What is the Circular Economy?
An example of the circular economy in action in the Moon Rabbit Cafe in Melbourne
The Circular Economy by Circular Flanders
Circular economy might be one of those buzzy terms you’ve heard a lot about recently. Actually it’s a combination of a really old concept and something new that government and business are increasingly working towards.
You remember how your grandparents used proper napkins and rewashed them every day (or every couple of days!) or how airplane meals used to come with proper cutlery, on hard plastic that was rewashed and reused instead of thrown away? Well, those are the kind or practices that a circular economy is trying to bring back, alongside really cool ideas like turning waste from restaurants into fertilizer for mushrooms which are then sold back to those same restaurants - wild! (One of our RePlated Accepted venues in Melbourne, Moon Rabbit, actually does this - see super cool photo from Instagram).
The circular economy is about trying to create an entire economy around circular principles. Therefore for us to truly be a circular economy (rather than a circular business) ALL businesses and governments need to participate!
At its core the circular economy concept takes us from a linear mindset of Take - Make - Waste to one where we consider WHERE our materials and products come from, HOW they are made and used and what will they become NEXT, with the aim or keeping a material out of the waste stream for as long as possible (ideally forever!) It is a huge transition from where we are now,but we think all companies big or small need to start to consider this transition for the environment, but also if they want to remain relevant and competitive.
We’ve always loved the illustration on the left from Circular Flanders as it so effectively and simply explains the approach.
To also address the elephant in the room, recycling is NOT a circular economy. Effective recycling is critical to a functioning circular economy but to be effective, recycling needs to be comprehensively redesigned in most countries to ensure that inputs into recycling are actually turned into raw materials. And for a true circular economy we need to do a better job of working up the waste pyramid to focus on education and reuse. Recycling is far later in a circular economy than reduction & reuse.
A circular economy looks at three key principles and a circular economy strategy should address each of them for an organisation. They are:
Eliminating waste and pollution
Circulating products & materials
Regenerating nature
There are a lot of things that need to be done to improve recycling to eliminate waste. For example why are we not creating incentives for using recycled materials (or disincentives for using virgin materials), so that they are more affordable, because at the moment it is more expensive to use recycled materials?
That circulation of products and materials is in part a design challenge need to design our products and services for this circularity instead of relying on recycling. For example, designing circularity at the end pf our Mealboxes life is something we are doing. We take our products back at the end of their life to turn them into new products because we have see ‘waste’ as a commodity. That kind of mindset shift is what we celebrate in the circular community.
Regenerating nature is also a huge part of the waste challenge and businesses like RePlated have a huge role to play by tackling the worst culprits of the linear economy - single-use plastics. These are the materials that often bypass landfill and wind up in our waterways and wildspaces. Eliminating single-use will go a long way to creating a better world. When combined with businesses like The Seabin Project (among others) who actively collect that waste out of our environment and then create markets to sell them - we can really take great steps forward.
While taking waste can seem overwhelming, there is a lot of cause for optimism in this space. This level of problem solving requires ingenuity and innovation to arrive at solutions and it seems that fantastically there is an abundance of it in the market!
As a consumer, you are often asked to make more environmentally sound purchasing choices. Circular economy practitioners in business are trying to redesign the system to make those choices easier, better and more practical.
We firmly believe everyone has a role to play in this transition and we are doing our best to give you a circular option in the reusable takeaway container space.