Circular Future Fund Combats Throwaway Culture with Winning Concepts

The recently concluded competition to curb throwaway culture has produced smart ideas from the winners of the Circular Future Fund

In November 2021, UK department store chain John Lewis pledged $1.2 million to fund innovative projects that promote a circular economy and combat the throwaway culture. The department store chain has teamed up with environmental organization Hubbub to launch the Circular Future Fund: The Million Pound Challenge.

The partners gave businesses, charities, social enterprises, and academic institutions two months to submit their concepts, which will then be judged by a panel of experts.

In April 2022, four winners were selected from the 245 applicants. The winners will receive financial support for one year to develop and implement their ideas.

The partners are optimistic that this will have a significant impact on reducing the amount of waste generated by the current throwaway culture.

The four winners are Dame, Pip & Henry, the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC), and the College of Leeds.

Dame

First on the list is a menstrual products company. Their goal is to bring menstrual cups more mainstream.

Dame explains that menstrual cups are a simple and effective solution to reduce plastic waste and improve menstruation overall.

The problem is that only 5% of the UK population uses menstrual cups. There are currently 4.5 million period products thrown away every day in the UK. Most disposable pads have an average content of 90% plastic.

Dame's proposal is a menstrual cup starter kit of different shapes and sizes. Their proposal also includes a simple take-back service that can encourage people to try the product.

Pip & Henry

Next on the list is a shoe company dedicated to addressing the problem of footwear waste. Pip & Henry designs and builds expandable and collapsible shoes for children.

The company states that children's shoes are replaced on average every four months. Their studies have shown that 85 of these outgrown shoes are thrown into landfills.

Their suggestion is a shoe design that grows with the child. This can be achieved through a modular sole that is expandable. The elastic and foldable parts allow the shoe to grow three half sizes.

In addition, the shoe can be disassembled into different components for more effective recycling.

Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC)

An innovative group from Scotland is proposing to apply the library concept to household goods and clothing.

They propose to retrofit existing libraries with 10 community spaces for the circular economy. This will encourage people to repair and borrow the things they need instead of throwing away their old items and buying new ones.

University of Leeds

The fourth winner has developed a prototype that manages to separate polyester from its dye using carbon dioxide.

The group from the University of Leeds explains that polyester is the most commonly used textile, but only 15% of it is made from recycled material.

The challenge in recycling polyester is the fact that already dyed polyester is difficult to recycle.

The group intends to scale their prototype so that the spent dye can be separated and reused, as can the polyester material.