How to incorporate it into your organisation
Take a step back and try to view your organisation through a circular lens. Which of the following strategies could you apply to the different parts of your operations?
Your purchasing, sales & marketing, design and/or manufacturing functions, how you provide your services, what materials you chose to use… however large or small your team all aspects of your business can become (more) circular.
The circular economy ‘R ladder’ can be shown in different ways, as the table with examples above or as below demonstrating the way materials loop around a circular system.
Don’t get overwhelmed, pick one area at a time, perhaps the highest selling product, the supplier you spend the most with or an aspect that you know is least environmentally sustainable.
When trying to balance the triple bottom line of environment, social value and finances through a circular lens it won’t always be possible to make the choice you feel is right overall. Sometimes the most environmentally sustainable option might just be too expensive.
But don’t let your journey end there.
Ensure you make conscious decisions - inform yourself as much as possible so that even though a choice you make today might have to be more financially driven, you are aware of the more environmental, circular and social value oriented options that are available.
You then can work towards creating different parameters so that next time the more circular option can be taken. Try setting out a decision-making process to support your team to understand the significance of their choices and aid discussions with your customer, supply chain and other stakeholders.
- Designing for circularity - need to ensure new products are designed for long life, and easy repair & maintenance whilst in use; and designed for easy reclamation, reuse/ repurposing or disassembly & up/re-cycling at end of life
- Developing a business model that allows ownership or access to the item through renting and a take back system for reuse or recycling – for example Mud jeans where the customer can chose to buy and give back or rent and give back. https://mudjeans.com/
- Making use of others ‘unwanted’ materials, reuse wherever possible (eg act as third party to enable this), review byproducts and ‘waste streams’ of local businesses and be creative to add value.
- Could you provide circular services (eg repair/share) as part of your business model?
- Review what you buy and who you buy from. Talk to your supply chain, where possible work with them to drive change
- Review your own ‘waste’ streams
- Replace current materials or products with a ‘circular’ alternative
- Is that product available anywhere second hand? (eg. there are now many organisations selling second hand office furniture, if you’re a charity you may even get it for free; equally it is easy to source good quality refurbished mobile phones and IT equipment)
- Is there a version of this product made from recycled or biobased material?
- Can I use a different supplier to dispose of that surplus material and it be reused or recycled rather than incinerated?
- Can we reduce the amount of resources (eg. materials/ food/ stationery/ energy/ water) that we use and/or waste?
- Do we really need to have;
- giveaways for an event, if yes then how can it be low carbon, useful and meaningful.
- branded uniforms, or could you have badges
- …everything matching or could you have 6 blue chairs and 6 green chairs in your boardroom which means it’s easier to find reused ones
Examples of West Midlands based furniture organisations:
ORS UK provides everything you need from a single typist chair through to a complete office refurbishment. But supplying new and used office furniture is just a part of our story. In order to provide a ‘total solution for every office’ they can also remove your unwanted furniture through their clearance service and deliver a complete range of turnkey interior services tailored to suit your every need.
Upcycle Birmingham are passionate about bringing unwanted items back to life by giving them a new look and a new home. The team work hard to lovingly restore donated furniture so it can be on the market and in a new home as soon as possible.