d33 SUSTAINABILITY / THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY
WHEN A PRODUCT FALLS INTO THE CATEGORY ‘WASTE’, YOU CANNOT DO MUCH WITH IT, APART FROM TRYING TO RECYCLE IT. THE WASTE CONCEPT MUST EVOLVE SO WE CAN MORE EASILY RECOVER IT AND VALUE IT
or used products and materials. “Until we have a profitable market for trading waste of any kind, we will be unable to incentivise people and organisations to recover it. Both governments and companies play a crucial role.”
She puts this partly down to the lack of speed with which regulation progresses. “When a product falls into the category ‘waste’, you cannot do much with it, apart from trying to recycle it. The waste concept must evolve so we can more easily recover it and value it.”
Other ways of enabling the transition to the circular economy, according to Tari, include channelling more funding towards businesses which are advancing technologies that facilitate material recovery and biodegradability and putting reverse logistics in place.
nowhere near sophisticated enough. The logistics and labour costs of return, repair and remanufacture is not cheap. Unless there is a very positive economic business case for companies getting involved, they just won’t do it.”
One new, potentially successful business model that Chamberlin sees emerging involves flipping the system from a product-based one to a service-based approach. This system is based largely on the performance economy as outlined by Walter Stahl, Founder-director of The Product-Life Institute, Geneva.
The Circular
Lucy Chamberlin was Head of Programme for the RSA’s Great Recovery Programme, which was a project that ran between 2012 and 2016 and looked at the challenges of waste and the opportunities of a circular economy through the lens of design. She says: “Return logistics are way behind. Dispatching items out to consumers is a finely tuned, high-tech process now. But the systems in place for getting stuff back for return or remanufacture are
Economy model takes a 5 R approach – repair, reuse, refurbish, remanufacture, and recycle. It requires businesses to radically rethink the way that they design and manufacture,
based on three key principles: n Designing out waste and pollution; n Keeping products and materials in use;
n Regenerating natural systems.
In the performance economy, selling goods as services enables economic actors to retain the ownership of their goods and the embodied resources throughout their life cycles, making them responsible for their maintenance and recovery, rather than saddling customers with that burden.
Tari points out Philips Lighting as a pioneer in this area due to its innovative, end-to-end circular lighting service
model. Philips Lighting installs, maintains and manages the lighting throughout its lifecycle, making it possible for commercial customers to purchase light as a service rather than invest in new hardware upfront. This allows Philips to build traceability, serviceability, recycling,
upgrade options as well as parts harvesting into their business model.
“ ”
This model is nothing new though; the sharing economy already enables us to access accommodation, movies, music and cars in this way. In fact, today’s users are clearly displaying a preference for access over ownership. Moving away from a system of outright product ownership to one in which consumers lease their furniture, household appliances and even kitchens, may be what the future holds.
“Ultimately we need a totally different economic system,” says Chamberlin, “and that won’t be possible until the underlying narrative of perpetual growth is challenged.” The circular economy has the potential to generate benefits for stakeholders on every level – customers, businesses, and society as a whole. But it cannot be achieved by individual players alone. It requires collaborative global action and large-scale, business- led collaboration in order to catalyse change on the scale necessary.
“I always say no company is circular unless all companies are circular,” says Chamberlin. “It’s all about material streams and no one company has complete control of its material stream.” But for Tari, the transition to a circular economy is a challenge that is open to all. “This is a transition to an entirely new economic model and a shift that everyone is invited to join. Those missing out on this opportunity will likely face economic hardships, and will probably not be as competitive.”
designer kitchen & bathroom
designerkbmag.co.uk
JUN 2019
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