Circular Economy Week 2022
It’s Circular Economy Week 2022. Who knew it even existed?!
#CEweek2022 is a week of inspiration and celebration to showcase and accelerate the ‘stuff revolution’. It is hosted by ReLondon, London’s circular economy partner.
Terms like ‘circular economy’ seem like jargon to many people which puts them off understanding its meaning and the importance of developing one for sectors, businesses and organisations.
A circular economy is "a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible".
Aura’s Founder, Laura Sutherland, developed her own circular economy for her pickle business, which is based on helping reduce food waste by using wonky vegetables. But it also shows you can go even further if you think about the whole life expectancy of products and everything associated with it.
Start by thinking about your product or service’s whole lifespan
Think about every element from what happens before materials reach you, then what you do with them, then what your end customers do with them.
Reduce. Reuse. Repair. Recycle. These actions should be applied at every opportunity.
Circular economies are designed to eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products at their highest value and where possible, regenerate nature.
Going further than that, a former Aura client built the world’s first thermal energy plant for leather manufacturing and took the wastage of the manufacturing process and essentially burnt it (with a lot more technical things happening), creating steam to help dry leather hides in the tanning process, creating electricity to keep the manufacturing facilities running and sell onto the grid, plus, the bi-product of the burning was an ash which was able to be sold to the construction industry to make bricks!
Aura’s early work with this client and exposure to to sustainable business (some 10 years ago), taught Aura so much about processes, and the value of this to stakeholders. Some of the results we achieved through good engagement work resulted in being included in their customer’s annual reports! Always seeking opportunities ;)
So our call to action is this > sit down and think about the life cycle and span of your products and materials associated. Think about action > reduce, reuse, repair and recycle.