Circular solutions helping us cut waste

Published March 25, 2025

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How are these featured ChangeNOW innovators slashing waste and boosting the circular economy?

This year, 2025, marks 10 years since the Paris Agreement was signed by 196 Parties at COP21. As part of the landmark agreement, it was established that greenhouse gas emissions needed to peak this year at the latest, and fall 43 per cent by 2030 in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The prime focus of the treaty has been to replace fossil fuels with cleaner, renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and hydropower. But our emissions problem goes beyond energy choices, and is inherently linked with two other unsustainable pillars of modern society: overconsumption and waste.

As manufacturing processes have streamlined and become cheaper, companies have made more and more products, catering to an expanding global population that has also embraced buying more stuff than ever before. This means more natural resources being depleted, more emissions-intensive manufacturing, and much more waste across global economies.

Linear economy vs circular economy

In order to tackle our waste problem, restore natural resources and habitats, and cut production emissions, we need a massive rethink of our traditional consumption practices. At the moment, linear economies tend to be the norm across the globe, meaning that resources are extracted, used to produce goods, and thrown away in a linear fashion. This ‘take-make-waste’ model is proving detrimental to our planet.

Instead, a circular economy works to keep these resources in circulation for as long as possible, rather than being quickly discarded. Doing so can help to protect and restore biodiversity, limit emissions, and reduce waste and pollution.

What is a circular economy?

Promoting circularity and a circular economy can take various forms. For one, it is about making products last as long as possible, which includes manufacturers making design decisions that will enhance a product’s durability, as well as encouraging customers to make repairs and refurbishments instead of buying replacement items.

In the same vein, circularity also includes reuse – whether that’s promoting sharing schemes and second-hand clothes stores, or prioritising washable containers over single-use plastic alternatives. Another key circular economy principle is recycling or upcycling – for when products in their existing form can’t continue being used, but the raw materials can be transformed into new and even value-added products.

International Day of Zero Waste

Despite a growing awareness of the importance of switching to circular economy principles – for the sake of the climate, biodiversity, and our waste problem – the world has been slow to make the transition. According to the Circularity Gap Report, the global economy was only 7.2 per cent circular in 2023, down from 9.1 per cent five years prior.

At the same time, consumption has been skyrocketing, with the world consuming over 500 gigatonnes of materials during that same five years – equal to 28 per cent of all the materials the world has consumed since 1900.

It’s critical this trend does not continue, and that economies swiftly make the move to more circular models. Fittingly, this Sunday is the International Day of Zero Waste, an occasion established by the UN in 2022 to emphasise the need for collective action to combat waste and champion zero-waste solutions.

‘Circular Economy’ is also a key theme at this year’s ChangeNOW summit – the largest event of solutions for the planet – taking place in Paris next month. To celebrate the International Day of Zero Waste, we’ve taken a look at our Innovation Database for circular solutions that will be exhibiting at the event.