Explaining the Circular Economy

There were noticeably fewer toys on the shelves at my favourite department store this Christmas. The staff did their best to hide the lack of stock by spamming shelves with one of the toys they did have in stock, a selection of plastic food items, but it was clear there was less variety on offer this year. It was the same at the grocery store. Supermarkets filled empty shelves with pictures of the products they normally contain. There was even a full-scale fuel buying panic in the UK, with queues of cars at filling stations. All due to the supply chain crisis we are currently living through. One of the many causes of the supply chain crisis is a lack of truck capacity. During the pandemic we got used to ordering much more stuff than normal. There aren’t enough trucks and drivers to deliver it all. To make matters worse, many qualified drivers can’t work due to covid. This being the case, one would assume that every effort is being made to maximize capacity on the trucks that are available. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Two thirds of the trucks you see on the road are partially filled or empty. Only one third are carrying a full load. Trucks are empty because they normally carry the goods needed to fulfil a single order. If the order amount is less than a truckload then the truck goes partially filled. It would be better to aggregate several orders to fill a truck. There is a lot of scope for this because many shipments end up are the same receiving locations, often retail distribution centres. However, there is currently no effective way for shippers to collaborate like this. We need an efficient market for truck capacity that allows different shippers to combine orders to make full loads. It’s the classic problem of matching supply with demand. The pay-off will be lower shipping costs, reduced CO2 emission and a better selection of toys next Christmas.

I recently purchased a new iPad. The device was what I expected – a small improvement on the previous (very good) model. What really struck me was the box it came in. It was beautiful! A team of exceptionally talented people put their creative energy into that box. The way it looked, opened (#unboxing), protected the iPad, held everything so there were no rattles. The materials were top notch and obviously expensive. It was such a nice thing I kept it for a few days just to look at it. Then I threw it in the recycling. According to this paper , packaging accounting for 36% of municipal solid waste. It uses up 40% of virgin plastics and 50% of paper in Europe. Yet, with a few tweaks to the design, that Apple box I threw away could have been used many times. Apple packaging is exceptional, but they are hardly alone in this. All their competitors ship products in beautiful, single use boxes. And let’s not overlook the ubiquitous Amazon cardboard box. Sometime the box is better engineered than the product it contains. Why are we throwing them all away? There are industries that get it right. I was talking to a Belgian brewing company recently and they told me they were still using beer bottle crates that were made in 1960s. They see beer crates as valuable assets, not waste. Why can’t we do that more?

If you aren’t tracking your containers, they might as well be disposable