Take the tyres that we put on cars everyday across the planet, right now these tyres are designed as a single use product, meaning that we don’t turn them back into useable tyres at the end of their life cycle, but why don’t we..?
Instead we crush the product up and put it into road and building sites and create a useful outcome for the outflow waste or we pyrolysis the tyre back into its original product ingredients, that gets used across many new opportunities, including the gasification process for new energy.
Yet, this doesn’t solve the problem of tyre waste, or that we still need virgin material to make more tyres. Why aren’t we designing tyres to be cradle to cradle, so that they can be repurposed back into a tyre. That’s the sole reason why we extracted the rubber and steel and oil, to product the tyre, that can only be used once.
The circular economy allows us to apply a lens with curiosity, that empowers questions to be asked, that highlight the circular innovation needed, to turn a tyre back into a tyre and nothing else.
This is just one of a number of products that Green Lab Futures are exploring, that can help businesses and local governments better design and encourage supply chain sustainability.
We are also passionately exploring
- Single use plastic in the medical sector
- Transportation products
- Renewable energy products
We have started working with the local governments and businesses, who are actively embracing circular economy activities in their business model, and sharing their stories through our new podcast, “Going Circular”. This podcast conversation includes interviews with all sorts of circular economy adopters, sharing their stories far and wide, their challenges and barriers, and their opportunities and enablers.
