Circular Economy and Sustainability

Author: Snehal Chaitanya, CEO – GoWheedle.com

What is Linear Economy Vs Circular Economy?

In a linear economy, products are designed, produced, used, and then thrown away as waste.  The term “linear” refers to the straight progression that a product can follow, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

In a circular economy, products and materials are kept in circulation through processes like maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, recycling, and composting.

The circular economy must follow these three principles to be sustainable:  Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

Cradle to Cradle, Not Cradle to Grave

In our current economy, we are using too many resources, too fast, and we are not  reusing them all.

There are three main resource strategies in the business context of Circular Economy

1. Narrowing Resource loops: This is about reducing the number of materials needed per product or service.  The narrowing principle is about ‘resource efficiency’, or ‘doing more with less’, which is also  an opportunity to save costs.  Linear economies have already mastered this strategy, but with no planning on what happens to the product after its use cycle. Thus, many efficiently manufactured products are thrown away after  only being used once – in the circular economy we try to retain the value of products  and materials for as long as possible.
2. Slowing Resource loops: First and foremost, we need to create products that have a long lifespan.  Building more durable products can actually increase the number of resources needed for  production.  But, if we design products that are easy to repair, maintain, upgrade, refurbish and remanufacture,  the extra resource used in production can be offset by the longer use-cycle of the product
3. Closing Resource loops: After many cycles of reuse, we need to close the loop and recycle. Separating materials means that flows are not contaminated and products can easily be  dismantled and remanufactured or recycled.  Moving to a Cradle to Cradle concept, rather than Cradle to Grave.

‘Re-Commerce, ‘sharing economy’, ‘peer to peer economy’ and ‘collaborative consumption’ are just some terms used to describe a variety of bottom-up initiatives, public-private-people partnerships, business start-ups and local government schemes, all of which utilise the idling capacity of our material world. Sharing is seen as one potential answer to the unsustainable patterns and levels of production and consumption. It can also be attractive for individual consumers as they can get easier access to products that are normally difficult to find or very expensive to buy. Higher quality second hand products, luxury goods and rarely used products are some examples of these.

Wheedle is an online shopping platform with curated selection of pre-loved (second hand and/or unboxed) baby & kids’ products. Parents can purchase products securely with the Wheedle quality & trust promise, or can Sell/Give pre-loved baby & kids’ products conveniently through the app. Wheedle is a sustainable solution to stop filling landfills, one pre-loved item at a time. Founded by Bangalore based mom of two, Snehal Chaitanya, along with a fellow entrepreneur mum, the start-up aims to normalise preloved.

Wheedle is a proud member of the Ellen MacArthur Circular Economy Community, promoting second-hand as the first choice for young Indian parents.

Incubated at the Entrepreneurship wing NSRCEL of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Wheedle (Reearth Tech Pvt Ltd) is one of the winners of Elevate 2023 as a start-up leveraging technology to promote sustainable lifestyle choices.

Blue Planet Boosts Circular Economy with a majority stake in Mahindra Waste to Energy