The circular economy is a systems solution framework that aims to tackle global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution. It is based on three core principles, all driven by design:
- Eliminate waste and pollution. This principle emphasizes designing products, materials, and infrastructure from the beginning so that waste is prevented from ever being made and goes back into the economy after use. This includes designing out economic activities that negatively impact human health and natural systems, such as the release of greenhouse gases, all types of pollution, and traffic congestion.
- Circulate products and materials (at their highest value). This involves keeping products and materials in circulation for as long as possible through strategies like maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, and recycling. For biological products, this means composting them to return nutrients to nature. The goal is to maintain the use of products through reuse, repair, and maintenance, thereby keeping finite materials in the economy and out of the environment, and safely returning biodegradable materials to the earth.
- Regenerate nature. This principle shifts the focus from extraction to improving natural environments and building biodiversity. It involves using practices that restore soils and increase biodiversity, returning organic materials to the earth, and adopting a regenerative model that mimics natural systems where "there is no waste". It also avoids the use of fossil fuels and non-renewable energy, instead preserving and enhancing renewable resources.
These principles are about redesigning our economy, acknowledging that the linear economy is a choice, and we can choose a circular one instead. The shift from linear to circular aims to create self-sustaining systems where waste and emissions are minimized by slowing, closing, and narrowing energy and material loops.
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