In Part 1 of “Wight A Minute”, which had the intended double-meaning of ‘waiting a minute’ – as in being thoughtful if you are a supply-chain project manager, as well as the Isle of Wight, where Teemill is headquartered, I introduced you (or re-introduced you) to the circular economy. Teemill (see Part 1) is focused not only on making T-shirts, in a sustainable way, but also providing a platform for other ‘makers’ to go circular. You can see the two videos below to provide the basics on a circular economy, using fashion as an example.
Note the frequent mention of projects, project managers, and project leadership here. To get ‘here’ from ‘there’ – in this case from a linear to a circular economy – takes insight, foresight, and vision (to quote good friend and project leadership pioneer Gordon Mackay (see a recent post from him here).
At the risk of some repetition, here are the steps of a linear economy:
Extraction: Raw materials are extracted from the environment.
Production: The materials are transformed into products.
Consumption: Consumers purchase and use the products.
Disposal: The products are thrown away, often in landfills or incinerators
In a circular economy, things are different – and that’s why it takes project leadership to help accomplish the change.
Here’s a 20-minute video that explains this and also provides the context of history here. Much of this is not new – what’s new is the capacity and technology, and project leadership – that can enable us to really take advantage of a circular economy.
The process can be seen in the figure below:
The process illstrated above is also 'narrated' quite well in this video:
Fundamentally the circular economy is “a system where materials never become waste and nature is regenerated. In a circular economy, products and materials are kept in circulation through processes like maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, recycling, and composting. The circular economy tackles climate change and other global challenges, like biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution, by decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources.”
The major point of this Part 2, is the “Wait a Minute” moment for those of you who might’ve thought of this as only oriented to fashion. It’s not. And as a good example of how it is indeed nearly unlimited, let’s take a radical turn from fashion to … chopsticks.
Yep. Chopsticks. I wanted to focus on one company – ChopValue – which has turned its attention to the millions of chopsticks used every day in just about every country. An example of one city NOT in Asia: 100,000 chopsticks are used EACH DAY in Vancouver. Chop Value has turned this into a circular value equation by figuring out how to sustainably convert used chopsticks into everything from office and home furniture to wall décor. See the photo below for an example.
This video from Business Insider shows how this initiative – originally, of course, a project – was brought to life.
If you are uncertain whether something as small as a chopstick could contribute to to sustainability, check out ChopValue’s sustainability report here.
Those numbers are going up significantly. At the time of this writing, the '137m chopsticks recycled' figure is approaching 200m – and the other positives are going up commensurately.
So the bottom line is that there is more to the bottom line than cash. And those things that aren’t cash (per se) still have value – and much of that value actually can turn right back into cash if you are clever enough to do what Teemill and ChopValue have done.
And… to that, it requires project leadership. You’ll learn more about that here on People, Planet, Profits & Projects. Stay tuned.
