Circular Economy and digitalisation are two of the big driving forces of business change today. But how do they fit together?

The way I see it, circular economy is a goal – that’s where we want to get in order to ensure a sustainable flow of resources through our economy and the wellbeing of our society. How about digitalisation?

Digitalisation is one of the tools we can utilise to achieve that at a large enough scale. If you think about it, society of the past used to be very circular – for example, neighbours would share many things. Tools… Transport… Wives… But today, the world is different. As much as it’s necessary to bring back into our culture some of the values like sharing and local communal spirit, we also need to think about solutions at mass scale. In order to facilitate circular business models such as sharing at a larger scale than a small community that trusts each other, digitalisation is necessary.

Digitalisation as an enabler of circular business model was a topic of quite a few workshops we did this autumn:

• With Circular Change, we facilitated a half-day immersive workshop as a part of GoDigital conference. After an inspirational talk by Ladeja about the current challenges and the importance of circular economy, the participants got a chance to test a new web tool for calculating your footprint and developing a sustainability action plan, which is being developed under the PSLifestyle project. Then, we dove into the use cases of digital technologies enabling circular business models. In the second half of the workshop, participants engaged in a practical session, developing ideas to make textile value chains more circular. We were grateful and happy for all the inspiring conversations that emerged.
• In co-organisation with SRIP Circular Economy, I facilitated a series of four workshops on the same topic, where participants got into drawing visual value chain maps and looking for opportunities to close loops.

Stay bright!

Ram