Circular Economy: It’s time to grow up ! (2)

Let’s face complexity!

After sharing the basic concepts of a circular economy, which are based on the cradle to cradle principles, we, as experts, have to move on and demonstrate, hands on, how a circular economy approach could be implemented in the real world, which is still largely dominated by a linear mind set and economic behaviour.

And I have bad news for everybody who wants to become serious about closing loops: it is NOT a simple straightforward journey in most cases! Yes it will be a hard job and many challenges will have to be overcome. (But it should be a fun and grateful task:-)

It will be challenging for:

• Design teams

who will start to integrate multiple use cycles of the materials and discover how many different use scenarios exists and how difficult it is to get disassembled the products for high quality recovery of their product components or materials.  Remember the key word here is QUALITY. In order to achieve this task they will have to collaborate with many stakeholders who will contribute to the economic solution with their knowledge.

• Supply chain managers

who will also have to rethink their actual role as they have to integrate  reverse logistics as a part of their standard purchasing behavior to procure high quality raw materials.

• Business managers

who need to find innovative solutions to make sure that their products, designed for disassembly do not get mixed up with other similar products, that will be either wasted or down cycled!

So let’s get ready and remember: The successful climbing of  a mountain starts with training, followed by a first step.

Jeannot Schroeder