Circular Economy Case Studies

FLOOW2 is the first business-to-business sharing marketplace that enables companies and institutions to share overcapacity of equipment, knowledge and skills of personnel. Users can register on the platform for free and participants pay a subscription to advertise their equipment on the platform, providing a revenue stream for FLOOW2.

Mazuma Mobile is an online mobile phone reuse and recycling service allowing consumers to unlock the cash value of their mobile phones, offering same day payments. Collected handsets are refurbished by an external partner where necessary and then sold to partners in emerging markets, insurance dealers and retailers in UK.

Active Disassembly use design practices that incorporate smart materials and processes to enable the rapid and non-destructive disassembly of products and components. Active Disassembly address some of the barriers associated with designing for remanufacture, including cost of new design, time, labour and quality of recovered components.

Identifying undervalued flows of materials, energy or information can be tricky. Sometimes however, the opportunity seems to be hiding in plain sight.

GameStop was originally a software and video games retailer, it now offers a highly developed buy, sell, trade program which creates value for customers while recycling products no longer being played. GameStop has expanded their refurbishing and recycling model beyond games consoles.

There are plenty of hot startups with a new technology that can accelerate the transition to a circular economy. Yet some of the best examples don't rely on new tech, but instead on the gradual evolution of processes and a precise understanding of energy and resource flows. Continual improvement, collaboration and systems thinking are the name of the game. At British Sugar’s Factory in Norfolk, these are very much on display.

Villa Welpeloo is a house in the Netherlands constructed from 60 percent salvaged material. Google Earth aided the selection of the construction area based on accessibility to industrial waste materials.

Here’s one you’ve heard before: the average drill is used for just 13 minutes in its lifetime. Yet many of us possess our own drill. So what if you could see which tools and toys your friends and neighbours owned, and borrowed from them? It sounds great, and has been a promise of the sharing economy. But Ryan Dyment, Founder of the Toronto Tool Library and Sharing Depot, says it doesn’t quite work like that.

Agency of Design examine the implications of circular design on products. Using a common household good, the toaster, Agency of Design produced three products with the same function but different attributes to enable reuse or recycling. The project demonstrates that there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution when designing for a circular economy.

Bundles offer clean clothes on a pay-per-wash basis. Applying Internet of Things technology enables product monitoring, while maintenance and refurbishment of higher quality machines preserves the product integrity for multiple cycles.

Architect Thomas Rau worked with Philips to purchase light as a service. The end result was a bespoke 'pay-per-lux' intelligent lighting system to fit the requirements of the space, at a manageable price. Philips retain control over the items they produce, enabling better maintenance, reconditioning and recovery.

One of the reasons that the circular economy framework has been a powerful lens for innovation is the redesign potential that it offers. With a creative outlook and a familiarity with the principles of a circular economy, one can look at virtually any product, process or system and ask “what would this look like in a circular economy?”

Re-Tek provide reverse logistics and data destruction services for redundant IT equipment. Refurbishing equipment for re-sale or donation to charitable causes, Re-Tek divert equipment from energy hungry recycling processes, extend the life of the asset and minimise environmental impact.