Fun with thrift: towards the circular economy

I went with Simon Smith of Ramboll to the EAUC conference this week to listen to what was going on and to promote our ideas for ‘smart refurbishment’. Of course the current economic conditions are forcing us to make do with reuse of existing stock but the growing recognition of the importance of putting embodied carbon into the equation should be driving this in any case. The ‘smart’ bit is getting the balance right between optimum use of space, upgraded fabric and energy.

In the light of this, Ellen Macarthur gave a timely and inspiring closing key note on how she had gone from record-busting sailor to campaigner for a radical transformation of our economy, bringing to that overwhelming challenge the same sense that the impossible can be done. The overarching vision is that we must redesign our economy from a linear ‘take, make, dump’ pattern to a circular one in which resources are used more prudently, intensively and design enables their repeated re-use. If the world’s supplies of mineral resources used in the conventional way are running out at the pace predicted (‘coal will last for 117 years’ etc) this is clearly an imperative.

One aspect of the circular economy is the idea of ‘Industrial Symbiosis’ in which one industry’s waste is another’s resource. The principle underpins the London Sustainable Industries Park in Dagenham where we (with Ramboll, Hoare Lea and Grontmij designed the Institute for Sustainability’s Research Centre for the LTGDC. As in the natural world, symbiosis doesn’t happen overnight and it takes time for a richly complex industrial ecosystem to take root. Good ecological management to speed up germination, nurture seedlings, and link mutually beneficial organisms translates to some pretty challenging marketing and creative approaches to funding to get the industrial ecosystem underway and self-sustaining.

One of the pioneer plants at the LSIP is Closed Loop, the company that recycles plastic bottles to food grade plastic. As a small example of low energy reuse rather resource hungry recycling I must show you my reuse of plastic bottles for replacement mudguards for my Brompton. They have lasted far longer than the originals - the serious mismatch between supply and demand is perhaps a lesson in itself.

There’s an old fashioned word for this which I think we might begin to see more of – thrift. Whether you call it thrift or ‘Project Redesign’ we need more of it and I look forward to sharing ideas.