Circular Economy

Why and why now?

Welcome

Redundant whaling station South Georgia

If the machine inspired the industrial age, the image of the living system may inspire a genuine postindustrial age

Peter Senge et al. (Sloan Management Review)

You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete

Buckminster Fuller

Frameworks and Change

Cradle to Cradle

Why Now? Other changes in progress, other contexts that matter• Exhaustion: commodities, energy and credit. Resource shocks

coming, risks and price volatility• ICT (digital revolution) collaborative use, rental easy and

convenient, control technologies track items, link systems (more mobile phones than toilets) from consumers to users

• Politics: high unemployment, declining public services, expensive housing and debt, rising inequality

• Open source: User is producer, user is creative, user is a hacker (design for repurposing) 3D printing, innovation

• Finance: looking for the new winners and reducing risk- diversity:B2B complementary currencies

In search of rarity (1970s)

• An unofficial recording. Perhaps their best!

• Search dealers and classified adverts / ‘black markets’

• Pay €80-200 if a copy is found

• Wait years….

In search of rarity the obvious (2010)

• An unofficial recording. Perhaps their best!

• Check the internet

• Pay nothing

• Wait a few minutes for the download

• (or if you must buy –its easy to find …still €80-200)

White Bicycle Scheme 1965

In most early schemes e.g. Holland 1965, Cambridge UK 1993 all bikes are stolen or destroyed very quickly

Easy rental arrangements- including an individual’s car

Airbnb – rapid growth

Zilok – rent anything + Liftshare + Zookal – rent textbooks

What’s wrong with this picture?

Unemployment

Food prices and Riots

Adbusters. social media enabled the OCCUPY movement to flourish

Circular economy – customer as user and producer

• Design for refurbishment, • Repair, repurposing (‘hacking’)• Disassembly • Extended use periods • User understandable and repairable

• They all contribute to a different relationship with products = business opportunity??

•

Why not? Extended use period

Innovation and …

• Open Source - we freely publish our 3d designs, schematics, instructional videos, budgets, and product manuals on our open source wiki and we harness open collaboration with contributors.Low-Cost - The cost of making or buying our machines are, on average, 8x cheaper than buying from an Industrial Manufacturer, including an average labor cost of $15 hour for a GVCS fabricator and using mail-order parts.Modular - Motors, parts, assemblies,

and power units can interchange.User-Serviceable - Design-for-disassembly allows the user to take apart, maintain, and fix tools readily without the need to rely on expensive repairmen.DIY - The user gains control of designing, producing, and modifying the GVCS tool set.Closed Loop Manufacturing - Metal is an essential component of advanced civilization, and our platform allows for recycling metal into virgin feedstock for producing further GVCS technologies - thereby allowing for cradle-to-cradle manufacturing cycles

Civilisation starter kit?

Civilisation starter kit (cont)

• High Performance - Performance standards must match or exceed those of industrial counterparts for the GVCS to be viable.Flexible Fabrication - It has been demonstrated that the flexible use of generalized machinery in appropriate-scale production is a viable alternative to centralized production.Open Business Models - We encourage the replication of enterprises that derive from the GVCS platform as a route to truly free enterprise - along the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy.Industrial Efficiency - In order to provide a viable choice for a resilient lifestyle, the GVCS platform matches or exceeds productivity standards of industrial counterparts.