Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of
courage — to move in the opposite direction.

– E.F. Schumacher

This article series is written for those who are interested in the why, how, and what of moving towards a circular economy, especially in the fields of business and technology.

Circular Actions

Actions above all

There is a danger inherent in writing things down, calculating, quantifying, measuring, tracking, and talking. The danger is the illusion of having achieved something, the illusion of action. If your analytics don’t drive you to act then all you have spent your time and money on is, at best, mental gymnastics. At worst? Missing the opportunity to act altogether.

There is an obligation to act and to act wisely. Analytics can help you act in line with your aspirations and the needs of our world. Take the opportunity to act, take it seriously, act wisely. As the Buddha said when asked to summarise all of his teachings: ”Cease to be non-circular, learn to be circular. Purify your own analytics: that is the teaching of all Buddhas”(1). I’m paraphrasing a bit but that’s the gist of it.

In what way can you utilise your newly acquired circular metrics to drive change in your business? Remember, the three metrics introduced earlier were recirculation, utilisation, and endurance. Moral incentives aside, how can you recapture value, reduce wasted time and effort, and ensure the usefulness and profitability of your business? What actions can you initiate immediately in order to move your company in these three areas, moving ahead of the competition that passively await regulations and further incentives? What examples exist of practical interventions that illustrate that circularity is not just possible, it is the right path to take?

Actions for Recirculation

Broadly, any action that reuses/recirculates another product/service as well as any action which makes a current product/service available for reuse/recirculation.

Specifically, modularity in product design is a good example of this. IKEA designs their products with disassembly, modularity, reusability, and circularity in mind. Removable fasteners, mono-material components, and parts used for several different products. Patagonia sources recycled and recyclable fabrics and further offers trade-ins of previously worn products for recirculation. Selling or using the waste from a product or process is, when possible, an easy win-win with regards to recirculation.

For non-physical products like software solutions it is encouraged to reuse code and write reusable code, for example according to certain design patterns as well as keeping the code modular and available for easy integration. It can even be as simple as correctly documenting your software so that repairing, upgrading, and reusing it becomes more straightforward for both new and existing developers. Recirculation is without a doubt the trickiest metric for software products and services but a little goes a long way. If you haven’t, you should investigate how your cloud provider handles their energy, waste, and latent resources.

Actions for Utilisation

Broadly, any action that makes sure the product or service is actually being used during its lifespan. Does your solution solve a real problem? If it does, what can you do make this clear for your current and potential users?

Specifically, any ”as-a-service” solution tends to have better utilisation since it is directly based on usage through access subscriptions rather than direct ownership. Other examples are sharing resources and capacities to avoid idle time, this could mean vehicles, machines, heat, ventilation, specialised tools, computation power, digital storage, etc. Any infrequently used product that can instead be used frequently by many actors is a great way to increase utilisation. Circunomics, for example, is a German company that finds uses for unused electric vehicle batteries.

For non-physical products there is a benefit to the fact that digital resources are more adaptable, flexible, scalable, and shareable. However, the same principles apply. Are you auditing the utilisation of your services? Can you choose lower capacities and slower computation times without any real loss in functionality? Can you easily remove or adapt unused resources? Simply taking an honest look at how much your different solutions are being used and ruthlessly optimising for maximum use and value and minimum idle time is the way to go. Remember, sustainable and resilient systems waste nothing.

Actions for Endurance

Broadly, any action that increases the value and/or decreases the cost of the product/service over time. To what extent can you work to make your offer provide value without having to spend time on constant additional development, maintenance, and oversight.

Specifically, make the costs relating to the product’s active lifespan as low as possible. Move towards lower costs for repair, maintenance, and replacement. One way of achieving this is having in-house or partner-based refurbish programs. Cisco, for example, follows circular design principles specifically for longevity of their products through modular designs where customers can replace and upgrade parts of their products as technology develops. Another example is predictive maintenance results in more frequent inexpensive fixes rather than massive repair costs. The railway industry has found predictive maintenance highly valuable, Siemens being a clear example with their Railigent X platform. On a different note, what ways can you see that improves endurance by increasing the value over time for your products, for example through customer satisfaction surveys and identifying failure points which can direct your future design decisions?

Wise Actions – Steer, don’t drift

This might look like quite a lot but it barely scratches the surface. It is, however, a decent start. Make sure your product is part of a circular process, make sure it gets used, and make sure its value lasts, for both your business and the users. Pretty simple stuff.

If I could push one mantra or slogan it would be ”steer, don’t drift”. Don’t drift around waiting for the EU to enforce audits, for the UN to strengthen their goal definitions, or for your local government to pretend it suddenly follows the Paris agreement. Within circular economics, it is sometimes said that the biggest obstacle is the fact that circularity mostly arise from moral incentives rather than business incentives. Consequently, the goal becomes making the business incentive of circularity clear. I applaud those who try and anyone even slightly rational can see the long term business incentives of not using up all the Earth’s resources. However, it doesn’t do to wait around for circularity to become the obligatory way to achieve more growth and profit, we do not have the time to wait for the right wave to drowsily surf. At every point in history you can decide which side to be on and the drifting, passive, and idle side will almost always be on the side of tragedy. Sci-fi author William Gibson wrote that the future is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed. You and your business will every day choose what future to steer towards. I trust you’ll choose wisely.

Written by David Janzi, data engineer at Stretch Beyond

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Circular footnotes:

(1) ”Cease to do evil, learn to do good. Purify your own mind: that is the teaching of all Buddhas”. If you are at all interested in the meeting of Buddhism and economics I can heartily recommend the writings of E.F. Schumacher and Ivan Illich. Although, if I am forced to give one recommendation I would prefer if you read the entire Shobogenzo(2).

(2) The Shobogenzo, or Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, is Dogen Zenji’s massive tome of Zen Buddhist writing. It contains my favourite piece relating to everyday life and eternity, the essay Tenzokyokun(3).

(3) The Tenzokyokun, or Instructions for the Zen Cook, is an essay by Master Eihei Dogen concerning the practice of the cook in a zen monastery and even though it touches on many things it all boils down to: ”Cease to cook badly, learn to cook well. Purify your own rice: that is the teaching of all Buddhas”(1).

Image by Tom Toro

Further reading:

LOW-TECH MAGAZINE
Doughnut Economics
Buddhist Economics
Opinions About Solar
Cradlenet
Research Institute of Sweden