Business case

Utilise waste streams as a source of secondary resources and recover waste for reuse and recycling

Use waste as a resource

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within other industries

Valorise waste streams - open loop

Transforming waste products, materials for reuse within other industries

Open loop upcycling

Cycle strategies aim to cycle and reuse materials at their highest value: they maximise the volume of secondary materials re-entering the economy, ultimately minimising the need for virgin material inputs and therefore also narrowing flows. Of course, virgin materials will always be needed to a degree: all materials degrade and can’t be cycled infinitely, use energy, and require blending with virgin materials to maintain strength and functionality.

Cycle

The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

large_photo-1515534238346-fb9ae3e399d0.jpg

medium_photo-1515534238346-fb9ae3e399d0.jpg

small_photo-1515534238346-fb9ae3e399d0.jpg

thumbnail_photo-1515534238346-fb9ae3e399d0.jpg

photo-1515534238346-fb9ae3e399d0.jpg

Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

![Screen Shot 2024-10-21 at 16.53.12.png](https://goldilocks-images.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/Screen_Shot_2024_10_21_at_16_53_12_12858da6aa.png)

Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

medium_Screen Shot 2024-10-21 at 16.53.12.png

small_Screen Shot 2024-10-21 at 16.53.12.png

thumbnail_Screen Shot 2024-10-21 at 16.53.12.png

Screen Shot 2024-10-21 at 16.53.12.png

In 2014, the World Health Organisation dubbed air pollution the “single largest environment and human health threat”. With particulate matter and toxic pollutants accounting for 6.5 million deaths annually, many cities around the globe are gasping for solutions. Engineer Anirudh Sharma has come up with a creative approach. While walking in Mumbai in 2013, the MIT Media Lab student and “chronic inventor” noticed that the plumes of diesel exhaust emitted by buses and cars were staining his clothing black. “I thought: what if we could cleverly recycle all this soot that is making the world dirty, and use the pigment to make something beautiful, like ink?” Sharma says. He formed a startup called Graviky Labs and has spent the past three years developing an exhaust filter that can capture 95% of the carbon soot from cars, generators and ferries and turn it into ink and paint. The result is Air-Ink, the world’s first line of art supplies made from air pollution. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign last month, the startup’s oil-based paints, markers and spray cans are set to ship in June. Sharma is now travelling to smog-choked cities around the world and challenging 19 street artists to create billboards and murals illustrating the effects of carbon waste, starting in London.Sketches produced with Air-Ink. Photograph: Courtesy: Air-Ink Last month, an installation dubbed “the world’s first clean air gallery” appeared in Windrush Square in Brixton, south London, which recently made headlines by surpassing its air pollution limit for the entire year in only five days. The pop-up featured works by artists from five of the UK’s most polluted cities (London, Glasgow, Leeds, Southampton and Nottingham) and used Air-Ink products made from exhaust collected over a five-day period. A separate hand-drawn billboard by artist Kristopher Ho showing fumes billowing into iconic London landmarks emerged over Shaftesbury Avenue last Monday, and will hang near Piccadilly Circus until 10 April. Other Air-Ink exhibitions and installations are scheduled to follow in Berlin, Singapore and New York until the end of April. The raw material for Air-Ink is collected through a patented cylindrical device called a Kaalink that fits on to a vehicle’s tail pipe and traps unburned carbon before it is expelled into the air, capturing soot particles as small as 2.5 micrometers across, or a 30th of the diameter of a human hair. Sharma and his team then remove impurities such as metals and carcinogens, grind the purified soot into ink pigment, and mix it with vegetable oil to create bold inks, markers and paints that have Kaalink’s early adopters buzzing.As part of initial testing for the product, Sharma installed five Kaalinks on Tiger beer delivery trucks in London recently.“We’re taking something from the street and putting it back into the street in an inspiring and sustainable way,” Ho said. “I went through about 10 to 15 markers on this mural, and when I was running low, the [Tiger beer lorries] just went out into central London to collect more ink.Inventor Anirudh Sharma holds a Kaalink unit. Photograph: Matt Crossick/PA “I don’t know if it’s the pollution, but the quality of the ink is really special,” Ho added. “It’s pitch black, really thick and dries incredibly quickly. I have some left over and plan on using it again on my other projects.” The jet-black ink is also remarkably green. Each 30-millilitre pen contains between 40-50 minutes of Kaalink-captured air pollution, while each six-litre spray can holds 2,000 minutes of diesel exhaust. In the past year, Sharma says that his team has cleaned nearly 1.7 trillion litres of air in Hong Kong and throughout India, where Graviky Labs is based, to harvest 770 litres of ink – the equivalent in terms of particulate emissions of continuously driving a standard diesel saloon car for 2.3 years.Considering that the company has only distributed about 75 exhaust filters to friends and family thus far, it’s an impressive start. Yet Sharma knows that he needs to make the company bigger if he wants a wider pilot scheme – such as strapping the steel Kaalink cylinders to taxis, buses or factory chimneys.  “There’s a massive potential here,” he said. “If each of the 20,000 black cabs in London had our product, we could clean 30 trillion litres of air a year” And if it leads to more art, even better.

   A world where we knowingly lead our future generations towards a catastrophic climate crisis, and live with the irreversible damage our planet has incurred        A world with less CO2 emissions, where our small climate conscious actions make the air breathable and life more enjoyable   

Cambridge

small_blob

thumbnail_blob

blob

Doconomy

Heineken

TEDtalks

DELL

mastercard

Air pollution is a common thread in bigger cities around the globe. AIR-INK tackles the issue of air pollution by capturing air pollutants (2.5 – 10 PM) and processing them to ink. That way, AIR-INK aims to clean cities and "[use the soot] to make something beautiful".

Paint with the magic black
- air pollutants used as ink by AIR-INK (Cambridge, US)

thumbnail_WCTD2022_campaignlogo.jpg

WCTD2022_campaignlogo.jpg

This collection has been built by a community of passionate researchers, students, and industry professionals as part of <a href="https://worldcirculartextilesday.com/" target="_blank">World Circular Textiles Day</a> (WCTD). 


World Circular Textiles Day takes place every year on 8th October. Our vision is to galvanise the collective ambitions and goals of people, organisations and businesses to reach a fully circular textiles world by 2050. Our mission is to provide a framework for circularity stakeholders to develop and deliver a collaborative, evolving roadmap and to chart circularity’s momentum annually from the 8th of October until 2050.

What does fully circular by 2050 mean?
- Shared textile resources, in the form of products and raw materials, are kept in **continual circulation**.
- Virgin resources are **replaced with circular materials**.
- Dignity, equity, and equality for the **people** involved in all parts of the circular value chain.

We need to know where we stand today to chart how to get to 100% Circularity by 2050. What circular activity is currently happening in the textiles and apparel industry, and where in the world is it happening? The WCTD Collection aims to answer this question by building the world’s largest digital library of circular textiles case studies. 

World Circular Textiles Day is proud to be supported by our 2022-23 Circular Hero Partners:
[Lenzing](https://www.lenzing.com/), [Texaid](https://retailsolutions.texaid.com/), [Bank & Vogue](https://www.bankvogue.com/), [Usha yarns limited](https://ushayarns.com/), [The Conduit](https://www.theconduit.com/), and [Asia Pacific Rayon](https://www.aprayon.com/en/)

## Want to contribute to the WCTD Collection? Sign up and add your circular textiles activities.

World Circular Textiles Day

large_WCTD background.png

medium_WCTD background.png

small_WCTD background.png

thumbnail_WCTD background.png

WCTD background.png

Impact on the availability of resources as well as their effect on living organisms, ecosystems, and components of the environment.

Ecological Impact

Impacts on the social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families.

Social Impact

Impacts on the financial condition of a company, as well as the the economicconditions of its stakeholders and on economic systems at local, national, andglobal levels.

Economic Impact

Impact on increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Reduced use of virgin materials and/or an increase of the use of secondary and bio-based materials

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

Reduced use of fossil fuel energy sources and/or increased use of renewable energy

Reduce Energy Consumption

Producing and providing business and consumer goods and services

Goods and Services

Producing electronics products for businesses and consumers, including cellular phones, personal computers, printers, servers, electronic computer components and peripherals, TVs, audio equipment, as well as household appliances, such as refrigerators, washing machines, etc.

Electronics and Appliances

Producing textile and leather products and processing them into apparel and accessories

Fashion and Textiles

Account for the systems perspective during the design process, to use the right materials, to design for appropriate lifetime and to design for extended future use

Design for the future

Use digital, online platforms and technologies that provide insights to track and optimise resource use, strengthen connections between supply chain actors, and enable the implementation of circular models



Incorporate digital technology

Designing to reduce waste during production and use

Design out waste

Using materials that can be easily reused or recycled after use

Reusable, recyclable materials and inputs

Using waste materials that have been processed and recycled to produce new products within the same industry

Using closed loop recycled materials

VISION:
Products and services are designed for multiple use and material value retention, with maximum positive impact.

DETAIL: 
Imagine a time when…products flow via optimal collection and distribution streams into reusable and repairable product platforms. Reuse and access models are dominant, and products are designed for multiple recirculation before biodegrading (if designed to do so), or being broken down into reusable raw materials for production. People only consume what they need. Production and consumption wastes have been fully eliminated and multifunctional, season-less and timeless fashions are the norm, yet still fulfil our human need for expression and creativity without constraint. All business models, organisations, governments and citizens play a role in maintaining a healthy, functioning circular ecosystem.

Products and Services

Impacts

small_climate-4803653_640.jpg

thumbnail_climate-4803653_640.jpg

climate-4803653_640.jpg

Industries

small_coast-wind-turbine-sea-sky.jpg

thumbnail_coast-wind-turbine-sea-sky.jpg

coast-wind-turbine-sea-sky.jpg

It is 2050.  Full systems change has taken place. This wouldn’t have been possible without the immediate action and radical steps taken from 2020 onwards. Many targets had to be identified in the early 2020s and achieved by 2030 to ensure that the 2050 goal happened in full. A sense of urgency, turbo stakeholder collaboration, supportive government regulation and clear, data driven targets enabled the mindsets and systems change needed to transform to a fully circular textiles ecosystem.

A circular economics model underpins what we have created. It reflects and supports a living organism made up of makers, users and restorers, interacting across vibrant and interconnected networks. Checks and balances, alongside transparency and accountability, ensure a healthy system. Financial, environmental, and social metrics have the purpose of serving communities and the planet. There is shared ownership of profit and loss – across all three metrics – throughout the value chain.

This is what we’ve achieved over the last 30 years:

WCTD Themes

thumbnail_wctd.jpg

wctd.jpg

         
     Gold is gold, no matter where it comes from...right? So why not consider conscious sourcing?  Recycled Metals go through a refining process that separates them from their accompanying alloys, reducing them down to pure gold and platinum. Because our recycled and re-refined gold is refined back into its pure elements, it contains the same properties as newly mined gold but without the negative environmental consequences. In other words, if we have the opportunity to use gold that is of the same high quality as newly mined gold but without the level of degradation to our natural resources caused by new mining, why wouldn’t we?                 Over a year ago, Dell approached Bayou With Love with the idea of making something beautiful from e-waste. Many people don’t realize that only around 12.5% of electronics are responsibly recycled globally. In phones alone, Americans throw away more than $60 million in gold and/or silver every year. Electronics contain so many valuable resources that can be recycled and upcycled, and Dell and their partners have a process for extracting gold from old computer motherboards that is 99% more environmentally friendly than extracting gold from the earth. Not to mention the ethical benefits by avoiding the harsh labor conditions where gold is so often mined.        

        Learn more about Dell’s recycling programs and circular gold supply chain at dell.com/gold.
Through our partnership with Dell we have been able to take this recycled gold found in used electronics, and create what we like to call “luxury with a story.” We all should be thinking “circular” in our approach to design. One industry’s “trash” can be another’s treasure.       Carbon Neutral. We source most of our diamonds from the World's First certified 100% Carbon-Neutral Diamond Producer, Diamond Foundry. Their diamonds are sustainably grown aboveground in America's beautiful Pacific West, 100% hydropowered by Washington State’s Columbia River.             

 When eWeek said ahead of CES that we were getting “fashion-conscious” with our new XPS 13 laptop, little did they know just how fashion – and environmentally – conscious we really are.
In what BGR called “the most unexpected announcement of CES 2018,” we unveiled a collaboration several years in the making with actress, entrepreneur and activist Nikki Reed to create a jewelry line made from gold recovered from computer motherboards.

“I want to shatter a lot off the misconceptions about sustainable materials and this preconceived notion that sustainability and luxury can’t belong in the same sentence,” Reed told Refinery29.
Her company, Bayou with Love, sells apparel and home goods that meet a strict ethical checklist: Everything is local, sustainable, and recycled or upcycled. This now includes The Circular Collection sourced from gold recovered from Dell’s recycling programs. The collection includes 14- and 18-carat gold rings, earrings and cufflinks.
It’s About More Than Jewelry
Something that I think got lost in a lot of the news coverage of this collaboration, however, is that there is more to our gold recycling efforts than beautiful jewelry. Also announced last week was our industry-first pilot to use the same recycled gold from used electronics in new computer motherboards that will ship in our Latitude 5285 2-in-1s starting this spring.

It’s About More Than Technology
As FastCompany noted, gold is the most malleable metal and the second-best conductor of electricity and usually comes from open pit mines, where miners blast rocks with dynamite, drill, crush the ore, and use chemicals to strip out tiny amounts of gold.
But at CES, Darrel Ward, senior vice president of commercial client solutions at Dell, called out that there’s 800 more times gold in one ton of motherboards than there is in one ton of ore mined from the earth. According to a Trucost study, the gold reclamation process created by Dell environmental partner Wistron GreenTech has a 99 percent lower environmental impact than traditionally mined gold.
“If we don’t start this now and we don’t start taking these precious metals out of the landfills and putting them back into the ecosystem, then we’ve all failed,” Ward said on the stage in Las Vegas.
Currently, only 12.5 percent of e-waste is recycled into other products. As a result, it’s estimated that Americans throw away $60 million in gold and silver every year through unwanted phones alone.
“I think in order to make this more than a blip on the radar, as a lot of these things have been–you know, with sustainable fashion, and conscious consuming–in order to make this more than a trend, we have to come up with new ways to harness people’s attention and really get them to see that this is the only way forward,” Reed said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuGiE5oNOlA&feature=youtu.be
It’s About More Than Gold
As part of Dell’s Legacy of Good Program, the company has pledged to recycle 100 million pounds of recycled content into its product portfolio by 2020. The collaboration with Nikki Reed extends from the company’s widespread efforts to find innovative ways to create value from waste.
“Let me tell you what I love about this company. It’s not just about the technology it’s what that technology empowers you to do,” said Ward. “It’s about driving human advancement. There’s a dimension of human advancement and what we do in the product group that’s particularly exciting to me. It really hits home. And that’s social responsibility and sustainability in our products.”
Since 2012, Dell has recycled more than 50 million pounds of post-consumer recycled materials into new products. If you bought an Optiplex system from us in 2008, there were 17 water bottles worth of recycled plastic in that bezel. And if you buy a new Optiplex from us today, plastic from those old 2008 systems is used to create it.
It’s About You
To make this possible, we need you to help support the effort by sending us your old technology – whether it was manufactured by us or not.
In the U.S., you can drop off unwanted and used electronics at a Goodwill participating in the Dell Reconnect program, a free and responsible recycling service partnered with Dell. Businesses can participate through Dell’s Asset Resale and Recycling Services. And, more global options can be found Dell.com.
You can feel good about reducing your personal impact on the environment, while also helping Dell reduce our impact across the value chain, take action against climate change, strive for zero-waste manufacturing and drive sustainability across the business.
And, as Reed’s proud husband put it on his Instagram, your unwanted technology could become a beautiful line of jewelry to last and be passed down to other generations.
  

Los Angeles

BaYou with Love

BaYou with Love, founded and run by designer, actress and environmentalist Nikki Reed, is a lifestyle brand focused on sustainable, ethical fashion and production within jewelry, apparel, home and beauty. Their fine jewelry using recycled gold, including gold recovered from discarded technology through their partnership with Dell. Through this partnership, they took recycled gold found in used electronics, and create new jewelry. "We all should be thinking “circular” in our approach to design. One industry’s “trash” can be another’s treasure."