Circular Economy Concepts Archives

8 November 201915 July 2020

The Circular Potential of Modular Design

Modular design, or modularity, refers to an object or system that is made up of smaller independent components, or modules, that may be separated, recombined, and used interchangeably across different units of the object or system it belongs to.

Modular design has been adopted by circular economy practitioners as a means by which to make refurbishment, repair, and upgrade far easier, thus extending product lifetimes and reducing the number of products and materials that are disposed of prematurely.

1 November 201915 July 2020

Shifting to a leasing ownership model

Leasing, in which a person rents rather than buys a product from a company, has been heralded as a new circular ownership model with the potential to extend products’ useful lifetime, improve resource efficiency, reduce virgin resource intake, and reduce value and material losses to the economy.

That all sounds great for the environment and the economy, but what about the costs of setting up and maintaining a model of sales that requires complex contract and production coordination, maintenance costs, and recovery methods? What benefit does leasing rather than selling products bring to a business? And is renting rather than owning something that customers want?

11 October 201915 July 2020

Waste isn’t waste it’s a resource

‘Waste isn’t waste it’s a resource’, or, ‘Waste-as-a-resource’ is one of the key principles of the circular economy. It encourages us not to see waste as valueless rubbish that we must get rid of, but rather to treat it as a valuable resource with the potential to generate economic gain when used to create new products.