Cisco’s Sustainability 101: What Is the Circular Economy?

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / December 7, 2023 / Cisco Systems Inc.

Foto: Accesswire

By Kelsi Doran

Do you feel a bit lost when people refer to certain environmental sustainability topics and aren't sure where to start when it comes to learning more? Sustainability 101 is a blog series that you can turn to for information about different environmental terms that may come up at work, during discussions with friends, and even at your annual holiday gathering.

Products have a lifecycle that starts before they're made and goes beyond their use - including what they're made of and how they're manufactured, shipped and eventually disposed of. Many companies talk about how the "circular economy" can reduce environmental impact - but what does that mean, in general and in practice?

The circular economy: where design thinking saves both cost and the environment

The concept of a circular economy is not new. In the 1970s, architect and economist Walter Stahl shared a vision of an economy in loops (now known as the circular economy) in a research report to the European Commission. In a circular economy, companies tune their processes to enable the reuse and regeneration of materials or products, as a pathway to making products with the smallest environmental impact and resource use possible.

In practice, this involves applying circular design principles across a product's lifecycle. Take for example a wireless access point.

To engineer an access point for circularity, a company would start with two key areas:

• first, selecting what materials are used in making that new access point, such as incorporating recycled (versus virgin) content, reducing the use of nonrenewable materials, and considering resource scarcity risks as part of material selection;
• second, designing the access point for repurpose, remanufacture, or recycle at its end of life, for example not requiring shredding or radical disassembly for recycling, or enabling streamlined disassembly to support harvesting individual parts from the end-of-use product.

Companies should aim to design products for circularity and sustainability the same way they design products for user experience - by making it an inherent part of the process. This circular thinking extends to other areas of a product's life as well. This includes waste reduction and the environmental impact of packaging, such as using recycled paper and cardboard. Manufacturing processes should reclaim material left over from each access point (e.g., cut metal, etc.) and recycle that material for other products.