🌞 Welcome to Full Circle 🌞
Hello hello! We're so excited you're here with us for the launch of our new newsletter exploring the Circular Economy.
Welcome to Full Circle, a newsletter documenting our journey to understand the many facets of the Circular Economy.
🌱 First of all, who are you taking this journey with?
Hi! Nice to meet you. We’re Cas & Grace, friends and collaborators who met during grad school at Parsons. We share a deep love for our planet, and a fascination with all things systems, sustainability, and climate through a design justice lens. In the past, we’ve worked together on a series of participatory workshops exploring what a post-growth future might entail, investigated the landscape of economic alternatives to capitalism, and created methodologies for prototyping speculative objects from the future. Now we’re using this newsletter as a place to document our investigation into a topic we’re excited to learn more about! If you’re curious to know more about us please visit the about page. :)
🌱 What’s the big deal with the Circular Economy?
We’re glad you asked! We’re pretty critical of our current economic system that commodifies our planet’s finite resources and treats them as if they are infinite (spoiler alert: they’re not 🫠) and encourages the production of unnecessary waste through convenience culture. We see an urgent need for our society to transition to more sustainable and equitable ways of existing on Earth, especially given the increasingly concerning impacts of the climate crisis. To us, the Circular Economy presents a possible way forward that reduces our need for virgin materials, minimizes our impact on the planet, and in some cases eliminates unnecessary waste altogether. Understanding the nuances of the Circular Economy is of utmost importance to us, so we can be more informed citizens and incorporate these values into our respective practices.
🌱 Why a newsletter?
Through our work together, we've found that we learn best by diving deep into a topic, processing what we learn through different mediums, and (most importantly) sharing that with others. So, we decided to do just that! We don't claim to be experts on these topics - but we are curious researchers driven to break down this dense topic and put it into digestible terms, both for ourselves and hopefully you. A newsletter was the most straightforward way of archiving our journey and updating you along the way, so here we are!
🌱 What can you expect on the journey ahead?
We'll start this wild ride with an exploration into the general landscape of the Circular Economy, and then make stops along the way to deep dive into topics like:
👯 How a transition to circularity can be just and participatory
🏔️ Issues with scaling circular methods
🦸♂️ Case studies on our circular heroes and circular villains
🧐 Investigations into how some countries are applying circular regulations
🔮 Speculative applications of circular processes
♻️ The problem with recycling and sustainability
📊 Interviews with business owners on the reality of applying circular practices
🤩 And soooooo much more…
Eeeee! We can’t wait to get started. 🤓
🌱 Where do you (the reader) fit in?
If all this sounds as exciting to you as it does to us (!!!!) then grab a snack, buckle up, and join us as we journey through the landscape of the Circular Economy. We hope to send bi-monthly updates and want our readers to feel like they're riding alongside us.
We will most likely make mistakes or take detours along the way (we’re all human after all), and we encourage you to leave comments with your questions, suggestions, and critiques. We want to hear if something comes up for you that you’re conflicted, confused, or stoked about! All feelings welcome.
Please also share this newsletter with anyone else you think might be interested in what we’re doing here. We’re in this together 🌍
🌱 Okay so what’s next??
We’ll be back in your inboxes in a few weeks with a bird’s eye view of the world of Circularity. Until then, comment below with some of the questions you have about the Circular Economy, and we’ll see if we can incorporate them in the next issue.