Circular Economy & Donut

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Schools of thought that inspired the circular economy. Where did the idea of a circular economy come from? What schools of thought or ideas inspired the concept? The origins of circular economy thinking come from many places and have been refined and developed over the years. Here are some of those schools of thought that have inspired circular economy thinking.......

Cradle to Cradle.....German chemist Michael Braungart and American architect Bill McDonough, developed the Cradle to Cradle™ concept and certification process. This design philosophy considers all material involved in industrial and commercial processes to be nutrients, of which there are two main categories: technical and biological. The Cradle to Cradle framework focuses on design for effectiveness in terms of producing products with positive impact.

Cradle to Cradle’s three principles.......

1.Cradle to Cradle design takes inspiration from natural systems, where there is no concept of waste: everything is a resource for something else. Biological nutrients should be safely returned to the soil, while technical nutrients should be used again and again at high quality. 2.

2.The argument goes that natural systems thrive on current solar income and human systems could too. Renewable energy is clean (at the point of use), low-cost to operate, creates no emissions in use, and utilises abundant resources.

3. Finally, celebrate diversity: diversity builds resilience in natural systems, and can do so in human systems, too. Equally, no two places are the same: a diverse approach is often necessary to overcome the challenges and meet the opportunities offered by different geographies.

The Performance Economy......In his 1976 research report to the European Commission, Walter Stahel, architect and economist, sketched a vision of an economy in loops (or circular economy), The Potential for Substituting Manpower for Energy, co-authored with Genevieve Reday. The vision looked at its impact on job creation, economic competitiveness, resource savings, and waste prevention. Credited with having coined the expression “Cradle to Cradle” in the late 1970s, Stahel worked at developing a ‘closed loop’ approach to production processes and created the Product Life Institute in Geneva more than 25 years ago. It pursues four main goals: product-life extension, long-life goods, reconditioning activities, and waste prevention. It also insists on the importance of selling services rather than products, an idea referred to as the ‘functional service economy’, now more widely absorbed into the notion of ‘performance economy’. Stahel argues that the circular economy should be considered a framework: as a generic notion, the circular economy draws on several more specific approaches that gravitate around a set of basic principles.

Biomimicry “Innovation inspired by nature” - Janine Benyus.The idea at the core of Biomimicry is that life has already solved most of the problems we are currently grappling with. To give some obvious examples: birds can fly with no need for fossil fuels, barnacles can adhere to underwater surfaces and have a tremendous ability to stay attached, insects outweigh humans yet cause no pollution or waste, leaves soak up sunlight and manage to efficiently and effectively transport water and nutrients through a dense network. Biomimicry holds that we can find solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s patterns and strategies. Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, defines her approach as “a new discipline that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems”. Visit the Biomimicry Institute to learn more about biomimicry.

Industrial Ecology.....The study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. Focusing on connections between operators within the ‘industrial ecosystem’, this approach aims at creating closed-loop processes in which waste serves as an input, thus eliminating undesirable by-products. Industrial ecology adopts a systemic point of view, designing production processes so they perform as close to living systems as possible. This is achieved by considering local ecological constraints and looking at the global impact of processes from the outset. This framework is sometimes referred to as the ‘science of sustainability’, given its interdisciplinary nature. The principles of industrial ecology can also be applied in the services sector. With an emphasis on natural capital restoration, industrial ecology also focuses on social wellbeing.

Regenerative Design......In the US, John T. Lyle started developing ideas on regenerative design that could be applied to all systems, i.e., beyond agriculture, for which the concept of regeneration had already been formulated. Arguably, he laid the foundations of the circular economy framework, which developed and gained notoriety thanks to McDonough (who had studied with Lyle), Braungart and Stahel. Today, the Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies offers courses on the subject......read on https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/schools-of-thought-that-inspired-the-circular-economy Read more about Walter Stahel’s thinking in his book: The Circular Economy – A User’s Guide.

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Circular economy solutions are needed to safeguard biodiversity and solve the climate crisis. Join us in creating a fair transition to a society in which we maintain the value of what we produce through smarter design and shifting from owning products to using services.

More than just a big idea – how extended reality tech can enable a circular economy. Taking inspiration from the role of gamification in driving environmental engagement, XR technologies have been harnessed to highlight the problems with, and symptoms of, our current extractive economy with the aim of inspiring action. Time Magazine’s ‘Inside the Amazon: The Dying Forest’ brings to life the environmentally and socially destructive realities of deforestation in an immersive journey. Meanwhile, the New York Times’ AR-powered storytelling tool enables users to visualise microscopic air pollution as floating digital fragments and, using location based sensors, compare their local levels with those of the world’s most polluted cities. The cumulative impacts of our linear economy could be similarly highlighted by XR to allow people to observe the gradual onset of ‘shifting baseline syndrome’ by simulating landscapes and ecosystems as they appeared twenty, thirty, or one hundred years ago. But neither nostalgia for a past less polluted – nor knowledge of the planet’s current trajectory – can alone transform awareness into action. XR technologies can be used to help to realise and scale the circular economy, in which waste and pollution are eliminated, products and materials are circulated, and nature is regenerated.

How XR can help visualise solutions for a circular economy...... Echoing the classic Walt Disney quote “if you can dream it, you can do it”, extended reality technologies allow us to construct any scenario from scratch. While painting the problems of a linear economy can prompt innovation, using XR to explore the solutions of a circular economy enables key audiences and actors to be engaged in a more active way. Already, XR is being used by some cities, institutions, and governments as a means of sharing solutions-based progress towards a circular economy. In the Netherlands, for example, the immersive VR experience ‘Virtual Gateway NL’ offers people the opportunity to connect, via a simple cardboard headset, with some of the country’s most forward-thinking solutions. Viewers can explore Dutch companies already incorporating circular economy principles, including Brightlands, a campus community pursuing innovation projects such as the use of bio-based materials like agro waste and lignocellulose (plant dry matter) as raw material inputs for new products.

Communicating the backstory and benefits of initiatives already underway helps to raise the profile of the circular economy in action and encourage similar actions......read on https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/tech-enablers-series/part-1

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Circular construction could be a huge boon for climate—and jobs. In a new study, the researchers tallied up the substantial economic and ecological benefits of taking buildings apart piece by piece rather than bulldozing them.Anthropecine Sarah DeWeerdt October 15, 2024 A circular construction industry could prevent substantial greenhouse gas emissions and unlock up to $3 billion of economic growth for New York State, researchers from Cornell University write in a new white paper. Construction, renovation, and demolition of buildings in New York generates 7.7 million tons of waste every year, and 58% of this material winds up buried in a landfill, burned, or shipped off to another country for disposal This linear construction industry also has a hefty climate footprint. Buildings and waste are the first and fourth largest sources of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions in the state, together responsible for 43% of emissions.The social costs are high too: indiscriminate demolition releases toxic dust that poisons nearby air and waterways. Disposal of the resulting waste worsens the strain on the state’s overtaxed landfills, which taxpayers must pay to maintain for decades after their closure.

In contrast, “Circular construction aims to design and construct buildings as material banks for future construction, extend the life of today’s built environment, and activate the potential of existing structures at the end of their service lives as ‘anthropogenic mines’ of useful materials,” the researchers write.While 42% of construction and demolition debris is currently recycled, this mostly amounts to downcycling, turning an undifferentiated mass of mixed materials into low-value products like aggregate and landfill cover. Just 0.4% of building debris is currently reused in new construction.

Deconstruction—taking buildings apart piece by piece rather than indiscriminately bulldozing them—could enable at least 90% of building materials to be reused or recycled, the researchers say.Deconstruction can reclaim valuable building materials ranging from lumber and steel to windows and trim, and even kitchen cabinetry and bathroom fixtures. This painstaking work is more labor-intensive than demolition, so it creates more jobs—including entry-level positions that could help people get started in skilled building trades. https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2024/10/circular-construction-could-be-a-huge-boon-for-climate-and-jobs/

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We like it a lot’: how Romania created its hugely popular deposit return scheme. Guardian In the two years since the system was launched, beverage-packaging collection and recycling has risen to 94% In the Transylvanian village of Pianu de Jos, 51-year-old Dana Chitucescu gathers a sack of empty polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, aluminium cans and glass every week and takes it to her local shop.Like millions of Romanians across cities and rural areas, Chitucescu has woven the country’s two-year-old deposit return system (DRS) into her routine. It is a simple scheme: when buying soft drinks or alcoholic beverages, the customer pays an extra 0.50 Romanian leu (£0.09) per bottle and gets the money back when returning the packaging, cleaned and in its original shape, to a collection point (usually the same shops where the goods were bought). Chitucescu makes about 40 leu a week from recycling her and another family’s bottles. “That covers the food for my seven cats,” she said. “It’s a great system, everyone in our village uses it, there’s always a queue at the shop.” Her weekly walk is one tiny part of a national shift that, until recently, seemed impossible.

Romania’s recycling rates were among the lowest in the EU, but in the two years since the scheme launched, beverage-packaging collection and recycling has skyrocketed to as high as 94% in some months. “It is a zero to hero story,” said Gemma Webb, the chief executive of RetuRO, the company running the system in a public-private partnership with beverage packaging manufacturers and the state. “The products are clean, there is little contamination, they can be recycled easily and we have full traceability as well, so we know every bottle that goes on the market. Romanians returned about 7.5bn beverage containers between the system’s launch in November 2023 and the end of September 2025, according to the company. The returns included 4bn PET bottles, 2bn metal cans, and 1.5bn glass containers. More than 500,000 tonnes of high-quality recyclable materials have been collected. “We are the largest fully integrated deposit return system globally.”

The scale of Romania’s turnaround is even more striking given where the country started. For more than a decade, the country has sat at the bottom of Europe’s recycling statistics. Between 2011 and 2021, the country’s municipal waste recycling rate barely budged, drifting between 11% and 14% while the rest of the EU climbed ahead. Romania ranked last in the EU for circular material usage, with only 1% of materials being recycled and reintroduced into the economy in 2021.But in 2018 the government began discussions about the scheme; in 2022 RetuRO began work, and on an extremely tight timeline including the construction of nine counting and sorting centres nationwide, the scheme launched in late 2023. “Now we have one of the largest, most complex logistics networks in Romania,” said Webb. In fact starting later than other countries may have been an advantage, says Raul Pop, the secretary of state in the environment ministry and a waste policy expert, because Romania could use modern software and traceability tools.

It is on a return-to-retail model: shops that sell the containers must either install reverse vending machines or process the packaging manually. There is also a financial incentive for them, which helps them cover processing costs, and RetuRO reinvests all profits back into operations.A nationwide Other countries, Pop explained, “suffer from their own inertia” because they introduced their systems decades ago and are now stuck with outdated models. For them, shifting to new systems risks confusing consumers, even if it could improve collection rates. Countries such as Poland, Turkey, Bulgaria, Moldova and Serbia have had meetings with RetuRO and the Romanian authorities looking to learn best practices as they prepare to implement a similar system. An advertising campaign used the Romanian traditional dance, the hora, people holding hands and dancing in a circle, to symbolise shared responsibility, and a recent study found that 90% of Romanians say they have used the system at least once and 60% return packaging regularly. Other countries, Pop explained, “suffer from their own inertia” because they introduced their systems decades ago and are now stuck with outdated models. For them, shifting to new systems risks confusing consumers, even if it could improve collection rates.

Countries such as Poland, Turkey, Bulgaria, Moldova and Serbia have had meetings with RetuRO and the Romanian authorities looking to learn best practices as they prepare to implement a similar system. Romania has also introduced a supportive legal framework, which means retailers can be penalised if they refuse returns – even the smallest village shops must accept containers if they sell the products or they risk fines, while big chains have automated return points......read on https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/27/we-like-it-a-lot-how-romania-created-the-largest-deposit-return-scheme-in-the-world

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Turning off the Tap: How the world can end plastic pollution and create a circular economy. UNEP This report examines the economic and business models needed to address the impacts of the plastics economy. The report proposes a systems change to address the causes of plastic pollution, starting by reducing problematic and unnecessary plastic use, redesigning the system, products and their packaging and combining these with a market transformation towards circularity in plastics.

This can be achieved by accelerating three key shifts – reorient and diversify, reuse, and recycle, – and actions to deal with the legacy of plastic pollution. Significant reduction in the use of plastic can be achieved, e.g., by redesigning the way in which products deliver their function to society, e.g., substituting dry products for liquified ones so we do not need to transport water (and the products can then be packed in simpler materials).

Reuse refers to the transformation of the ‘throwaway economy’ to a ‘reuse society’ where reusing products and refilling them makes more economic sense than throwing them away.

Reorient and diversify refers to shifting the market towards sustainable alternatives, which will require a shift in the way products and packaging are produced, consumer demand, regulatory frameworks and costs. Finally, as a complement to the other solutions, the report also discusses the importance of ensuring that where plastics are produced, they are designed to be recyclable in the market where they are sold and that waste management and the recycling market become more viable ventures. Today, only nine per cent of plastics produced are mechanically recycled. The report highlights that these solutions are available now and that a systems change, underpinned by the necessary regulatory instruments, will result in a range of economic benefits and reduce damage to human health, the environment and the climate.

This document outlines a systems-change scenario to end plastic pollution, building on the 2022 United Nations Environment Assembly decision to negotiate a legally binding agreement by 2024. It addresses root causes through three interconnected market shifts: accelerating reuse to replace single-use products, expanding recycling to compete with virgin plastics, and reorienting and diversifying markets toward sustainable alternatives. Complementary actions target legacy plastics through improved collection, responsible disposal, and prevention of microplastic leakage. If implemented globally, these measures could reduce plastic pollution by 80% by 2040, prevent 0.5 gigatons of CO₂-equivalent emissions annually, and deliver more than USD 4.5 trillion in combined direct, environmental, and social cost savings between 2021 and 2040. The transition could create 700,000 additional jobs, improve livelihoods for millions in informal sectors, and generate USD 1.3 trillion in direct public and private cost savings alongside USD 3.3 trillion in avoided environmental and social costs.....read the full report https://wedocs.unep.org/items/26984ecb-1a48-43b1-ada5-72a0d5c25851

Schools of Thought that Inspired the Circular Economy. Where did the idea of a circular economy come from?

Circular Economy Solutions are needed to Safeguard Biodiversity and Solve the Climate Crisis.

Circular Construction could be a Huge Boon for Climate—and Jobs.

'We like it a lot’: How Romania Created its hugely Popular Deposit Return Economy

Turning off the Tap: How the World can End Plastic Pollution and Create a Circular Economy. UNEP This report examines the Economic and Business Models needed to Address the Impacts of the Plastics Economy.

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