Hello and welcome to this insight into the rapidly emerging sustainable world. For the next few minutes, we will take you on a short journey into a world even more exciting than your simply incredible smart phone, can that be possible, absolutely.

Many of us remember the day Steve Jobs walked out onto the stage at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco California, iPhone in hand to say, "Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone."

I can see it now; and he was so very right, what happened next! We loved it, we flocked to stores to buy our very own slice of magic. You might wonder what on earth that has to do with sustainability.

Well, that's easy. Women are safer, we can call for help from where we are, work from home, shop on the internet, check our bank account, the sheer convenience of all that has removed the daily commute, the supermarket trip, parking on busy streets to pay a cheque into the bank. It has saved us valuable time, money, frustration, inconvenience, it is a lifestyle asset we simply cannot do without.

A smart phone represents the sustainable world at its very best and that is what we mean when we talk of truly astounding changes, happening right now, at the same speed as your little slice of magic sitting next to you, in your back pocket or propped up on its stand in your car.

In the sustainable world we call this spectacular leap the Circular Economy, or just CE for short. CE is about convenience. A fair few business people will be reading this, people who probably already know the four buzz words of CE: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Renew. They certainly do not find them heavy going; each of the four words creates new dimensions for their businesses to operate in, new markets, new products, better ways of doing things, and yes altogether a lot more convenient than the way we do things now. 

Let’s take a look at some of the things coming our way as CE drives design.

There are three corner stones to the Circular Economy, they are:

•      Eliminate waste and pollution
•      Circulate products and materials (at their highest value)
• ·     Regenerate nature

Most of us think about waste as stuff we put in the bin. Experts see waste for example, as time to be programmed out of a process, or as a raw material for a new life cycle.

In that context wasted time burns unnecessary energy, polluting our atmosphere, and, if we design our products and services so that they can be split into reusable components then landfill operations, plastic pollution and so much more will just – disappear.

Many of us drive a car that we do not actually own, we don’t need to. Manufacturers, their retailers, and financiers have worked out a system that ensures your four wheeled pride and joy, when you don’t want it anymore, is actually part of an advanced network that circulates products and materials at their highest values. 

The next few years will see yet more exponential advances across hundreds of household items, that’s CE working behind the scenes, but what we see is convenience, our lives made easier.

Ordnance Survey will tell you that there will be something like 20,000 changes every day in the built and natural environment across the British Isles. Flying from the Scilly Isles to the Shetland Isles for 9 months in every year the OS Flying Team record around 2 gigabytes per second over a normal six-hour day. Within 3 years all of Great Britain's natural and built environment is completely refreshed.

The detail finds its way into every OS map. Their work, highly advanced, so in depth, its accuracy is measured in millimetres is saving agriculture, farmers, landowners, industry, and local authorities millions often billions, regenerating nature as they go!

Yes, OS really are our eyes in the sky.

Naturally Sustainable will continue to highlight how CE is making real differences in our lives. But we can all help save our planet. Put quite simply, let the designers create the convenience, but it is we consumers who, if we understand what is happening around us, will accelerate NET ZERO into a reality. 

Naturally Sustainable are indebted to BDO for their concise reporting of investments in the UK circular economy in 2023. 

BDO report total disclosed investment of £1.3bn represented 50% annual growth year on year with average disclosed deal size increasing from £9m to £11m. As investment specialists they see the growth in the CE market as  considerable achievement given the decrease in Merger and Acquisitions private investment over the same period.

Our business is that of research in an area we have known at strategic level since the late nineties. Yes CE has been around that long!

There is precious little data available in a readable format coming out of 2023. Globally many observers report a lot of positive interest but not enough real investment activity.

We can strongly recommend BDO to anyone interested in data, quality information and trends in the Circular Economy.