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Picturing a
Circular Economy
NOVEMBER 21, 2020
Evolving Climates

With the advent of the internet and other technological advancements, the world is changing in dramatic speeds. Industries can become irrelevant overnight and disruptions brings out unprecedented job losses. It is precisely in such times that we should constantly adapt–before changes occur.

Anticipating the Future

Speed is imperative in a globalised market. You don't solve a problem when it finally comes, you strategise by looking at ongoing and promising developments. One promising idea is the Circular Economy which is currently on track for full implementation in the Netherlands.

Circular Charlotte
An organization from the Netherlands, Metabolic, is working with governments in actualizing circular economic systems. One of them is Charlotte, an American City, which is implementing the infant steps in fully adopting the Circular Economy by 2050. This means that the circular economy is not just something on theory but something they are rolling out on a large scale basis. I believe understanding it would be imperative for business owners interested in the long game, in making long term decisions and anticipating future problems.


What's a Circular Economy?

it's an economic system that is waste-free and regenerative by design. That would mean everything (above 97%) we use would be either recycled or repur- posed, there would be no food waste and energy would be renewable. This is a topic many are numb to, we hear about sustainability all too often. However Circular Economy is very contextual, there are specific action plans about how each and every type of product can be redeveloped, how to distribute the materials between small-medium businesses and big enterprises etc.

The Fiscal Impact of the Circular Economy

The vast majority of our economic system can currently be defined as linear. We extract resources, which are then transformed to products via the use of labor, energy, and money, and then, soon after their use, these products are thrown away. Every time a product that we have crafted and manufactured with care ends up in landfill, not only do we lose the physical resources it is made up of, but also all of the time and energy that went into its creation.

McKinsey estimated that up to 630 billion dollars a year is lost in Europe alone through the loss of materials in the linear economy (EMF & McKinsey, 2011).

Loss in the Current System that is the Linear Economy


New Job Opportunities

These material losses translate to unrealized employment potential.

US EPA institute for local self reliance estimate that low-value activities that result in material losses like incineration/landfill, only generate 1-6 jobs per 10,000 tonnes of goods disposed of. Recycling generates 36 for same amount of material while reuse & refurbishment create 300 jobs for each 10,000 tonnes of waste. The systematic transformation for circular economy – from development of new technologies, to evolution of new forms of collaboration or business models can generate even newer employment and opportunities for skills development.

Number of Jobs according to Waste Treatment Methods


3 Broad Approaches

There are many specifics but 3 broad approaches of the Circular Economy are as of follows:

Next we share explore how a Circular Society would look with the 4 themes of Circular Charlotte.

Design all products for easy repair, disassembly & full recyclability
Create necessary business structures & incentives to get these materials back into the economy at highest possible value. (Preferably whole products/components)
To Strive to use only responsibly-sourced renewable resources for both energy and material provision and avoid use of toxic substance that continue to circulate in environment.
THEME#1
CHARLOTTE AS A ZERO-WASTE CITY

INTERACTIVE BINS IN EVERY HOME
• Every household could be equipped with smart sorting containers with built-in technologies to tell users if they have sorted something incorrectly.
• Residents would get reward points paid directly to their digital wallets for every pound of correctly-sorted waste.
• They could use their earnings for the purchase of local goods branded with the circular charlotte label, many of which have been remanufactured or grown from those same residual streams. If they have reward points leftover, they could use them to pay taxes or their fully renewable energy bill.

LIVE DASHBOARD FOR BUSINESSES TO BID FOR MATERIALS
• A real time resource monitoring platform, the Charlotte Circularity Dashboard, would continuously report how much is available of different kinds of residual goods–from citrus peels to old shoes. These resources would be automatically diverted to various processing facilities throughout the city , run by large companies and small entrepreneurs alike, The dashboard would keep a record of orders placed requesting different materials, and ships off materials to the earliest bidder.

THEME#2
CHARLOTTE AS A RESILIENT AND HEALTHY CITY
DECENTRALISED ENERGY SYSTEM FOR RESISTANCE AGAINST DISASTERS
•Further efforts to improve city’s health and resilience could focus on decentralization of utility services. Renewable energy, decentralized battery storage and smart distribution of energy through the city’s smart grid could make Charlotte’s energy system resistant to impact of storms/floods with most damage remaining localized.
ADVANCEMENTS IN VERTICAL FARMING
•As other circular industries develop, Charlotte and its surrounding region could become increasingly independent of foreign imports, with almost all materials sourced from local cycles.
•Local food production has potential to grow immensely, with advancement of vertical farming technology and reuse of organic waste streams as fertilisers.
AQUAPONICS IN SCHOOL FOR BOTH SCIENCE AND FRESH FOOD
Most of Charlotte’s schools would also have their own small-scale aquaponics facilities, which would be used both for hands-on science education as well as to provide farm-fresh produce and fish to school’s cafeteria.。
THEME#3
CHARLOTTE AS AN INNOVATIVE CITY OF THE FUTURE

• With Charlottes innovation in waste collection and sorting which would result in supply of previously unavailable hi-quality and pure resource streams, a whole new cluster of industries could begin to develop throughout the city. New product develop- ment would explode in the early 2020s.
• At first, the major focus of R&D activities would be on processing textiles, plastics & construction wastes.
• In 2023, CharM, the city’s newly opened materials lab, a joint project of several of Charlottes’ incuba- tors and accelerators, would begin experimenting on how to convert collected organic wastes into new materials–Like clothing, furnishings & biode- gradable packaging. The strong need for materials & product innovation because of the city’s ambi- tious circularity goals would also need to new educational facilities such as Charlotte institute of Circular Design & Engineering.

THEME#4
CHARLOTTE AS A CITY WITH OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL

•Plastic wastes, which are of too low a quality for automated processing at that time, would be sorted, washed & shredded for production of small batches of street furniture, waste bins & trophies for school sporting events.

Existing Products designed with Circular Principles

It is easy to talk about the ideas of Circular Economy but how do designers take these essences and adapt designs around it? It is just using recyclable materials? I would like to introduce a design where the values of the Circular Economy can be seen.

SU by Emeco
Su, is a stool by Emeco designed by studio Nendo. I mentioned before that one of the broad approaches of the Circular Economy is easy repair, disassembly & full recyclability.

The stool comes in recyclable materials, in fact you can change around the materials using interchangeable parts. However the interesting part comes in disassembly and repair; the stool can be disassembled with a single 25-cents coin. Beyond how the user looks or sit on the stool–by rethinking the process in repairing and disassembly, they managed to improve something that everyone thought is obvious and would not even think about improving. Why must you have a full set of carpenter’s tools to disassemble furniture?

Conclusion

Where do you fit in a circular economy? I only touched briefly on the surface but there are strategies in every industry intrinsically linked with one another–agriculture, construction, automotive, oil, and logistics among many others. It pays to understand how all these affect one another and affect you, because there are promising evidences that this will be the future.

The key is to predict what the world will be in 30 years and make it happen in 20.