A Layperson’s Fantasy About A Circular Economy

“I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival.” Prince Charles in a recent BBC article.

We have 1.5 years to change our ways, or we won’t be able to survive climate change.

I can’t believe it’s a fact now, reported on the news. We are running out of time to save our kind and a lot of animals. Maybe most animals. Now is the time to act.

But, with only 18 months to turn the tide, we need more help beyond our collective bottom-up efforts at reducing our carbon footprint. We need systemic changes.

Though government policies are the fastest ways to change things (bureaucracy and politics aside), we need to do something with our current model of economy too. So I found myself fantasizing…

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Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.  Definition of Consumerism from Wikipedia.

Thanks to consumerism, we’ve been urged to become passionate consumers in the name of “prosperity”. Even though it worked – coupled with industrialization and mass marketing, economies have taken off, and societies are getting affluent – it’s shortsighted.

I can’t say that consumerism is bad. It lifts communities out of poverty and creates environments that facilitate technological progress. Besides, my limited knowledge of economics limited my understanding of the full extent of what it does. But we can’t deny there are deadly flaws in the system.

Our unsustainable linear economy

Chronic overproduction

For a start, we’re making more things than we need because we want to fully stock stores to make it more appealing, and everyone wants to get their product out there!

Even after several sales, it’s unlikely that everything would be sold. Where do the surpluses go?

This article stated that surpluses are donated, sold to other businesses or thrown away, especially if they’re perishables.

Then again, I know of a company that simply destroys unsold merchandise to prevent folks from trying to get refunds with donated items.

We also have brands like Burberry, which burned $40 million worth of unsold goods to keep them off market, so they can maintain brand exclusivity.

It makes me wonder how many years they’ve been doing that. It scares me to think about all these years of oversupply.

The chronic overproduction is wasteful and unsustainable.

Take, make, use, throw.

Besides the surpluses, everything that is sold and used also represent an eventual source of waste – because we have a linear economy.

Raw materials are taken from the environment; made into products; products are used; then products are thrown away.

Sure, some of it gets recycled, but it only represents a small percentage of the materials used.

Once again, it’s an unsustainable system.

Now, we’re stuck. Companies need to keep making products to make money, we need to keep buying things to move the economy. But we can’t keep harvesting resources from the environment to make things we end up throwing in the landfills or incinerated.

As it is, we’ve strained our environment almost to the point of no return. With the population growing and consumption still on the rise, especially in developing economies, we’ll run out of resources even if climate change doesn’t claim us.

A circular economy

It’s past time that we turn our consumerist linear economy into a consumerist circular economy.

Even though I’m a happy minimalist, I don’t expect people to all be conscious consumers. Everyone has different needs and beliefs.

People are going to keep buying. The act of buying, getting the thrill of buying and having the thrill die off is exactly how every addiction works. It may be a relatively harmless addiction, much like addiction to coffee or sugar, it’s still a hard habit to kick.

So I believe consumerism is here to stay, but that’s not to say we can’t do it right.

The key is to look into how we use resources and make sure we minimize waste right from the start and not after the fact.

If we can improve the way we use materials and make recycling of products that has reached the end of their life cycle part of the sales package, we may be able to have our cake and eat it too.

Can you imagine an economy in which companies do the following?

• Use renewable energy
• Use materials with infinite/high recyclability that cause lesser damage on the environment
• Improve efficiency of system to prevent wastages in the manufacturing process, and find alternate uses for wasted materials
• Use sustainable packaging material such as cardboard boxes, biodegradable packing peanuts, paper etc (even better if the peanuts can be recovered and reused!)
• Recover defective items. Then repair and sell at a lower price, or dismantled to recover materials
• Recover items at the end of their use to recycle their parts
• Replenish natural resources, often by planting trees

Wouldn’t that be fantastic? That’s a picture of a circular economy.

It’s a sensible way, perhaps even the only way, to proceed. Also, the company will see a higher profit in the long run – not from selling more products, but from the more effective use and recovery of resources.

A circular economy = better ways to recover materials

Manufacturing

Curbside recycling, as convenient as it is, is an inefficient system. At the moment, recycling is a messy endeavor. It involves high input in the sorting and cleaning processes even before the actual recycling happens.

A circular economy necessitates better material recovery processes.

If industries come together to set up material recovery systems, they’ll be able to recover materials they need for new products! After all, materials used are more similar within an industry, and pooling resources distribute the cost.

This will be especially useful if they use highly recyclable material like aluminum, steel or glass. It’ll make the recycling process so much more efficient too – involving less sorting, less contamination, less waste.

Retail

A circular economy wouldn’t end with the manufacturers too. Retailers has an equally big role to play.

For example, supermarkets can offer in-store reuse programs by providing container and reuse bags for customers to buy produce in for a fee. Customers use these bags and return them when they make a grocery run. In turn, these retailers benefit from customer retention and loyalty.

I see a simple recycling solution in pharmacies too. Every time we filled a prescription at a pharmacy, we get new pill bottles.

Wouldn’t it be much easier if pharmacies collected these bottles instead? After all, we collect a prescription when we run out of medication. It’d be so easy to deposit the old bottles there.

The only sorting involved will be separating cap from bottle. And you won’t have to worry about them falling through the cracks in the machinery. Or contamination with plastic in other colors.

At the end of the day, there’re a lot of ways to solve the problem. I foresee new businesses emerging to provide the solutions. We just need to shift our collective thinking faster!

Simpler solutions in the meantime

While we wait for bigger solutions to be developed, we shouldn’t forget that solutions can be simple too.

Take companies delivering milk in glass bottles for instance! That’s how it has always been done anyway. Plaine Products sell shampoos and body washes in refillable aluminum bottles.

These examples show us that the solutions can be simple. If we can receive Amazon packages in two days, I’m sure we can find ways to deliver things in reusable packaging and collect empty bottles for recycling!

Wrapping up my fantasy

At this moment, I wish I’d studied manufacturing processes so I could write a more technical piece and perhaps achieve more. But then again, I wish I was a marine biologist when I was learning about plankton!

Alas, I am but a layperson with a passion for environment conservation and a lot of daydreams.

That doesn’t mean I can’t join my voice with the the voices of folks in favor of a circular economy! The more consumers talk about it and push for it, the more companies would listen. The faster they’ll redesign their business models.

We may be laypeople in the world of business, manufacturing or materials recovery, but we’re seasoned consumers and rightful residents of earth. Surely, we can have our say.

Please join me in my fantasy and share this dream of a circular economy far and wide. Talk about it often and loud. Perhaps someday soon, it’ll become a reality.

Remember, we only have 18 months.

Hopefully, there’ll come a day when we can consume with a clean conscience, and the next generation can consume without worries too.