In a Circular Online exclusive, Catherine David, CEO of WRAP, highlights examples of Circular Living projects that, she writes, shows the sector shouldn’t write off the circular economy as just talk.
In ‘Is the waste sector deluding itself over the circular economy?’ Tony Breton, MSC, MCIWM, and David Newman, FCIWM, predict that only radical action will stop us sleepwalking down the well-trodden linear economy path for more years than the Paris Climate Accords can tolerate.
And they’re right. We need to fundamentally reset our economy from the ground up to give our grandchildren the chance of a comfortable future and repair some of the damage done to the environment.
The circular economy is complicated, nuanced, and we’re only beginning to seriously grapple with it and understand how it might function.
We’re nowhere near our goal of bringing profound change at the scale required to decouple economic growth from the use of new, and haven’t begun the colossal global cultural shift needed across governments, businesses and populations to support our move from make-sell-bin-repeat to Circular Living.
I look at the growth of renewable power and its potential to become a significant factor in our energy portfolio, and it gives me the drive to keep pushing for a circular economy. Government figures for 2024 showed that renewables generated a record 50.8% of the UK’s electricity that year – the first time they exceeded 50%.
Only a few years ago, this would have been unthinkable, yet even today, there are those who would continue to drill if we gave them free rein to do so. But we know that’s backward thinking.
I believe the circular economy can and will have that kind of trajectory, but we need to keep innovating and putting the incentives and infrastructure in place to ensure circularity scales.
We need to create a positive vision of a better future, of Circular Living, and that can be built with the practical examples all around us.
There are many great examples of progress from the waste sector – from Essex County Council’s work on food recycling, to the Welsh Government’s global leadership on recycling, reuse and repair; to SUEZ’s partnerships with Surrey County Council and Cornwall Council on reuse shops.
We need to create a positive vision of a better future, of Circular Living, and that can be built with the practical examples all around us.
Not to mention the many consumer goods businesses innovating upstream and downstream to drive business growth and achieve environmental outcomes.
Or look at our report with OC&C Strategy Consultants. We took a sample of 200 UK businesses and 1,500 consumers, and found that a growing number of Circular Living strategies are already helping many to improve their financial performance and mitigate against future uncertainties linked to climate change.
It shows early adopters benefiting from revenue growth, competitive advantages and cost savings. Since 2020, circular industries have been growing 3.1% points faster than linear industries and circular-native businesses have been growing up to twice as fast as linear competitors.
Circular Living strategies are now firmly established in many businesses – large and small – but many more are missing out on the benefits they offer, such as building resilience, unlocking growth and helping to secure customer retention by staying relevant in an ever-changing marketplace.
Our report highlights the key strategies and rewards they’re delivering and is essential reading for any business wishing to future-proof itself.
What it also shows is that the circular economy today is not a perfect picture and much, much more needs to be done with far greater ambition and collaboration. But to focus only on the barriers and to ignore the many doors that are being opened to take us through them is like heating your home with coal – very last century.