The circular economy is wasting the potential of its innovations — And its costing us dearly

Companies and governments are pouring billions into research to advance a regenerative economy, but most of this innovation is wasted.

#1 Waste: Hiding circular innovation

Car manufacturers are reducing the amount of energy it takes to make their cars by 75%, and winemakers are moving to organic practices to restore the health of their soil.

But they are hiding this knowledge because they fear people will believe it’s more expensive, lower quality, or attract attention to less sustainable parts of their organizations.

Other companies need to patent their circular innovations to get investors. Ecovative has created an alternative to plastic packaging with mushrooms. Nebia has developed a shower technology that saves 50% of water.

Imagine if this technology could spread to other industries. We could save billions of liters of water and billions of tons of plastic waste from the oceans.

By open-sourcing these innovations, industries could start integrating them right now, instead of waiting for the patents to expire in 20 years.

#2 Waste: Keeping circular innovation in a silo

Levi Strauss developed a process that could save the jean industry 50 billion liters of water, and they made it open source. Still, they didn’t create a way for people to participate and collaborate to improve their designs or processes and share new use cases they can re-use.

So some companies and government programs are sharing their knowledge openly. But by failing to connect with communities of interested people, they are wasting the opportunity to improve and spread powerful innovations.

By opening innovation and inviting communities to improve them, experts can improve their practices, make them cheaper, and accelerate sustainable manufacturing everywhere.

This post was created with Typeshare