On 29 March we invite you to join us for an informal evening at Fab Lab London. We envisage that this will be the first of many network events. There will be a short presentation reflecting on the last four years of the Great Recovery project, the opportunity to introduce your own sustainability work, and lots of opportunities for networking – all welcome.

Sign up here

The largest free to attend circular economy event, Resource is the only major circular economy and resource efficiency event for businesses.

Today sees the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, and the circular economy has a strong representation:

‘Circulars’ Awards are announced

The Circulars award programme offers recognition to individuals and organizations from commerce and civil society across the globe that have made a notable contribution to driving circular economy principles. Last year we were delighted that the Great Recovery and Sophie Thomas received Commendations in both the ‘Accenture Award for Circular Economy Pioneer’ and the ‘Fortune Award for Circular Economy Leadership’. And yesterday, in Davos, the winners for this year were announced. Congratulations to all the finalists. You can find out who won and more about their work here.

Ellen MacArthur Foundation launches new plastics report

Yesterday, to coincide with the beginning of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation launched their latest report ‘The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics’ written as part of their Project MainStream initiative.

The report seeks to rethink the incremental and fragmented improvements being made and provide a fundamental rethink of the way we use plastics, to give a vision for their materials flows within a new and circular economy.

ICEhouse from William McDonough + Partners

Showcasing the principles of Cradle to Cradle design, and providing a place for the Davos delegates to meet and discuss the future of the circular economy, William McDonough + Partners architects have created ICEhouse. Designed for full dissassembly, the structure will ‘melt away’ at the end of the conference, ready to pop up again elsewhere.

It’s been quite a journey for our Survivor Sofa – from front room, to landfill, through teardown and redesign, to design fairs and showrooms, and finally to its new home at RSA House – all in less than 6 months. And now its epic journey is coming to a TV near you.

From Monday 14th December at 10pm ‘The Survivor Sofa Story’ will be broadcast on the Community Channel (available on Freeview, iPlayer, YouTube and more) weekly for the next few years – so there is plenty of time to tune in!

Find out more and watch it here.

Does the UK have a problem with waste sofas?

And not to be outdone by its flat screen counterpart, radio has also got in on some circular economy action. Leading on from our ‘Rearranging the Furniture’ report Lucy Chamberlin, Design Resident Ella Doran and network member Kingston Community Furniture went on site for an interview with Radio 4’s PM programme.

Find out more and listen to the interview here.

This turkey from across the pond is doing its best to bustle into the retail nest that is the pre-Christmas shopping period. And it’s not coming quietly: it seems that this year even more retailers are upping their staffing, strategising  with precision from packing depots and setting up stall for a big day of sell, sell, sell!

But beneath these shiny deals is the thinly veiled awareness that really we all, retailers and consumers alike, know that this caricature of consumerism is in no way a good thing. Seemingly worried about missing the party, however, we are ploughing on and trying our best to quash those feelings, after all more sales leads to more growth, so it’s all good, right?

Wrong.

It’s not so good for business

Despite predictions that UK shoppers’ spending today could exceed £1bn for the first time, the messages from business are mixed. The store touted as bringing Black Friday to the UK have backed out of the event this year. And some analysts are suggesting that the event is in fact not a huge success for retailer’s bottom lines, bringing unpredicatability to spending as consumers wait for discounts, leading to masse reselling or returning of goods, and giving customers poor brand experiences to boot.

It’s not good for us

Electronics, in particular, have been the Black Friday products of choice. But from TVs to tablets these much desired gadgets, with their embedded energy, environmental impact, and their material content, won’t take long to end up as waste. According to WRAP, ‘the average household in the UK spends around £800 on electrical and electronic goods each year. By weight, the UK purchases about 1.4 million tonnes per year and disposes of a similar amount. Less than 10% of this is re-used despite the fact that much of it either still works or could be repaired’.

At The Great Recovery we have taken many people to waste sites and – designer, policy maker, citizen – they never fail to be shocked and overwhelmed by the accumulated ‘stuff’ which flows through our society. On a recent visit to an e-waste site in Scotland one was bowled over to discover that the enormous pile of e-waste he was stood beside was not in fact Scotland’s waste for one year – “No, no” the site rep retorted, ‘that’s three days’ worth”.

We need to appreciate the impact on the climate of the full life time of our products – their production, use and waste phases. It seems particularly crazy that the weekend before the biggest global climate talks kick off in Paris we are embracing such a frenetic and unthinking, and recently invented, consumption love in.

Surely there are better things we could be doing. Let’s use the ridiculousness of Black Friday to kick start some good habits all year round.

Here are five things you can do:

Reduce

Before you go anywhere near a computer or don your wrestling gear to hit the shops, stop and think, do you even need it? Really? These guys didn’t.

Sharing platforms, from Airbnb to Zipcar to Libraries of Things, are on the rise and in their best form these business models built on getting the most value out of the products we have, making use of spare capacity and building community. Could you borrow, share or rent that gadget rather than own it outright?
Engage with the RSA’s work on the sharing economy.

Reuse

This week TRAID are extolling the virtues of #secondhandfirst – making better use of the lovely stuff that’s already in circulation rather than buying brand new – think vintage, think preloved, think secondhandfirst.

And it’s not just clothing: each year in the UK we generate vast amounts of furniture and other bulky waste, much of which is perfectly reusable and, as we learnt during our Design Residency with SUEZ, in demand.
Try eBay, Gumtree, Freegle, Furniture Reuse Networks and charity shops for stuff in your area.
And where possible support demand for reconditioned and refurbished goods from retailers.

Repair

Many discarded items, and particularly electronics, could have their lives extended with a quick repair job. Restart are committed to fixing our relationship with our electronics and in an alternative message for Cyber Monday they are launching their RestartCode on the 30th November, a pledge on intentions and actions to fix first, so why not sign up?

Try one of the repair cafes springing up across the country (or start one yourself!), or find how-to guides online, and let’s make repairing the norm.

Recycle

Of the e-waste the UK creates 40% still ends up in landfill or incineration – that is buried in the ground or burnt, and that looks like this– how festive!

So make sure your products go to a good second life.
As a bare minimum make sure old items that cannot be reused and the packaging of new items go into the correct waste streams.
Check out Recycle Now for info about your local area’s waste services and product by product information.

And on the Black Friday thing, maybe just ignore it?

This interloper doesn’t work, for business, for the planet and for us – as that old adage (almost) goes: having more stuff than you need doesn’t make you happier.

With businesses apparently acting on customer demand despite it playing havoc with the pre-Christmas sales period, this is actually a case where if we all ignore it, it might just go away.

This week Sophie presented ‘Never Turn Your Back on the Ocean’ a new collection of work based on her beach-combing and most particularly on her experiences of visiting Kamilo beach in Hawaii, the beach closest to the Pacific Garbage Patch – one of five vast accumulations of waste drifting in the oceans.

The textured letterpress prints and carefully arranged fragments challenge us to rethink the way we value this hugely versatile material, and starkly remind us that, though often hidden from our view, the items we use everyday do have an afterlife; we need to plan for the sea change we want, and not the one we have.

Pentagram and Do the Green Thing hosted the exhibition and a Q&A session with Sophie this week.

Sophie has taken over the RCA Alumni twitter this week @AlumniRCA and you can follow her on @tmsophie

If you have ideas for rethinking our use of plastic, check out the Plastic Fantastic challenge and get help turning them into reality.

Want to know more about plastics in a circular economy? Try these for inspiration

Sophie tells the story behind Never Turn Your Back on the Ocean

Plastic – it’s a love/hate thing – We brought together plastic experts to hear about the challenges and opportunities

How can we create a clean circular economy? – Michael Warhurst of CHEMtrust explains the challenges of chemical contaminants in recycling

Closed Loop – we visited the Closed Loop plant in Dagenham to hear about the innovative work to recycle HDPE and PET plastics

Plastic Fantastic Challenge!

Entry closes 14th December

This autumn Impact Hubs and Enviu are teaming up to invite both plastic ‘haters’ and ‘lovers’ to work together towards sustainable solutions in order to reduce plastic waste. In short: Love Plastic, Not Waste.

The Plastic Fantastic Challenge is targeted at young entrepreneurs and (post-) graduate students as well as experts and professionals in industry, science and environment. However everyone can join this European open innovation competition by subscribing, sharing and contributing to the business concepts that can be posted on www.plasticfantasticchallenge.org. The call for innovative business ideas is open until December 14th 2015. In the consecutive phases of the challenge ideas are matched, teams are formed and concepts are further improved with the support of an expert community.

The best teams will be rewarded with a 3-day intensive Bootcamp at a central location in Europe. During this Bootcamp the teams are coached and supported in perfecting their plans, before presenting them to a final jury. Final winners will be awarded a cash prize of EURO 10,000 of seed capital and membership to their local Impact Hub for further mentoring and access to investors.

Find out more about the challenge here.

More about the organisers:

About Enviu

Enviu starts world-changing companies. We want the global economy to be inclusive and serve people and planet. We drive this change by initiating mass collaboration and impact driven entrepreneurship. Our start-ups deliver products and services that improve the quality of life for large groups of people. Enviu is a partner for NGO’s, corporate foundations and family offices.

About Impact Hub

Impact Hubs are where change goes to work. Part innovation lab, part business incubator, and part community center, we offer our members a unique ecosystem of resources, inspiration, and collaboration opportunities to grow impact. We believe a better world evolves through the combined accomplishments of creative, committed and compassionate individuals focused on a common purpose. Joining our diverse community of members and collaborators will inspire, connect, and enable you to develop your best work every step of the way.

And if you fancy getting stuck into some consumer products and finding out more about what’s in them and how they could be different in a circular economy, then get down to Fab Lab London on Saturday 14th November and join in with a tear down that’s happening simultaneously across several cities. We’ll see you there!

The last three years have been an exciting journey of discovery into the world of design for a circular economy and have seen us build a wonderfully diverse network of thinkers, makers, sharers and doers. And so, earlier this month, we were delighted to gather these friends and supporters to celebrate our collective achievements and to reflect on the second phase of our work with Innovate UK.

The journey so far…

We took over Fab Lab London (itself celebrating its one year birthday this month) with a giant timeline plotting the multitude of events, teardowns, workshops and activities held by The Great Recovery since our inception in September 2012. Attendees were asked to populate this timeline with their experiences of being involved, and of the influence and impact the project has had on their work. (We also took the opportunity to ask our network for their suggestions on future direction of The Great Recovery – send us an email to info@greatrecovery.org.uk if you have any thoughts on this).

Voices from our network

We were delighted to hear from a number of our network during the evening as we reflected on the fantastic journey of the project so far. Our particular thanks went to Nick Cliffe and his colleagues at Innovate UK, whose support has enabled and championed the work of The Great Recovery.

Design is at the heart of our work and we were delighted to be joined by Rich Gilbert from The Agency of Design, textile designer Ella Doran, and Craig Anderson from the Furniture Re-use Network who each talked about the benefits they have felt from their involvement with The Great Recovery and the way it has informed their practice.

Incoming RSA Director of Economy, Enterprise and Manufacture, Tony Greenham, expressed the RSA’s continuing commitment to working on the circular economy as a crucial part of building a sustainable, fair and dynamic economy.

“Save our Sofas’

Turning Fab Lab’s boardroom into a cinema for the evening, we were thrilled to screen our latest film ‘Save our Sofas’ – an extended cut of our design residency work with SUEZ – which will soon also be available on the Community Chanel. We’d like to give special thanks to film maker Paul Wyatt for his fantastic work on this, and on all of our films.

Tell us your stories

We’d like to thank everyone who came along and contributed their feedback for making the evening such a success. And of course to all those hundreds of you who couldn’t make it on the night but have still played a part in our story so far.

We are now collating the reflections and insights gathered into our next publication, for release in early 2016.

If you couldn’t make it to this event but have been part of our journey so far and would like to share your reflections, please do get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.

To celebrate a year of the partnership between Fab Lab London and The Great Recovery we invited designers Corin Kennington, Tom Baber and Peter Roden to work their magic on a very large 8m x 2.5m blank wall.

Taking inspiration from the workings of the circular economy they created this large scale mural over three days, using discarded paint. The ‘re-invent’ lettering references the practise of circularity through its continuous looping from one end of the wall to the other, and encourages everyone in the space to think about reuse and reinvention of materials in their projects.

It’s completely transformed the space and we love it!

All images courtesy of Corin Kennington and Peter Roden.