Remember all those “I’ll read this later” articles you bookmarked this week? We’ve got you covered. In Circulate on Fridays, we pick out the most essential circular economy coverage from the past five days. Enjoy!
Self driving cars have been in the news again, and it seems Uber’s recent launch in Pittsburgh has accelerated the debate. Recent coverage has focused on the rules needed to ensure that this technology is allowed to flourish and deliver benefits where relevant, but in a safe and equitable way. Barack Obama’s op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette provides the White House perspective, and Wired add further context on how the Department of Transport needs to play catch up.
Can you imagine a hotel where almost every room is empty? A hotel that spends an enormous amount of money maintaining those empty rooms, no matter how little they’re used?
– Lyft CEO John Zimmer
In Forbes, Bryan Pearson asked “where is the Uber of fashion?”, arguing that while product as service business models do exist in the fashion industry in companies like Rent the Runway and Le Tote, they lack the inventory and ‘on demand’ aspects of Uber. Style Lend and Stitch Fix also provide access rather than ownership for clothes, but Pearson reckons the these models won’t truly scale until users can get what they want, when they want. Perhaps collaborating with a logistics network with its own surplus capacity could be the answer.
Yet people still appreciate the benefits of an asset-light lifestyle, according to Lucy Purdy. If you’re after working examples of innovative business models based on sharing, access or paying for performance, there’s no shortage in this Guardian piece. Looking beyond the AirBnBs and Ubers of the world, startups like Eurecook, Rentomojo, Bundles and Pley are showing how a new type of offering can benefits manufacturers and users.
The New Yorker has an in depth profile of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. Read for plenty of extreme adventure stories, lots of fishing, and the history of the company, from humble beginnings to the latest endeavour: rethinking our food chain.
The latest research from Arup focuses on The Circular Economy in the Built Environment, and applies the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s ReSOLVE framework to the design of buildings and cities. You don’t have to be a structural engineer to pick up a copy, as the study explores “how circular economy practices can be scaled up from the individual component or asset level for city, regional, and even global economies”.
Finally, is your drug-dealing business struggling now that so many mushrooms are being used to grow ‘leather’? Well fear not: apparently “waste crime is the new narcotics”, says Sir James Bevan, Chief Executive of the England & Wales Environment Agency. He sees parallels between illegal resource management and drug-related crime in the 80s, when “the system hadn’t quite woken up to the enormity of what was going on and was racing to catch up.” On a more serious note, scaling up circular economy activities could help address this £1bn cost while establish new, valuable resource flows.
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