BILLY and the circular book club

 

Pre-owned is growing like nobody’s business. Second-hand clothing, for example, was worth $141 bn in 2021 and will likely reach $230 bn this year, with an estimate of hitting $350 bn by 2028. 

IKEA, whose 20th century war-cry in the UK was “Chuck out your Chintz” is now a paragon of sustainable thinking and doing - and strives to be a circular company by 2030. Joining the IKEA Buy-Back Service is a peer-to-peer marketplace, IKEA Preowned. It’s starting off in Madrid, but aims to roll out globally in the next few months. This is a good example of how AI is helping make good ideas a reality. 

And what better way to celebrate your new-old BILLY bookcase than to fill it with a few new-old books? But don’t sleepwalk your automatic pilot to Amazon. There’s a new way now which benefits both indie bookshops and authors. It’s called Bookloop and it has been set up by Bookshop.org partnering with the Society of Authors and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society. This means that a % of royalties will go to authors - something that Amazon wouldn’t dream of doing.

All aboard the literary carousel and off we go!

I wonder if you’ll find this one there?

A noble yet undervalued craft

 

I’m pinching someone else’s article this week, because it deserves something more than getting lost in my sprawling bookmark system. It’s by Alex Vuocolo: The Disappearing Art of Maintenance and was spotted by Good Business in their weekly newsletter.

Amongst other things, this article for me highlighted the disconnect between all those trend reports and innovation newsletters and sustainability innovation alerts, and the life that most people lead. My own life is one lived in constant dread of updates, especially as far as my MacBook goes. I’m tottering along with my 2015 model, but fear that the next OS upgrade could wreak even more damage than the last, which rendered two printers obsolete in one fell swoop.

Maintenance, as Alex Vuocolo points about, is about making things last, not repairing what’s broken. It’s conspicuously absent from the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra as it doesn’t really fit with the ideas of reduction or anything prefixed by “re-“ as it’s about steady state, not change. That alone doesn’t make the concept of maintenance sound progressive or innovative.

But why must the idea of “sustainability” inevitably be coupled to the idea of “change”?

I’ve mentioned eBikes before - and this article talks about how, for example, the electro vehicle boom, driven by the promise of cutting emissions has caused a surge in demand for metals such as nickel, cobalt and lithium. Using up a different set of the earth’s resources while attempting to conserve another. 

Also highlighted in the article is the abstract nature of the climate debate and emissions goals:

Emissions goals are not unlike GDP targets. Both are administered abstractions, somehow all-powerful and impotent at the same time. They reduce action to aggregates and strip human actors of agency.

Or:

The pragmatism of maintenance work is sorely needed in the climate debate, which is so often preoccupied with end-states that it has no earthly or humanly way of achieving.

Of course, in the real world that most of us live in there are people that service your car, your boiler, your bike - and keep the roads and the railways and the buses in good order. But perhaps it would help to bring this mindset into other areas of modern life, too.

In the end, this is one reason I cannot abide the term “the consumer” being applied to everything beyond that which is actually consumed - from smart phones to cars.

Now, pass me that spanner.

Loop-the-loop economy

Lufthansa have occasionally offered products that fall into the up-cycling and repurposing category in their World Shop, from messenger bags made from old life-vests through to on-board drinks trolleys to use in the comfort of your own home.

This year, there is a whole collection, made not just from the interior materials, but also from the aircraft itself, in this case an Airbus 340 that had been in service since 2001.

As well as the natty bags and wallets, there is now furniture. A coffee table made from the A340's aileron slats and a very stylish bar:

The beauty of these design items is, of course, not just the quirkiness of the item itself, but the story behind it. Who sat in the seat my sports bag is made of? Who has looked out of my "bar" window - and over which land or sea?

This may not offset flight-shame for the most hardy among us, but it does do something to forward Lufthansa's reputation in both design and responsibility.

A bit more down-to-earth is a new app brand that's hoping to aggregate all those return-your-clothes-for-money schemes: Stuffstr . Nice idea, and one that it would be good to see working.

But will you eventually be able to sell back your Stuffstr or even your World Shop up-cycled purchases there?

To all the clothes I've loved before

I've made a real effort this year to cut down on buying clothes. It hasn't been easy, and I have caved in on a couple of occasions (notably to replace shoes that have worn through - why don't shoes last these days?). And it seems I'm not the only one - the world is has been waking up to recommerce for some time - see my posts here, here, here and here - and even the everyday retailer Asda is having a go with its Re-Loved section in the Milton Keynes store, where donated clothes of all brands, not just Asda's own, will be sold.

Second-hand clothes have always been part of my wardrobe, from hand-me-downs as a child, and later jumble sales and the Army Surplus Store (still going as "H.M. Government Supplies) to Kensington Market. And what a joy to hear that Flip is still going, albeit up in Newcastle as the Covent Garden branch with its Hawaiian shirts and naval jackets - like a giant cast outfitter for South Pacific - has long gone the way of the rest of the 80s.

As well as the re-use/re-sale angle, there's the re-purpose thread of sustainable fashion, too. And maybe an even bigger opportunity is fashion rental. Changing the mindset away from weddings and ballgowns and fancy-dress costumes to the everyday. The clothes rental market is heading to become a multi-billion dollar business  and subscription models are springing up everywhere from children's shoes to plus-size clothes.

But whether the subscription models are really sustainable remains to be seen. The danger is that people will continue to hunger for the latest fashions, but once the responsibility for the cleaning, repair, passing on and responsible disposal is in someone else's hands, they'll turn a blind eye to the cost to the environment.

A beautifully bright idea

A couple of years ago, I was wowed by an idea from the fashion industry - Manufactum's sustainable fashion, which included the beautiful silks from Johanna Riplinger, dyed using flower petals from Indian temples.

I was reminded of that when I saw this stunning idea from JAT Holdings and Leo Burnett Sri Lanka. Petal Paint is made from the flowers left in buddhist shrines and temples, which would otherwise go to waste.

There are 5 shades to reflect the Buddha halo - Lotus Red, Pigeonwing Blue, Marigold Orange, Temple Flower White and my favourite, Trunpet Yellow.

The paint is sold through JAT's normal channels, and also donated to local artists to restore murals in temples.

If that's not circular economy at its best, what is?

Circle of Life

So many years have passed since the word 'sustainability' entered the language of business that I believe many people have forgotten the difficulties they may have had in understanding exactly what that word means. Although I use the word, it's one I've always had misgivings about. It's a heavily-laden word,  weighed down by its own worthiness, implying a lot of hard graft for not a lot of reward. It has associations with endurance, with injury and suffering, but none with anything positive, be it people, purpose, planet or profit. It's a must-do rather than a want-to do.

I'm pleased that businesses have started talking about the 'circular economy.' Like the idea of the 'sharing economy', it's an idea you can understand intuitively. I'm surprised the term has been around since 1989 (raised by British environmental economists) as I have only been aware of it in the last two or three years.

Rather than a linear economy, with its produce - consume - dispose beginning, middle and end, the circular economy, as you see above is all about keeping resources going and giving value for as long as possible, and then re-cycling.

Incidentally, this ties in well with my abhorrence of the word 'consumer' - in this model, people are active participants, creating, selling-on, adapting, repairing and recycling as well as using the goods.

It's only a pity that many of the major tech companies with their in-built obsolescence don't seem to have got the hang of this just yet.