Circular Principles:
What can we learn from thriving ecosystems?
The following principles are inspired by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s principles of a circular economy1, Cradle to Cradle’s beautiful cherry tree metaphor2 and essentialism3.
Letting go
Inspired by natural ecosystems, we realise the power of letting go.
The cherry tree sheds leaves every autumn. It doesn’t grow indefinitely. It doesn’t exist forever. And it doesn’t aspire to simultaneously be a cherry tree, an oak and a deer. It’s just a beautiful cherry tree with a certain life cycle before it lets go and gives back all nutrients to the ecosystem.
This focus on one’s essence, a healthy size, a certain lifecycle, and giving back can be a powerful inspiration for our strategies.
Rather than expanding into non-essential areas, growing for the sake of growing (and ‘more’), and aiming for the infinite, we thrive in our neighbourhood of the forest and are beautifully connected to others and all.
- Focusing on our essence and role in the ecosystem. => Essentialism
- Finding a healthy balance between receiving, using and giving resources across the lifecycle. => Generosity
- Understanding and appreciating the beauty of the transient and finite. => Natural cycles. Design endings4
Success in our new paradigm comes from being a well-connected node in the ecosystem that shares and circulates
information, nutrients and other forms of value (e.g. money) rather than extracting these resources.
In contrast to business strategies focusing on creating and capturing value in a competitive win-lose world5,
our strategies focus on creating and circulating value. In particular, we emphasise systems thinking and understand that all is interconnected.
The cherry tree is well connected to its ecosystem through mycorrhizal networks that share information and nutrients with other life forms. This contributes to the forest overall and ensures the thriving of the cherry tree within that system.
Similarly, in a circular economy and our interconnected reality, we can only thrive together.
Take a producing company, for example. It can’t just take-make-forget its products anymore. In the linear economy, the fog of the market gave us the illusion that we were isolated. We bought materials, produced, sold and forgot - not really knowing what happened to our creations. However, seeing the unintended consequences of products ending up as waste, companies increasingly realise that they need new business models, types of collaboration and partnerships to be successful in the long term.
By enabling material flows, we create value and ‘circular’ offerings decoupled from linear material flows. We circulate products, parts, and particles and allow them to flow from one form and product into another, cycle after cycle. Just like nutrients in natural ecosystems.
Similarly, enabling information flows helps us to be more adaptive, resilient and innovative as a network. In contrast to the isolated tree or business, well-connected nodes in the mycorrhizal network receive critical information quicker and can adapt their strategies6.
Plant and grow
The cherry tree is generous. It offers shelter to birds. It creates oxygen for humans and animals. It produces an abundance of cherries that are nutritious food for the ecosystem.
It meets its needs of thriving and re-production in synergistic ways with the environment.
Sources:
1 The three principles of a circular economy are
Ellen MacArthur Foundation: https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/topics/circular-economy-introduction/overview
accessed on 9 April 2023
2 Read more about abundance and effectiveness in systems in the beautiful book ‘Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the way we make things’ by William McDonough and Michael Braungart
3 ‘Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less’ by Greg McKeown
4 Joe Macleod on the need to design endings on https://www.andend.co/ accessed on 9 April 2023
5 Literature on competitive strategy, such as by Michael E. Porter
6 Smithsonian Magazine: Do Trees Talk to Each Other?
“Trees share water and nutrients through the networks, and also use them to communicate. They send distress signals about drought and disease, for example, or insect attacks, and other trees alter their behavior when they receive these messages.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084
3 ‘Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less’ by Greg McKeown
4 Joe Macleod on the need to design endings on https://www.andend.co/ accessed on 9 April 2023
5 Literature on competitive strategy, such as by Michael E. Porter
6 Smithsonian Magazine: Do Trees Talk to Each Other?
“Trees share water and nutrients through the networks, and also use them to communicate. They send distress signals about drought and disease, for example, or insect attacks, and other trees alter their behavior when they receive these messages.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084