“… and go round and round and round in the circle game.” — Joni Mitchell




Behind our environmental challenges today is an economy that is based on a “take- make- waste” system. We extract renewable resources quicker than they can be regenerated, and generate waste faster than nature can handle it. That undermines Ma Nature’s ability to support us. Throughout Greenopolis we’ve told stories of organizations that are expanding the boundaries of their thinking to work with the limits of natural systems, not against them.

Seeing the underlying limits in resources and waste can open up strategic opportunities for companies and society. Putting these two together leads to a simple framework for a new industrial system for life beyond the “Bubble Economy”.



The figure above gives a big-picture view of an in¬dustrial system that mimics nature. Waste is dramatically reduced through conversion into two different kinds of reusable resources.

“Natural nutrients” are biodegradable by-products of industrial products and processes that can go back into nature and regenerate as resources. This includes composted food wastes, compostable clothing made from organic fibers, some bioplastics, and by-products from renewable energy, such as the water that comes from converting hydrogen into electricity in fuel cells.



“Technical nutrients,” a term coined by Michael Braungart and William McDonough in their book Cradle to Cradle, are materials that can circle back into the creation or use of other products. Technical nutrients are soda and detergent bottles that get recycled into new bottles. They are automobile and copying machine components that get remanufactured into new components. They are computers that can be disassembled easily and safely so their parts can be remanufactured. They are superefficient lightbulbs that require less energy (thereby reducing CO2 emissions) and that also can be taken apart and completely reused after their lifetime. They are also by-products of manufacturing processes that can be used in other processes, such as the waste heat or chemical by-products at Kalundborg or in Per Carstedt’s Green Zone that become energy or inputs to other processes.



The system shown above is simple to understand, and we have found that it is a great way for anyone from school children to industrial managers to quickly grasp the principles of a truly sustainable economy. In such an economy, we work steadily to reduce all forms of waste (solid, liquid, and gaseous) toward zero and continually find new ways to design products and processes so that what was once waste become valuable material to other industrial processes or nutritious material to flow back into natural systems.

An economy based on separate circular flows of technical and biological nutrients mimics the living-systems principle of “waste equals food” and has two critical benefits: reduction of waste flows and their collateral damage to communities and natural systems and reduction in the amount of natural resources that must be extracted or harvested.

Many companies embarked on developing circular business models long ago and have since reaped substantial rewards.



Xerox has been designing copiers to be disassembled, remanufactured, and recycled for years and gains over $400 million in annual direct-to-the-bottom-line savings from utilizing recovered components.

BMW and other automakers have found a compelling harvest of economic value in taking back automobiles at the end of their lifetime and designing them so that whole portions, such as dash panels and doors, can be recovered and re-used easily, as has Pratt and Whitney in the remanufacturing of aircraft engines.

A similar wave of investment and innovation has hit the computer industry in the past few years.

What can your household, school, community or business capture and transform from waste to resource? Next week we’ll show a simple tool and approach for eliminating waste and transforming it into positive resources.