our planet, and incremental changes are welcome. The urgency of systems change can be overwhelming (it is to us, too), but big shifts take time, care, collaboration, and intention. Sharing ideas that resonate with you and weaving them into your work, relationships, consumption, and approach to living is how big shifts start! We’re finding meaning in moving the needle in small ways, especially in community with others. That’s what we’re doing here at Full Circle, and why we’re so excited you’re here with us.

Thank you for joining us for our first issue of Full Circle! We are looking forward to continuing on this wild ride with you, getting deeper into the details of the Circular Economy. For our next issue, we’ll be looking more closely into how the mechanics of this model work, different applications of the circular mindset, and much more. We’d love to hear any questions you still have lingering, concerns you have that you’re curious to see addressed, or suggestions for our road trip playlist! Leave a comment for us below and we can try to incorporate it into future issues. We’re happy you’re here, and we’ll see you next time! ✌️