Circularity: The Ultimate Sustainable Design Solution

Written By Cecilia Zeichner

If you are alive and shopping for anything in the year 2025–be it for fashion, cars, heck, even laundry detergent–you’re getting bombarded with sustainable marketing. It can be hard to cut through the noise: are shoes made out of recycled water bottles really eco friendly? (Answer: sort of. Link opens in new window.) Are organic cotton sheets better for the planet? (Answer: Slightly better for the environment but still sort of a problem! Link opens in new window.) What if I only shop second hand as much as possible? Now we’re getting somewhere. The best solution to the climate crisis is a principle known as circularity: the idea that all materials and products must be designed to be reusable.


In many ways, sustainability is a design problem and circularity is one of the best solutions: how can designers create a product that makes up for the impact of its creation? Architects Michael Braungart and William McDonough have probably written the most succinct treatise on this topic in their book Cradle To Cradle (link opens in new window.) They advocate creating a built environment where instead of physical objects going from cradle to grave, we can upcycle or repurpose every component of an object to create something else. McDonough proposed a model city in China that reflected this ethos: trash and sewage would get turned into the methane that powered stoves and heaters; rooftop farms would have made the city self-sufficient; water trapping systems would have recycled rainwater into tap water. As you can imagine, the project went to the grave before it even got to the cradle. The scale required to build so much infrastructure was prohibitive. Perhaps circularity could work on a smaller, more humane scale, fueling an industry that constantly pushes newness–perhaps the fashion industry.


Right now, the industry has other plans. A lot of companies are far more interested in couching their sustainability efforts in the tried and true consumption model: buy this new top made out of recycled fabric! Check out this handbag made from mushrooms. See? You can still shop but now it’s guilt free. The problem here is that a lot of these new products forget to take one thing into account: the very end of the product life cycle. What happens when products made from these gee-whiz technologies go to landfill? Will they disintegrate gracefully, nurturing the land from which they came? Could parts of the product be used again? Or will it just turn into unusable garbage, part of an ever-growing mountain of waste consuming our planet?


Imagine a future where all leather handbags had a detachable lining, a compostable zipper closure, and buttons to close the pockets instead of snaps or more zippers. The bag can easily be repaired and, when it can no longer be used as intended, it can be broken apart. The handbag designer could work with a facility, either their own or a third party, that can handle the hard work of repairing the bag or breaking it down for parts.The leather could decompose safely, provided it was dyed and treated with natural products, or it could be recycled into some sort of leather compound fabric. The lining could be taken apart and shredded, or recycled into a new textile. Or maybe the lining fabric has seeds embedded in it and the company can use the lining to create a garden outside of the facility to attract pollinators. Someone could cut out the buttons and toss them in a bin, ready for reuse in another bag. Or, or, or…


This handbag example unfortunately highlights the major problem with circular design. Much like McDonough’s model city, we need infrastructure for this concept to work. Fortunately it’s much easier to build repair shops and recycling centers than it is to build skyscrapers. We also need social buy-in from customers to even agree to repairing their items in the first place. Some of the biggest barriers to profitability for the nascent repair and resell industry include the high cost of labor to sort and mend products, accessibility to repair centers, and, of course the siren call of fast fashion. (Link opens in new window.) It would be cheaper to just buy a new sweater than to get one covered in holes repaired. In the article, Liz Ricketts of The Or Foundation says, “We treat waste as if it is a free resource. Sure, you might give it away for free, but it takes a tremendous amount of effort and labour and skill to try to re-commodify that thing that you gave away.” This exact problem is what happens when we value newness over durability, when we value convenience over craftsmanship. 


I also would not want to advocate for a fashion industry where everything was always the same. There will always be trends and there will always be people chasing them—creativity and novelty are what make us human—but we would need a general consensus that not everyone needs newness all the time.


National and local governments are beginning to understand that, in order to incentivize a textile recycling industry, they must pass regulations to cut down on cheap fashion. In the EU, there are now Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws that require companies to pay for the disposal of unsold goods and fines companies for overproducing. New York State has already established dozens of EPR laws and is working to pass one for the fashion industry. Here in the US, a bipartisan bill called The Americas Act (link opens in new window) would subsidize the creation of a textile recycling industry in the United States and with partner nations in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. The act would also promote “nearshoring,” where manufacturers would move production closer to stores to save on transportation costs and carbon emissions. It’s a shame the Republicans who supported this act also support our Dear Leader Donnie whose tariff plans, assuming if any of them succeed, would torpedo any chance of creating a waste economy that spans the Western hemisphere. The future of a nationwide textile recycling infrastructure remains uncertain.


You don’t have to wait for the fall of our newly authoritarian federal government to create a circular system, you can do it on your own. Here are some ideas:



Notice how all of these activities are most effective when done in community with one another. That’s because implementing circular design is too massive a project for anyone to do alone. It’s time to find or form your circle, roll up your sleeves, and have fun breaking the climate catastrophe cycle.

Cecilia Zeichner
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