Waste Doesn't Begin In The Bin
We Were Asking The Wrong Question
For most of my life, I thought waste was an end-of-life problem, you buy something, use it, eventually you throw it away and hopefully somebody smarter than us finds a way to recycle it. That seems perfectly reasonable until you begin asking what happens next.
The more I have learnt about products, materials and circular design, I realise waste doesn't begin when something is thrown away, more often than not, it begins long before we ever bring it into our homes. Waste can be designed into products years before consumers ever purchase them.
I didn't expect circular design to teach me that and I certainly didn't expect it to change the way I think about waste altogether.
What surprised me most was discovering many of the most important decisions have already been made long before a product reaches the end of its life; the materials have been selected, the components have been combined, the construction methods have been determined and the outcome has quietly begun taking shape.
Have we been asking the wrong question all along, Not how do we dispose of this? But what happens next?
We Have Become Remarkably Comfortable With Better Endings
One thing I noticed throughout this journey is, we have become remarkably good at celebrating better endings. Recycled. Recyclable. Compostable. Upcycled.
These are all important conversations and each has an important role to play. Yet increasingly I find myself wondering whether we have become too comfortable allowing the conversation to begin there.
What if the future of circular design isn't simply about creating better endings?
What if it's about creating better beginnings?
Products designed to last longer, designed for continuation and to remain valuable long after their first life has ended. The more I learn about circularity, the less interested I have become in asking whether something can be recycled and the more interested I have become in asking whether it needed to exist in that form in the first place.
Increasingly, I have found myself asking more difficult questions.
Is turning plastic bottles into towels circular design or simply a better linear system?
Have we solved the problem or simply delayed it?
Are we designing products for continuation or are we designing slightly better endings?
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I have become much more comfortable asking uncomfortable questions, perhaps circularity was never really about waste after all, maybe it’s always been about continuation.
Sometimes The Most Thoughtful Ending Is Returning To The Earth
One assumption I challenged throughout this journey is circular systems only have one pathway home. Increasingly, I don't believe they should, our hope is that one day SunGods products will find their way home to us through thoughtfully designed return pathways, allowing materials to begin another life, sometimes that won't happen and that's okay too.
Designing for continuation means accepting there should be more than one thoughtful ending available.
Return. Recovery. Renewal. Composting where possible. Continuation can take many forms.
Perhaps circular design isn't about creating perfect systems after all, maybe it's about creating better possibilities than the ones we have today. Nature rarely creates waste in the way we do, everything has a beginning and deserves to continue into something else.
There is something remarkably beautiful about that.
The Future Of Luxury Might Look Surprisingly Simple
Before SunGods, I thought luxury was about beautiful products, today, I think the future of luxury may have much more to do with beautiful systems.
Systems that respect materials.
Systems that value longevity over replacement.
Systems designed around continuation rather than convenience.
Systems that ask more of the brands creating products and less of the people buying them.
Regenerative thinking has taught me something unexpected throughout this journey, nature doesn't rush to create something new when something reaches the end of its life, it simply continues.
The future of luxury has much more to learn from that than we realise and recognise responsibility can be beautiful after all.
Circular Design Quietly Changed Everything
Something unexpected happened whilst building SunGods, circular design quietly stopped being one of the conversations we were having and became the conversation leading all of them.
Today, we rarely begin product conversations by talking about products, we begin by talking about beginnings.
Could it be designed with a beginning, a life and a way home?
Could thoughtfully selected natural materials work together?
Could unnecessary components be eliminated?
Could it continue beyond its first life?
If for some reason our community couldn't return it to us, could it safely become part of the earth again?
The questions have changed and perhaps that's the point, circular design no longer sits patiently at the end of our product development process waiting for us to consider it, for us it loudly leads every conversation we have.
Discovery Continues
The Awakening taught us to question what products are made from, discovery is teaching us something different. Waste isn't simply an end-of-life problem, more often than not, it's a design problem, a systems problem and a thinking problem.
I believe circularity was never really about recycling, it has always been about continuation; designing products that can become something else, designing systems that leave something valuable behind, designing better beginnings so better endings become possible.
What I know for certain is this.
Everything has a beginning.
Everything has a story.
Everything leaves something behind.
And perhaps responsibility simply begins by becoming curious enough to ask whether there might be another way.
We're only just beginning and perhaps that's the point.
The products we create, the choices we make and the lives we live are all designed with a beginning, a life and a way home.