Embracing circularity – Through the lens of people's everyday lives
Circularity is an economic and design framework that eliminates waste and pollution by keeping materials, products and energy in continuous loops of use. People consume resources daily, often unaware that circularity surrounds them everywhere, especially in buildings. Let's explore circularity from different perspectives, through the lens of people's everyday lives.
Keeping resources flowing in everyday routines in people's lives
In daily life, people are surrounded by circularity, an abstract word, yet it shows in everyday choices and habits, keeping resources flowing rather than ending up in landfills. Circularity relates very closely to things, moving away from disposable convenience and back toward care, connection and craft.
From the kitchen and food lifecycle, to the wardrobe and secondhand, and home and refurbished goods, and more. This is what circularity looks like in people's everyday routine. People move from disposable convenience to care, connection and craft in how they share, produce and live.
Circularity in every building
A building can also stop being a static consumer of resources and become an active participant in keeping water, energy and materials continuously flowing.
A few principles include water management through greywater harvesting and rainwater collection, passive regeneration through thermal mass insulation and solar shading, active recovery through ventilation systems, upcycled architecture using bio-based materials and living building envelopes that apply native greenery.
Fundamental shift to circularity in industry view
The world is now shifting from "take-make-waste" to "re", to a genuine circularity in design, production and living.
- Design for permanence and modularity is built on the fact that products can be easily repaired, upgraded or disassembled.
- Closed-loop manufacturing means industrial processes look at how waste from one process becomes the raw material for another industrial use.
- Bio- and regenerative cycles, where organic waste returns to the soil as nutrients through composting and other processes.
- Products as a service, with manufacturers retaining responsibility for equipment that lasts long and is easy to recover.
Circularity in the HVAC systems
When circularity is applied to technical systems in buildings, especially HVAC, it addresses one of the most energy-intensive, material-heavy and equipment-dense systems of a building. Circular HVAC treats heating, cooling and airflow as closed loops of thermal and energy reuse, including components and chemical refrigerants.
Circularity isn't just about physical metal; it applies to energy flows such as drain water heat recovery, exhaust air energy recovery and waste heat reuse. Circular HVAC in materials relies on design for disassembly rather than completely replacing building technical systems.
Nowadays, HVAC equipment upgrades are shifting from the building owner back to the HVAC manufacturer, moving toward products-as-a-service through reuse, upgrading, revitalising, reclaiming, recycling and reusing old equipment, and more.
Finally, mechanical systems need to be re-evaluated across a 4th design dimension: material-related environmental impact (embodied carbon). This alongside investment costs, operational energy/maintenance costs and occupant comfort.
Perspectives on circularity in research
Circularity is an economic and design framework that eliminates waste and pollution by keeping materials, products and energy in continuous loops of use. At its highest level, circularity decouples economic growth and human well-being from consuming finite planetary resources.
In our current economy, we take materials from the Earth, make products from them, and eventually throw them away as waste – the process is linear. In a circular economy, by contrast, we stop producing waste in the first place.
— Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Academic and interdisciplinary research views circularity as more than recycling or industrial design; it studies circularity as a social, psychological and systemic shift in how people interact with the world.
Current research highlights several core dimensions of "everyday circularity". Behavioural economics research shows that most people want to live circularly. In industrial ecology and systems design, researchers emphasise that nature is the original circular system. Sociological studies around the "everyday built environment" explore how circularity changes social dynamics. Environmental and legal research focuses heavily on the policy interventions needed to enable individual and systemic circularity through, for example, energy performance directives, ecodesign standards, life cycle analysis with embodied carbon, right-to-repair laws, and more.
Embracing circularity for the future – From concept to shared responsibility
Finally, we need to move the conversation beyond recycling and toward keeping materials, energy and value in continuous use. Treat HVAC and building services as part of the circular economy, not only as energy consumers, but as resource loops. Let circularity become more than a concept: make it a design principle, a business model and a shared responsibility.
