In our current economy we extract resources, use them to make products and their packaging. The packaging is discarded when it has served its purpose. We use the products and ultimately dispose of them, wasting their resources. We call this the linear economy because resources make a one-way trip from raw material through the production and use phases to become waste.

In a circular economy these resources are recovered instead of wasted after the use phase of a product or packaging item. They will cycle back into the manufacturing phase to maximize the use of their value and minimize the waste and environmental impact.

From a linear life span…

…to a circular lifecycle of products and packaging.

Learn more about the fundamentals of the circular economy in this introductory course.

Further reading:

[1] De Lange, J., Luttikhuis, E. O., ten Klooster, R., & Lutters, E. (2013). Towards integrating sustainability in the development of product/packaging combinations. In Smart Product Engineering (pp. 855-864). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.