Moving Towards a World Without Waste

We now live in a traditional linear economy: we get raw materials, make things, use them, and then throw them away, sometimes summarized as “take, make, waste.”

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In contrast, a circular economy creates a model of resource production and consumption that maximizes sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, composting, and recycling existing materials and products for as long as possible. It’s an economic model that moves us towards a world without waste – or as little as possible. It tackles climate change and other global challenges, like biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution, by separating economic growth from needing to use up our finite resources.

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The primary targets for achieving a circular economy are usually identified as: plastics, textiles, e-waste, food, water and nutrients, packaging, batteries and vehicles, and buildings and construction.

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The circular economy starts with product designs that optimize durability, ease of maintenance and repair, upgrade capability, disassembly as well as incorporate any standards and opportunities for compatibility. Like the common shaped and sized electric cord plug, the original variety of cords for electronic products are now becoming all C plugs.

Circular economy strategies can be applied at various scales, from individual products and services to entire industries and cities. For example, “industrial symbiosis” is the strategy where the waste from one industry becomes the input for another – car batteries being reduced to their component metals to sell back to manufacturers as the raw materials for new batteries. At the individual level, consumer product symbiosis can be used shirts becoming a new quilt, a set of wool jackets becoming a new rug, or the suet from a cut of beef becoming bird food.

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There are an increasing number of ways to learn more about and support the circular economy.  The City of Lansing Sustainability Office offers links to more information, an interactive map of businesses and organizations in the Lansing area that support a circular economy as well as a checklist for individual actions.