Could your business use a circular economy to be more sustainable?

The concept of a circular economy grew from the need to tackle rising resource consumption and waste production, which causes negative environmental impacts.

While there are many interpretations of how a circular economy could be adopted, businesses can start the transition by adopting practices that reduce waste and support the environment.

It’s good for businesses, consumers and the environment, as it can transform our ‘throwaway’ society into one where more resources are circulated, greenhouse gas emissions are removed and nature, such as biodiversity, can be regenerated.

So how can your business move to a circular economy? You’ll need to re-think and re-design how you make products and power your systems with renewable energy. A large part of this will be to eliminate waste and pollution. Most waste ends up in landfills or incinerators, which further pollute the planet.

Circulating products and materials back up the chain will allow them to either stay in use, or be taken apart and re-used. Designing systems to incorporate these two main principles will be the key to creating a circular economy for your organisation.

Here are some basic examples to get you thinking:

Recycling – Designing products with recyclable packaging and making a framework for product lifecycles could help prevent waste by gathering old products from customers and reusing them.

Remanufacturing – Using recycled materials including old products returned by customers will help you save money and resources while reducing waste.

Repair and maintenance – Offering a repair or maintenance function for your products can extend their lifecycle. This can include phones, vehicles, clothes, and much more.

Sharing – Creating a sharing or renting scheme for eligible products could reduce costs for customers and extend the lifecycle of quality products, rather than throwing away cheap ones.

If you don’t sell physical products, there are still ways you can take part in a circular economy. This will involve looking at your waste and supply chains and focusing on regenerating nature. This allows nature to recover and increase biodiversity through practices which return materials to Earth. Currently, most biomaterials are lost after use and the land used to extract them becomes depleted of nutrients.

Here are some things your business could think about:

Collection – Items can be designed, re-used and if biodegradable, eventually put back into the ground. Creating a supply chain which incorporates this could reduce waste.

Regeneration – Splitting out your waste will allow you to recycle materials such as glass, card and plastic, while sending bio-waste back into the system to regenerate nature where possible.

Offsetting – While some carbon offsetting projects can leave a lot to be desired when it comes to supporting the environment, especially since they could be seen as greenwashing, the idea of supporting nature regeneration projects, if tracked and calculated correctly, could be a good way to support the natural environment.

While implementing circular economy activities isn’t a magical fix and requires additional processes and stricter carbon accounting, it could do wonders to reduce waste. If your organisation is looking to tackle the climate emergency and bolster your sustainability strategy, implementing circular economy principles could certainly do the job.