In this narrated slideshow, McKinsey alumnus Markus Zils explains how the circular economy encourages companies to seek ways of retaining more of the value of the material, energy, and labor inputs that go into their products.
The circular economy aims to eradicate waste—not just from manufacturing processes, as lean management aspires to do, but systematically, throughout the life cycles and uses of products and their components. Indeed, tight component and product cycles of use and reuse, aided by product design, help define the concept of a circular economy and distinguish it from the linear take–make–dispose economy, which wastes large amounts of embedded materials, energy, and labor.