The ‘Circular Economy’ Can Help You Waste (and Spend) Less

If you’re like most people, you probably want to feel like you’re doing your part to avoid a Mad Max-style future in which we’re all fighting in the desert over dwindling resources. You recycle your plastic, metal, and paper trash. You bring a reusable bag to the grocery store.

Those are all great—and meaningful—actions, but they're not as effective as you might hope, because we’re all trapped in a wasteful lifestyle. The average person wastes 168 pounds of perfectly edible food every year, for example, and generates close to 5 pounds of garbage daily. And lots of your recycling isn’t getting recycled, including less than 10% of all the plastics we use. The engine of the world economy is a “take-make-waste” model that encourages a disposable relationship with just about everything, and it’s difficult to break out of it.

But you can do more by embracing what’s known as the circular economy.

Reduce-reuse-recycle

A circular economy is a model focused on reducing waste as much as possible. There are a few basic principles:

• Reuse: If something is worn out or no longer functions as originally intended, seek out ways to keep it useful instead of simply trashing it.

• Recycle: If you can’t figure out a way to reuse something, find ways to recycle it.

• Repair: When things break, figure out how to fix them instead of simply replacing them with a new model.

• Remanufacture: If there’s no way to repair or repurpose something that’s broken, only then make a new version.

At the core of the concept is to transform “waste” into a new resource that can be used. Some of this is obviously only possible at a societal level, but there’s a lot you can do on your own to follow these principles and live a more circular lifestyle.

Reuse everything you can at home

One of the easiest ways to embrace a circular economy model in your life is to change how you use the resources in your home by finding ways to reuse as much as you can. Water that goes down your drains can be captured to water your lawn or garden, or to flush your toilet. Food scraps and other organic matter can be composted for use in your garden (or your landscaping, or in other people’s gardens).

This concept extends to your stuff. You can repair a lot of appliances and other items with a little bit of knowledge and some basic tools, instead of throwing them away and buying new. Finding new uses for tools, gadgets, or materials that you’ve accumulated or that no longer serve their original function is also a key strategy of the circular economy—even something simple like using an old toothbrush to help clean the bathroom tile, harvesting the remnants of old soap bars to make new ones, or using the lint from your dryer as kindling in your fireplace or fire pit helps.

If you’re remodeling or renovating, choosing materials like tiles made from recycled materials or reclaimed wood transforms your project into a circular one. (You can also recycle the scraps from your renovation instead of tossing them in a dumpster.)

Borrow instead of buying

In a consumerist society, it’s easy to just buy things that we need, even if we’re only going to need them for a single use. A more circular approach is to borrow or rent the things you need. This is can as simple as borrowing tools from your neighbor when you need them, or renting equipment from a hardware store instead of purchasing it, using it once, and leaving it to rot in your garage for a decade before deciding it’s too old and throwing it away.

Another approach is to seek out a local tool library, or organize a neighborhood tool share. In fact, you can get together with neighbors, friends, and family to share a lot of stuff, like clothing (especially all those children’s clothing your kids grow out of almost instantly). Another way to make your lifestyle more circular is to use tools like Freecycle or Buy Nothing Groups to give away stuff you no longer need and to grab used items that still have a lot of life left in them. This kind of circular borrowing and lending has another big advantage: You can save a lot of money over the years by borrowing or finding free, used items instead of buying new all the time.

Choose products wisely

You can’t always find what you need at your neighbor’s house or on Freecycle. Sometimes you’ll have no choice but to buy something new. In those cases, however, you can still support the circular economy by choosing companies that have embraced the concept too. For example:

• Patagonia has built its business model on a circular and sustainable concept, including its Worn Wear program, which allows you to trade in your used gear and buy used gear in turn.

• Ikea not only works to use recycled materials in its products, it also offers a Buyback & Resell program allowing you to sell your unneeded Ikea furniture back to the company, which then sells it used to someone else, wasting nothing.

• Adidas has launched a Three Loop Strategy, which aims to a) use recycled materials in its shoes, b) reuse those materials when the shoes wear out, and c) eventually switch to using natural and renewable resources in making its shoes in the first place.

• Flor has a robust recycling program for its rug tiles, making it easy to send old carpet tiles back to the company to be recycled and reused in a sustainable way.

• Mattel has its Playback program, which makes it easy for families to mail in their old, used plastic toys so the materials can be recycled and reclaimed.

Choosing companies that are engaged with a circular economic strategy takes a little research, but once you identify them you can make your own efforts a lot easier by working with these companies when buying something is your only option—and establishing your own personal circular economy is the most effective way to lead a sustainable and eco-friendly lifestyle. (And think of the money you'll save.)