Experts talking about Circular Economy, LCA and EPDs

Three industry experts, 14 tips to take your product circular!

Every expert was once a beginner – and that includes the three business leaders who shared their circular economy (CE) expertise in this webinar.

Jason, David and Ged (below) all run or work in product-based businesses on CE principles. They’ve learned a lot since they started out. Now you can learn from them, as they explain how to take your product circular: how to get started, how to manage resistance and how to keep the faith when the going’s tough.

Our experts

  • Jason Graham-Nye, co-founder, gDiapers (compostable nappies – circular product and service)
  • David Bell, Manager Sustainability and Insight, InfraBuild (steel recycling, remanufacturing and distribution)
  • Ged Finch, R&D Manager, XFrame (prefabricated structural framing – circular product and service)
But first, a quick introduction to CE

CE is about much more than recycling. If your product can be recycled, that’s a start, but it’s circular economy with a small ‘c’. More importantly, it’s with a small ‘e’ too. Going circular involves a lot more!

In most cases, recycling means another business recovers the value of the materials in your product. That means they gain the economic value too, including the value added from manufacturing, the intellectual property and branding. Going truly circular ensures you keep these economic benefits.

Extending your product’s useful life is the next step. If your product or its parts can be reused, repaired, refurbished, remanufactured, or repurposed, you’re on the CE path.

True CE involves creating a new business model. If you’re manufacturing and using your product in a smarter way, like our three experts, that’s gold star CE! It’s also where your business will gain the most benefit.

  • Infrabuild are manufacturing more efficiently and reducing waste. Wherever possible the ferrous feed for both their electric arc furnaces is 100% scrap metal.
  • XFrame and gDiapers are offering better ‘functionality’ with a radically different product. XFrame’s product makes it easy for customers to change their office and residential fit-outs as their needs change. Plus, the company’s changed their traditional financial relationship with their customers to let them lease the framing instead of buying it.
  • gDiapers have designed plastic out of their product entirely. Plus, they offer a delivery, collection and composting service that eliminates all waste to landfill.

Our experts’ advice

Getting started

1.     Do your research. Talk with customers. How could you design your product so customers can use it more intensively (as XFrame have)? Talk with your suppliers too. Are there opportunities to use circular materials at the start of your manufacturing process (as InfraBuild do)?

2.     Understand what happens now. Before you design something new, Ged suggests you find someone who ‘understands the industry now’. Their commercial and practical skills will help you look at your product critically and identify holes and opportunities you can’t see for yourself.

3.     Get good data – early. David says accurate data is critical, from day one. Without it you’ll struggle to understand your starting point, to map where you want to be, and to measure your progress along the way. Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and material circularity indicators (MCI) are your friends here.

4.     Start with product design. David warns against overlaying CE on a poor design. You may get some recycling benefits at end-of-life, but the real benefits come when you change your business model.

5.     Tackle your packaging. You’ll learn a lot that will help you take your product circular too. Minimise or (better still) eliminate your packaging. Make what’s left recyclable or reusable.

6.     Run a pilot. InfraBuild piloted the Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) on one of its product ranges. (The MCI identifies opportunities to build circular value into a product or service.)

InfraBuild’s pilot helped the company understand the opportunity to develop MCI metrics for all their EPD products. They use these metrics in their markets to support discussions and change, and to ‘go beyond recycling’.

Building relationships

7.     Collaborate! CE is about systems, and systems involve partnerships. Collaborate with suppliers, resellers, regulators – and your competitors too. You can’t go circular alone.

When a materials inventory identified that a gDiapers supplier was unknowingly using a ‘red’ (hazardous) material, the supplier welcomed this information and changed their product. That’s CE collaboration!

8.     Get the ‘big guys’ involved. Jason’s Board includes a member who formerly worked for Kimberly-Clark. They bring valuable industry knowledge.

Dealing with resistance

9.     Show people the bigger picture. Your vision, the sizzle… whatever you call it. Ged says people need to ‘see something bigger than themselves’. In gDiapers’s case, it’s not just about making nappies. They’re tackling a huge environmental issue: ‘Every minute over 300,000 plastic disposable diapers enter landfills or pollute our oceans’.  

10.  Educate (including your industry). Your new product may fly through user testing in the factory, but it’s what happens ‘out in the world’ that really matters. That’s why Ged and his team include contractors (‘Roger and his nail gun’) in their training programme.

Both David and Ged speak about the challenges of reusing building materials. The construction industry is generally happy to use recycled materials, provided they’re certified. Some practitioners are less comfortable specifying and building with reused materials: they’re concerned the materials could be damaged or fall short of building codes. Tackle issues like these at an industry level. Again, education’s the key.

11.  Be adaptable. gDiapers found developing economies like Indonesia were a good place to test their product. There’s a strong market (all babies need nappies!), exporting waste for recycling is expensive, landfill in limited and local environmental regulations make it easier to trial composting human waste there than in developed countries. Plus, there’s the potential of IMF and World Bank funding.

12.  Consider certification. gDiapers’ original hybrid nappies were the first product to be Cradle to Cradle® certified. While the process was ‘hard work’, Jason says it was worth it. Certification helps gDiapers market their product. It has also helped the business identify risks and manage their supply chain.

Keeping the faith when the going’s tough

13.  Remind yourself that good things take time. According to David, CE is ‘an iterative process’. You won’t get there quickly but, with good data, you’ll keep improving your product.

Expect to learn a lot. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it! 

March 2022

Leading the circular transition

James Goddin_square

Dr. Jim Goddin is the Head of Circular Economy at thinkstep-anz. The Chartered Engineer specialises in circular economy systems design and has worked alongside the Ellen MacArthur Foundation on leading metrics such as the MCI and Circulytics. Moving down under from the UK, Jim brings his expertise to facilitate the circular transformation in Australasia. Jim is a national expert in the UK on ISO 59020 (TC 323) on circularity metrics and is also an advisor on circularity metrics for the £30m UKRI Circular Economy Hub.