{"id":415866,"date":"2025-09-11T13:18:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T13:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/415866\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T13:18:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T13:18:11","slug":"the-circular-economy-could-save-the-world-if-anyone-actually-knew-what-it-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/415866\/","title":{"rendered":"The circular economy could save the world \u2013 if anyone actually knew what it was"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A polar bear rummages through bags of garbage at the Arviat Solid Waste Site in Arviat, Nunavut, October, 2022.Fred Lum\/the Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Benjamin Errett is a writer and head of marketing at Green Standards.<\/p>\n

The circular economy is all about reuse. So it\u2019s fitting that at every conference on the subject, you\u2019re guaranteed to hear someone joke yet again that we\u2019re talking in circles. <\/p>\n

Most human activity today follows the spectacularly wasteful \u201ctake-make-waste\u201d model we call the linear economy. Products pass through our fingers like water \u2013 10 minutes for a coffee cup, three years for an office chair, or a century for a building. And then it\u2019s off to the giant dumpster we call our planet. Eventually, we\u2019ll hit the end of the line. <\/p>\n

Enter the circular economy, which asks the radical question: What if waste is just stuff in the wrong place? The three principles are simple and profound: Design out waste. Keep products and materials in use through sharing, repairing, refurbishing, and remanufacturing. And regenerate natural systems by working with ecological processes rather than against them. (A side note on the blue box, the most visible symbol of circularity: Recycling sits firmly at the bottom of the circular hierarchy. Even when there\u2019s public engagement and existing infrastructure, the whole process tends to downgrade materials. Paper, paperboard, and aluminum do well, but most plastic still ends up in the landfill, ocean, or as we\u2019re increasingly learning, our bodies.) <\/p>\n

The circular economy is above all an economy, one that creates new jobs, revenue models and opportunities. When supply chains loop back, we can do more with less for much longer. If we can make it work, it will keep us working in perpetuity.<\/p>\n

Failed plastics treaty talks leave no clear path to address growing pollution problem<\/a><\/p>\n

Investors wary of sustainability claims as companies ditch disclosures<\/a><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s kept me working for the past four years. After a long and glorious journalism career, I now run marketing for a crackerjack Canadian company called Green Standards<\/a>. As the name doesn\u2019t at all suggest, we help large organizations keep their surplus furniture, fixtures and equipment in use and out of landfill. That started 16 years ago in Toronto with donations to local non-profits \u2013 putting the chair in charities \u2013 and now includes reselling and recycling hundreds of thousands of tons of office stuff for businesses and governments across 40 countries. By virtually eliminating workplace waste, we\u2019re very much building the circular economy.<\/p>\n

This year, my employer sent me to three major conferences \u2013 in Montreal, Denver, and Sao Paulo \u2013 devoted to advancing circularity. At these meetings, representatives from major corporations, all levels of government, and non-profits talked about reverse logistics, digital product passports, and heritage buildings as resource banks. We talked about tool kits, frameworks, and best practices. And we talked excitedly about it finally being more than talk, about the companies figuring out ways to mine critical minerals from used batteries, the cities passing deconstruction ordinances, and the unoutsourceable jobs these new industries are already creating.<\/p>\n

But when we left the confines of the conferences, the talk abruptly stopped. No one I encountered outside the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, the Denver Convention Center, or Iberapuera Park mentioned circularity. These Canadians, Americans, and Brazilians have almost certainly recycled where facilities existed, or driven a used car, or sewn a button back on a garment, or used Facebook Marketplace, or collected a deposit on empty cans. <\/p>\n

In other words, we\u2019ve all participated in the circular economy in some small way even if we\u2019ve never heard the term. So why do advocates of the circular economy \u2013 and I count myself among them \u2013 keep using jargon that no one understands? If a tree doesn\u2019t fall in the forest because we recycled enough paperboard to keep it standing, do we just miss the sound?<\/p>\n

New draft of global plastics treaty scraps production cap<\/a><\/p>\n

Opinion: Recycling won\u2019t solve our planet-killing plastic-pollution problem<\/a><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

One of the big speakers at April\u2019s Canadian Circular Economy Summit<\/a> in Montreal was the newly appointed CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation<\/a>, perhaps the key global organization advocating for circularity. As a solo sailor, Ms. MacArthur set the record for circumnavigating the Earth. Inspired by what she saw (and probably also because the circle metaphor was too good to pass up), she created her foundation in 2010. <\/p>\n

Based in the Isle of Wight and employing 200 people around the world, the foundation has published reams of circular guides and tool kits, influenced EU and UN regulation, and engaged major multinational corporations. As they crisply explain on their website, a circular economy designs out waste, circulates materials at their highest value, and regenerates nature. And yet a 2022 YouGov survey in the U.K.<\/a> \u2013 the country in which Ellen MacArthur has both been knighted and appeared on Top Gear \u2013 found that 87 per cent of adults had never heard of the circular economy.<\/p>\n

Jonquil Hackenberg, the foundation\u2019s new CEO, had a solution for that. She actually had a whole bunch of solutions, bulleted in elegant slides that demonstrated her ability to speak to the Davos set. But it was when she said \u201cmake circularity cool\u201d \u2013 or more formally, to implement \u201cDesirable Solutions,\u201d which was itself the fourth of five points on a slide titled \u201cCreating the Enabling Conditions for Success\u201d \u2013 that it began to feel like, in the immortal words of Regina George from Mean Girls, we were trying to make fetch happen. Cool things, as a rule, are not discussed on PowerPoints in hotel ballrooms.<\/p>\n

And to be fair, my fellow attendees knew that. At a workshop titled \u201cPractical Engagement Tools for Mainstreaming Circularity,\u201d Dagmar Timmer and Kate O\u2019Connor of the Vancouver think tank OneEarth Living <\/a>dove into research that pointedly didn\u2019t mention circularity at all. Using a motivations-focused model established by Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, they surveyed a swath of Canadian consumers<\/a> to find out what led them to buy what they bought. The results were a snapshot of what the environmental movement has accomplished and how much more remains to be done. Those groups totally convinced by the facts of climate change are described as being motivated by EcoTrends and Healthy Life & Planet, but even in B.C. they\u2019re only a third of the population. <\/p>\n

The Waste Not Want Not impulse motivates another quarter of people, the tightwads who roll their eyes at tree-huggers. Then there are those motivated by Rugged Independence and Practical Traditions, all of whom might cross the street to avoid a climate march but would likely support right-to-repair laws that ensure you\u2019re able to fix every gadget you buy. Add it all up and there\u2019s a strong majority who support circularity, very few of whom know the word. The key is bringing the motivations together without turning them against each other.<\/p>\n

The unofficial star of the Canadian conference, based on how many people were politely waiting in line to talk to her, was Stephanie Phillips. Her day job is as head of the Deconstruction & Circular Economy Program at the City of San Antonio\u2019s Office of Historical Preservation, all of which means she\u2019s figured out how to do green things in the red state of Texas. Her secret: Frame it, or rather reframe it, as heritage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe use an organ donor analogy,\u201d she explained. \u201cSome structures may have reached the ends of their lives, but their parts and pieces can help sustain the lives of other structures through reuse.\u201d Her team has been working to train local contractors on deconstruction since 2019, reinforcing that material reuse is a form of both environmental and cultural stewardship. It may or may not be cool, but on a very local scale, it\u2019s working.<\/p>\n

ESG may be falling out of vogue, but sustainability is becoming unavoidable<\/a><\/p>\n

Opinion: Ottawa must prioritize climate tech in Canada\u2019s new defence strategy<\/a><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In Denver, the conference known simply as Circularity<\/a> is hosted by a company that used to be called GreenBiz. That\u2019s the clue to who participates: Sustainability officers from Fortune 500 companies, each paying several thousand dollars for tickets. This was also the only conference where the lunch menu included <\/b>meat, which was explained as a way of \u201cnudging diners towards sustainable plant-based options while preserving freedom of choice.\u201d Which, given the aforementioned need to increase the popularity of circularity, seemed reasonable. You don\u2019t have to be a vegetarian to reject waste, and if the goal is to meet people where they are, it\u2019s a fair bet they\u2019re lining up for the chicken fajitas.<\/p>\n

The best thing I heard <\/b>was from Dennis Wilson, who works for the French construction behemoth Saint-Gobain. After he casually mentioned that his employer was founded to build the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles \u2013 a corporate origin story flex if ever there was one \u2013 Mr. Wilson spoke about how, as a manufacturer, circularity is really a way to be closer to the customer. If you sell something with the understanding that you\u2019ll happily take it back when the buyer is done with it, you get a much better understanding of how they use it. On the other side of the transaction, it just feels like exemplary customer service. And if this is Saint-Gobain\u2019s clever, multicentury plan to repossess a French palace, it\u2019s even more inspired.<\/p>\n

In Colorado, the most influential proponent of junking the jargon was Bill McDonough. As the co-founder of the Cradle to Cradle movement, he\u2019s an icon to the circularity crowd, and both the style and substance of his keynote address demonstrated why: He spoke almost entirely in cranky Zen koans. We need perpetual assets. They\u2019re not natural resources, they\u2019re nature\u2019s sources. Don\u2019t call it extended producer responsibility; it\u2019s extended producer opportunity! And then came his pointed digs at the lingua franca of the room: Design for end-of-life? Don\u2019t use language that frightens the children! Work toward net-zero? More strange language for the children.<\/p>\n

And because it\u2019s 2025, the strange language can backfire quickly. Talking about reinventing the entire economy is like catnip for the conspiratorial right. Remember how the 15-minute city concept, a way to encourage walkable neighbourhoods where kids bought popsicles at corner stores and seniors could age in place, was portrayed as a shadowy communist plot<\/a> to confiscate cars? We can\u2019t eliminate the bad-faith detractors, but we can at least avoid talking like members of the Bilderberg group. And maybe explain that if they make their foil hats from aluminum, they\u2019ll be infinitely recyclable.<\/p>\n

This being a sustainability-themed conference in the United States in 2025, there was a fair bit of despair in the Rocky Mountain air. Subsequent LinkedIn posts from a handful of circularity advocates have talked of giving up on capitalism. And after six years of standalone Circularity conferences, the organizers announced that next year\u2019s edition will be folded into a larger meeting alongside discussions of green finance, climate tech, and biodiversity.<\/p>\n

Opinion: Climate risk disclosures must be mandatory for companies<\/a><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In the Southern Hemisphere, the vibe was completely reversed. Though it took place in Brazil, this year\u2019s World Circular Economy Forum<\/a> was really a testament to Finland. Or rather to Sitra<\/a>, which has run this conference since 2017 and may be the world\u2019s most effective promoter of circular solutions. Functioning as an independent arm of the government with a billion-dollar endowment thanks to a well-timed gift of Nokia stock from the Finnish Parliament, Sitra has the funding and the reach to push circularity hard. It\u2019s taught in elementary school, which is probably why (per another YouGov survey) 83 per cent of Finns have heard of the circular economy.<\/p>\n

The Brazilian government greeted these can-do Finns with open arms and a samba squad. The four-day conference was livestreamed around the world, but on the ground I didn\u2019t encounter a single other North American. It felt like a world charging ahead without the United States, where all governments and NGOs saw their circular initiatives as not just possible but inevitable. And with groups like the International Association of Waste Pickers representing the people who actually do the dirty work of reclaiming resources, it felt real.<\/p>\n

The global economic turmoil unleashed by you-know-who was mentioned only obliquely. Kristo Lehtonen of Sitra argued that this was circularity\u2019s moment in part because of competitiveness and national security. To read between the lines, he was saying you can\u2019t tariff reuse.<\/p>\n

But Sao Paulo is still situated in the real linear world, and there were hard facts on offer. Circle Economy<\/a>, the Amsterdam-based counterpart of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, released their annual Circularity Gap report<\/a>, an analysis conducted with Deloitte to determine how round the global economy is right now. And the sobering result is that it\u2019s even less circular. It\u2019s now 6.9 per cent<\/a>, down from 7.2 per cent last year. The report comes with a \u201croadmap for ambitious change,\u201d but it\u2019s hard not to take it as more high-level proof that the campaigns for circularity have yet to connect. We\u2019re still not closing the necessary loops.<\/p>\n

So where does all that talk leave the circular economy? I keep coming back to one conversation in Denver, where representatives of Coca-Cola and Pepsi sat side-by-side on stage to discuss their co-operation in creating the holy grail of circularity: A solution to the single-use cup.<\/p>\n

The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project<\/a> took over a small California city for three months in 2024 to see if one cup could rule them all. Thirty businesses \u2013 including McDonald\u2019s, Wendy\u2019s, 7-11, Starbucks and many more \u2013 in the city of 60,000 people agreed to sell all their drinks in a bright purple plastic cup emblazoned with the motto \u201cSip. Return. Repeat.\u201d It was designed to be just nice enough to not throw out, but not so nice that consumers would want to keep it. <\/p>\n

An extensive marketing campaign was launched using an \u201capproachable, purple, playful program identity to speak to everyone, not just the environmentally-minded.\u201d They secured the web domain returnmycup.com<\/a>. Sixty bright purple bins were situated all around town, and local recycling facilities helped pull any misdirected cups out of their processing centres.<\/p>\n

And \u2026 it worked! Sort of! By the project\u2019s goal, enough cups were returned \u2013 51 per cent of them, or 220,000 \u2013 to make the project better for the environment than the single-use alternative. There are clever suggestions for next steps and more pilots are planned for next year.<\/p>\n

But the most telling comment came from a Starbucks representative at the Denver conference, who said the biggest problem that remained to be solved was branding. Every coffee shop wants you walking down the street holding their cup, not a universal violet receptacle. \u201cIt\u2019s so important for everyone,\u201d he said. \u201cHow do we strike the balance of a program that\u2019s shared but everyone has their name on it?\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve solved the logistics of circularity. The value is there, especially at a local level. Corporations can be convinced that it\u2019s worth playing along. With the right language, we can get people to do it and, for the most part, like it. But in the end, it comes down to marketing. The circular economy is an economy, and everyone in it needs to be sold on the idea. Call it reuse, competitiveness, deconstruction, cultural preservation, client focus, value, independence, empowerment, or if you must, circularity. The words are just means to an end, though the nice thing about circles is they don\u2019t have ends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A polar bear rummages through bags of garbage at the Arviat Solid Waste…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[9884,728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-415866","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-appwebview","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115185864201506430","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}