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Embedding Sustainability through a Circular Economy

In Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, William McDonough and Michael Braungart lay out the pillars of sustainable design as material health, material reutilization, renewable energy, water stewardship, and social fairness.3 Core to sustainable design is that materials meet contemporary needs but can also be reused or repurposed to avoid waste. The authors write, “In a cradle-to-cradle conception, it may have many uses, and many users, over time and space.”4

The ability for materials to be reused and repurposed is a defining part of a circular economy, which uses resources for as long as possible (in contrast to a linear economy, which produces, uses, and disposes of resources more readily) and is embraced by sustainable cities. In a circular economy, a product has reached the end of its lifecycle only when it’s neither reusable on its own nor able to be incorporated into another product and repurposed. At this time, it is disassembled and breaks down through natural biodegradation or is returned to the Earth as a healthy supplement for nature. On a large scale, adopting a circular economy and a circular way of thinking can take a liability and turn it into a social good; for example, repurposing contaminated industrial land (like the brownfield site in Springfield), or reimagining abandoned manufacturing buildings and developing them so they benefit cities.