Chris Sherwin, of leading design and innovation consultancy Seymourpowell, gives an industry perspective on the circular economy.
Read about the impact of this seminal essay on the performance economy by Professor Walter Stahel.
Professor Walter Stahel provides an insight into the opportunities posed by shifting towards a ‘performance economy’.
“Taxing renewable resources is against the logic of a sustainable society. Human labour – work – is a renewable resource which has not been recognised as such by politicians so far.”
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the University of Bradford are happy to welcome Alex Steffen, editor of the best selling book WorldChanging and leading futurist, to an evening lecture around positive 21st century perspectives, at the Royal Geo…
Myths are powerful, neither true or entirely false, they point to sensitivities around how we think of ourselves. Its quite easy to spot them. If it’s got leverage, then it is probably part of a marketing strategy somewhere already.
What we know. In a circular economy energy flows through, but is increasingly based on current sunshine rather than fossil stocks; materials cycle as nutrients and by design; capital is rebuilt, whether this is the soils or upcycling materials or …
“Today’s chemists have been brought up in the age of petroleum and we have been educated in the spirit of that age – petrochemistry”, says Professor James Clark, Director of the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at the University of York.
It’s a tough world for business when oil prices rise. In the soft drinks industry packaging often uses oil based PET – and according to plastics information provider PIE Europe, its prices have risen by about a third since August 2010, with the bi…
Roland Clift and Julian Allwood outline how industrial ecology, applying chemical engineering thinking to the management of material flows in the economy, can point the way to a more sustainable economy.
The idea that recycling is a ‘good thing’ pretty much pervades the formal schooling system, but it may be due for a long overdue rethink. Recent scientific investigations around recycled cardboard packaging made from old news papers has thrown up…
Using a clear, positive, coherent framework around the notion of a circular economy we aim to act as a catalyst to inspire people to re-think, re-design and build a positive future. We believe this needs to be done through curriculum development, …
Back from Hamburg and some training with the EPEA folks, who are well known as consultants and experts on the ‘cradle to cradle’ (C2C) approach to design. We had a very good week and as usual it threw up more questions, though it did supply many a…
“The global economy is almost 5 times the size it was half a century ago”, says Professor Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey, who sits on the UK Sustainable Development Commission and chaired their former Economics Steering Group. Questioning…
If only it were just about technology, y’know redesign a telephone for easy disassembly, perhaps shift to bioplastics for some of it, rework the components and choice of materials, develop a different relationship with suppliers and at the end of …
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho is best known for pioneering work on the physics of organisms and sustainable systems; also a critic of genetic engineering biotechnology and neo-Darwinism. She is Director and co-founder of the Institute of Science in Society (www….
I have just had a bad day in the snow. A v v bad day as Bridget Jones would say and its not just the snow falling in quantity or the slight contact between my car and a.n.other which has been on my mind.
It’s a puzzling old world. No sooner has the IEA’s latest outlook on world oil (1) announced that as far as conventional and cheap-to-extract oil is concerned we are on a plateau of production and cannot expect to see the levels of 2006 again (so …
Rob Sauven, Managing Director of Vestas Wind Technology UK, sits on the board of Directors of RenewableUK. He gives us his views and invites us to play a little game.
“Plans are stronger when design is firmly based on a good concept”, say Dutch architects Ro Koster and Ad Kil, who form RO&AD Architecten, combining 30 years of experience.
Michael Braungart is a chemist, and the co-author of “Cradle to Cradle, remaking the way we make things”.
Professor Birkeland, author of “Positive Development: From Vicious Circles to Virtuous Cycles through Built Environment Design”, answers our questions.
We know we need to generate useable energy, and we know what the options are. So what would you choose? Make your own choices based on your own values and valuations. Brought to you by Rob Sauven, Managing Director of Vestas Wind Technology UK.
The challenge of moving to a sustainable low carbon economy is huge, so doing something always seems better than doing nothing – yet panic is not a good counselor.
The first macroeconomic report series into the size of the prize for business in the transition to a circular economy
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