Circular Economy - Collective Action
Circular Economy
The East Lothian Climate Hub is a partnership between the East Lothian Climate Action Network and Lower Impact Living CIC (Lil). Lil’s core work includes circular economy consultancy and collective action. To get involved with Lil including volunteer activities, visit the Lil webpage.
If you are interested in being involved in a Circular Economy working group, please complete an expression of interest.
Vision
We own less and share more: this is the norm – we borrow what we need, through our informal networks. People are able to borrow more, consume less. Less needs to be manufactured. There are enough sustainable resources to meet the needs of the growing population
Read more about this thematic area below.
East Lothian Biodiversity Case Studies
Fixing for a Future
How a local repair cafe and tool library has been set up, how volunteers work together, and the campaign 'Against Fast Fashion'
Preston Lodge High School's Pre-loved initiative
Set up through a collaborative effort between teachers and students.
East Lothian Libraries
How East Lothian Libraries are making changes to reduce their use of plastic.
Your Circular Economy Visions (from the visioning exercise)
The following visions and ideas were received over a series of months between May to August 2024, at a number of events, galas and harbour festivals, gatherings, holiday clubs with children and at Fringe by the Sea. The visions were gathered against open ended questions, and have been collated into different sections to highlight people’s vision for a more sustainable, flourishing and resilient East Lothian: Under Circular Economy the county’s vision is:
Our consumption
- We’ve reduced our consumption to 1 earth (ie the resources one earth can regenerate each year). There is less consumption of materials and more sharing of everything and skills sharing for food growing / making
- There are less commodities
- We use more natural materials. People are wearing wool to keep warm, natural materials e.g linen – helping local farmers (e.g. wool which is now often discarded/not able to be sold) – look at history of East and West Linton for linen
Re-use
- Toys exchange
- Old clothes and things in general are donated
- Sharing hubs and community spaces and libraries all working together
- There is a wide range of co-operative working and sharing of resources
- There is a discount at all Fringe by the Sea stalls for bringing your own re-usable mugs
How we look after our things
- Patching clothes
- More repair cafes
Recycling
- More recycling, more recycling of clothes, recycling blister packs at doctors, better recycling bins and bags. Use of glass bottles
Waste
- There are bins around the town which are now no longer over flowing as wasteful packaging has become low / zero
- There are bigger bins on the beaches
- There is less use of plastic and no more plastic dropped
What do we mean by ‘Circular Economy’?
Unlike the traditional linear economy, which follows a ‘take, make, waste’ model, the circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use for as long as possible and regenerating natural systems.
- The linear economy takes raw materials from the Earth, we make things from them and then we throw them away (often little used!) to end up in landfills or be incinerated. There is no waste in nature, it’s a human invention created through the over-exploitation of those raw materials and working against, rather than with, natural systems and processes.
- In a circular economy, products and materials are kept in circulation through processes like maintenance & repair, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, recycling, and composting.
- The circular economy tackles climate change and other global challenges, like biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution, by decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources. By shifting our economy from linear to circular, we shift the focus from extraction to regeneration.
- Underpinned by a transition to renewable energy and materials, the circular economy is a resilient system that is good for business, people, and the environment. It is only part of the solution, as it takes considerable energy (and other materials!) to remanufacture, repurpose and recycle our ‘waste’. Many materials these days are alloys (mixtures of materials) and it’s very energy intensive to separate these. Better to create less in the first place. Even in a really circular system, there is always some waste.
- There are big wins in terms of both materials consumption and carbon footprint. For example if Scotland adopted a ‘material sufficiency lifestyle’ i.e. keeping goods like new for longer, lowering of consumption of key materials like textiles, scaling community services for repair, rental & reuse, we could reduce material consumption by 14.6% and our carbon footprint by 14%.
By implementing circular strategies, Scotland can increase its circularity by nine-fold, and nearly halve the resources needed to fulfil its residents’ needs and wants, while cutting emissions by 43%!
Circularity Gap Report Scotland
Circular Economy Strategies
Figure 1 describes the strategies or levels of circularity.
The strategies (or actions) are listed in order of preference in terms of resource & carbon savings i.e. R0 Refuse is the lowest impact action and R9 is the highest (before landfill or pollution of course). You might be surprised to see Recycle so far down this list. It has been sold to us as the silver bullet for decades but is in fact only a small contributor to the problem of waste.
Did you know that only 7.2% of materials are cycled back into the economy globally? To unlock the true potential of the circular economy we have to climb higher up the ‘R’ ladder. We cannot recycle our way out of this!
Watch the short video from the Ellen Macarthur Foundation which gives an illustrated explanation: Explaining the Circular Economy and How Society Can Re-think Progress | Animated Video Essay
Links & Resources
Food Waste & Composting
Zero waste Scotland Support to support reduction in Food Waste
Community Fridge Network
Food Bank – How Can I Start A Foodbank in the UK
Share, Repair, Reuse
iFixit Repair manual for just about everything!
Start Your Own Repair Café – Join the Movement
Libraries of Things – The Shareable LOT Toolkit
General
Zero Waste Scotland: Offers resources and support for transitioning to a circular economy, which includes promoting reuse, repair, and recycling to minimize waste and pollution.
Scottish Waste Environmental Footprint Tool (SWEFT): Provides a comprehensive view of the environmental impact of waste, helping communities understand and reduce their waste footprint
Circular Communities Scotland: Offers publications and toolkits, such as the ‘Bike Reuse Toolkit’, to guide local authorities and community groups in implementing circular economy practices
Making Things Last Strategy: The Scottish Government’s 2016 strategy outlines priorities and actions for building a circular economy, focusing on reuse and repair. Useful (if dated) info.
New Plastics Economy global commitment: Scotland is a signatory to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy global commitment to end plastic pollution, both as part of the wider UK and also in its own right as the Scottish Government.
Circular Economy Bill and Waste Route Map measures
Business Support
Zero waste Scotland Support for Businesses to develop Circular models – The circular economy offers a huge opportunity for businesses across all sectors to benefit from. This includes spending less on materials, fostering stronger customer relationships, reducing waste and developing new growth opportunities.
Link to Lil Policy Update: September 2024
Inspirational Projects
Borrow Cup – Hubbub A collaborative project between Hubbub and Reposit and several takeaway beverage partners including Costa Coffee, Cafe Nero and Burger King in Glasgow showing what can be done when a reuse project can be delivered at scale.
Pre-loved Shopping | Stirling Reuse Hub | Scotland A project of Transition Stirling, the Reuse Hub includes a Library of Things, pre-owned furniture & household goods sales, workshops and skills development.
Fixing for A Future (and see Case Study below) is Sustaining Dunbar project offering repair cafes & workshops and a tool library.
Empty Kitchens Full Hearts In 2024 this food share project turned 35,850kg of surplus food into healthy meals for people in need.
Lil Reuse Project & Revolving Wardrobe delivers local Reuse Festivals, swishes (clothes exchanges), share rails in libraries and schools as well as a Revolving Wardrobe based at The Mart, East Linton.
Scottish Coastal Cleanup A charitable project of Forth Resource Management (a local business that recycles farm plastics, sustainable biomass production and recycles garden waste to soil improvers and compost alternatives – reducing peat use too) which support coastal litter and fishing gear cleanups around the Scottish Coast.
Keeping in touch
Do you already work in a circular way? If you are interested in connecting around this area of work and/or would like your projector organisation added to the map please tell us a bit more about you and what you do in this short form by clicking here.
