What is a circular mindset exactly?

What is a circular or regenerative ( as it’s sometimes called) mindset exactly? We’ve heard quite a lot about circularity in the corporate sphere in terms of rethinking supply chains and production processes to move away from the linear model (take, make, consume, discard) towards the wholesome 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

But what does circular thinking look like in society at large? And how will it help Britain move to a more sustainable future? This week is Circular Economy Week, organised by ReLondon, a partnership of the Mayor of London and the London boroughs to improve waste and resource management and ultimately transform it into ‘zero waste city’ by 2050. So, there’s no better place to look answers.

A quick click through the programme  offers up a range of solutions from workshops that teach people how to repair and upcycle everything from clothing and bicycles to electronic devices and furniture, to exploring circular construction, zero food waste consumption models and kimchi recipes. There’s even a session on transforming the oil, gas and energy industry using ‘closed-loop models.’

Labour’s 2024 manifesto set an optimistic target to get the country to zero-waste by 2050 (although it was not clear how it would get there). According to the latest Defra stats, the UK produced 25.7 million tonnes of waste in 2022, a decrease of 7.1% from 2021: i.e. moving in the right direction, but work to be done. But if London, which has a pretty robust Waste policy, is anything to go by, the “3R’s message” is still not getting through to households.

ReLondon found that of the 7M tonnes of waste produced each year (from households and businesses), around 27% of that is food waste, with 19% being food that could have been eaten. One fifth of the material that could have been recycled was put in the wrong bin at kerbside properties versus 51% of recyclable items from communal properties. Councils have a big communications challenge.

The ‘circular neighbourhoods’ conference this Friday, organised by grassroots reuse orgs ReSpace and ReRoute, promises to get to the heart of the matter. The solutions these community orgs are championing are genuinely radical and transformative. ReSpace, for example, negotiates for unused and abandoned buildings (London has some 80,000 of them) to be renovated by local volunteers and transformed into pop-up community hubs with exhibitions and arts events, ‘free-gan’ kitchens and re-use training workshops that support homeless people and low-income families. As a blueprint for regenerating pockets of deprivation and promoting green skills, adaptive thinking and community cohesion, the ReSpace model has been so successful is now being adopted by other councils around the UK.

Circling back to business, brands should not shrink from the grassroots regenerative and re-use movement for fear it may slow sales. Rather, they should work out how they can fit into the picture.