Why Building the circular economy is the noblest of all engineering challenges?

Most of us are familiar with the three R's - reduce, reuse, recycle. But tackling climate change and biodiversity loss needs us to go beyond existing lean and green practices to a more comprehensive approach, where waste is eliminated, resources are re-circulated, and nature is regenerated. These are some of the principles of the circular economy, and it is critical to our future.?

The circular economy creates value, allows development, and enables access to goods and energy for all. It is not a question of degrowth but efficiency; it is about producing and consuming differently to exploit our planet's finite resources. Nothing is lost; everything is transformed. It is underpinned by a transition to renewable energies and materials.?

This new economic model implies sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling existing materials and products. While the concept is simple, its implementation is complex. It requires behavioural change, the development of new design principles, and the creation of synergized industrial value chains.?

To scale their circular economy practices, organizations must embrace circular design principles and new business models. Organizations can push their circular initiatives forward by rethinking their value and supply chains and collaborating more within their ecosystems and with governments, lawmakers, academics, think tanks, suppliers, vendors, clients, and innovative startups. To build up the new economics at scale, they must align a multiplicity of actors.

Building this new circular economy needs a system of systems approach and associated decision-making tools, relying on transparent data shared by a critical mass of actors across multiple industries, banks, and governments to act in a common direction.?

While this change can seem overwhelming at first, it is one of the most exciting and noblest engineering challenges. Redesigning products is what engineers live for. In 2008, one of our teams applied for their first patent. It was inspired by the discovery of the cradle-to-cradle concept and is one of our proudest achievements.?

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