Welcome to The Circular People, where we celebrate circular business ideas being tested all over the world! Circular means creating less waste, and resources being used to optimize circularity through reuse, upcycling, repair and recycling only as a last resort.

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FIBRETRACE

This company embeds a patented luminescent pigment into textile fibres at the very start of the supply chain — making every thread traceable and verifiable, from raw fibre all the way to recycled…
PULPATRONICS

This company replaces metal-and-silicon RFID tags with fully recyclable, chipless paper tags — cutting CO2 emissions by 60% and costs by 30%
HYFÉ

The circle of it: This company transforms food manufacturing wastewater — rich in sugars — into low-cost feedstock for biomanufacturing, replacing petroleum as a raw material for chemicals and materials.
COMPOSTIFY

This company develops home-compostable alternatives that enrich the soil to traditional plant containers that tend to be made from virgin plastic

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Circular Economy Principles

What is the Circular Economy?

A Circular Economy is one that closely mimics the life-cycle of resources in nature: nothing is created and nothing is destroyed and resources go back into the earth and can be regenerated in some form or the other. In our current “linear” economy, resources are taken from the Earth, products are made from them, and eventually thrown away as waste- there is no end-of–life design for most materials, and most materials end up in a landfill and have no way of being used ever again.

In a circular economy, products and services would be designed taking into account the full life-cycle of the materials used by that product or service such that waste would be eliminated or at least minimized. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a UK-based non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the transition to a Circular Economy since 2010, the circular economy is based on three principles, driven by design: eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials (at their highest value), and regenerate nature.

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