Circular economy. Making your mark

The circular economy has seen a significant increase in interest over the past few years and is continuing to gain steady momentum. New ways of thinking, designing and developing are brought to the fore, caught in one liners such as ‘waste equals food’ or ‘access, not ownership’. The idea of the circular economy only took off in the 1980s, but this doesn't mean that the practices at the core of a circular economy, such as repairing, recycling, refurbishing, or repurposing, are equally novel.

From  the  very  moment  that  people  from  nomadic  cultures  chose  to  have  a  permanent settlement concerns about solid and liquid waste management has risen. Urban aggregation makes the problem  societal and  one of the first documented  waste management systems dates back to 3500 BC in Ancient Greece.

Twelve thousand years ago, when the Palaeolithic period was coming to a close and the first relatively stable settlements were starting to appear, it began to be obvious that implements manufactured by humans through transformation of elements such as wood, stone, metals or textiles did not disappear nor were they transformed in the same way as naturally-occurring elements. Moreover, the manufacture of implements and tools was at the time a complicated and not very obvious task, so the policy was to reuse whatever was left from previous settlements, or objects that had deteriorated due to their primary purpose.

At that time the life-styles were according to the cycles of the seasons and nature and consumption were limited within the local borders. It was a subsistence economy and self-sufficient society.

These periods in history were indeed very different to those which followed the industrial revolution. Times when reuse won over recycling.

Today, the concept of the circular economy can be defined as: “The circular economy is a concept in which growth and prosperity are decoupled from natural resource consumption and ecosystem degradation. By refraining from throwing away used products, components and materials, instead re-routing them into the right value chains, we can create a society with a healthy economy, inspired on and in balance with nature.”

We are now facing worldwide problems with potentially devastating effects on the world as we know it. Through the comparative account on linear vs. circular economy, we can understand how the traditional industrial production strategy (take-make-waste) is only inflicting more damage to our already suffering planet, whereas circular economy can manage to close the loop and mimic regenerative and restorative features of the natural system.