Before the mass adoption of industrialization, a circular mindset was the norm.

Very little was wasted in a system as there was so little to start with, which was so hard to acquire. Everything had value and that shaped our ancestor's behaviour to be conscious of what they had, and what they threw away.

Today, the circular economy is a ‘new’ movement being championed by industry leaders, used as unique selling points by businesses, new initiatives by governments, and yet, the everyday consumer would be hard-pressed to define the term if you stopped them in the street to ask.

Australia has a proud history of circular innovation through the creation of the Permaculture “permanent-culture” movement in the ’70s which is now a global community, started by David Holmgren and Bill Mollison, who should be remembered as a national treasure.

The permaculture movement started as a land management system that has now grown into a philosophy that focuses on the observation of the natural environment first, then adapting agriculture and built environment to it and use the natural energy systems to eliminate work and waste.

Though the Circular Economy movement will reach farther and wider and engrain itself deeper into our daily lives as it will reshape our consumptive behaviour, and both the processes and economies of industrialization while producing further profits and innovation to the market.

It also has the ability above all other systems to decouple our national GDP from their current liner make-ship-use-waste paradigm to an exponentially deepening model that not only maximises the value of a lifecycle, extends the lifecycle, and then has the ability to wrap it all up in a long term service model, while creating whole new industries.

I haven’t included a definition of Circularity or Circular Economy here for a very good reason and here’s the part I love the most… We get to define it ourselves.

We get to create our own sustainable future, deepen our economies, create jobs in the face of global automation, re-wild our cities, regenerate our agricultural wastelands, mine plastics from our oceans, recycle our old ideas and create a world that we can breathe in.

Unless you have a better idea?