Material choices matter

The circular-economy vision that has emerged from William McDonough’s early work on Cradle To Cradle suggests that we must make less, buy less and consume less. If this is to work, the things we do buy and use need to be made from genuinely circular materials.

Events company GreenBiz will run its Circularity conference from June 15–17. This will be third time it has run the event. Circularity 21 will be online only, as was Circularity 20, because of covid-19. The launch event, Circularity 19, took place in person in Minneapolis, billed as North America’s first major conference on this subject.

In spite of the presence and ongoing participation of figures such as William McDonough, whom some have termed the father of circular-economy thinking, sustainable fashion champion Elizabeth Cline says she was left a little underwhelmed by Circularity 19. Writing about the event later for grassroots US environmental organisation the Sierra Club, Ms Cline said she feared the message coming across was a recycled version of recycling. The author of two books about sustainability and the fashion industry, she said: “The notion that we can go on making as much as we want as long as we reuse it all is a myth that we’ll have to leave behind if we ever want to realise the dream of a circular economy.”

She quotes Professor Roland Geyer of the University of California at Santa Barbara as saying that recycling and reusing products is something we’ve tried over and over again without being able to make it work. She says that when she put…