When Mikael Hedström from Ragn-Sells was asked what he thinks all people should know, he replied: The phosphorus issue; everyone should know about that. I was standing in the raspberry bush listening to the energy strategy podcast, thinking: is he talking about eutrophication and algal blooms?
He wasn’t. Instead, he was talking about how convulsively we stick to our linear business models and how destructive it is. The thing is, we need phosphorus in agriculture to be able to feed many people. But instead of recycling it from our sewage sludge, we are constantly breaking new, from mines in the Western Sahara, occupied by Morocco, in China and Syria, which are the biggest suppliers. Stable, huh? And the phosphorus is a finite resource. It’ll run out if we keep doing what we are doing.
Hedström also pointed out that linear business models have only existed since the Industrial Revolution. A modern and particularly bad invention, which is mostly about producing waste. And we keep digging up, creating new, selling, buying and throwing. And it gets harder and harder to get rid of all the waste we produce.
But there is hope. Now the Swedish Government has published its strategy for circular economy. Hopefully it can lead to increasing knowledge, inspiration and perhaps even driving the municipalities to manage their procurements.
How do we become circular?
How to get out of linear brainwashing is of course different from company to company, but it is always about using our resources optimally. The good news is that it’s usually more profitable to do just that. Some questions you can ask yourself are:
- Is it possible to sell a service instead of the product itself?
- Is it possible to take the product back from the customer when it is consumed and reuse or recycle it in your own production?
- Do you manufacture products in such a way that they can easily be disassembled and recycled?
Are you interested in exploring how the company can go from linear to circular? Contact us and we will help you to sort out what it means for you and find new business opportunities!
