Articles
Opening the Aperture (2025)
How Widening the Lens Can Fast Track the Circular Economy
The circular economy mission will fall short if it attempts to build a circular materials economy that is sitting on top of — and disembodied from — a linear extractive economy, where people and nature are exploited.
Slaying the Rent Dragon (2020)
Value Capture for the Common Good
Slaying the ‘rent dragon’ — by capturing more of the ‘rents’ extracted from communities and using them to eliminate the rents charged to communities — would enable a latent pile of ‘gold’, in the form of money and human energy, to go to productive activities that deliver community and social benefit.
Massive Small Manufacturing + Humanitarian Making in the Field (2019)
All We Are Shipping Is Information
Field Ready’s pursuit of ‘circular economy’ approaches like local production and repair, driven by necessity and cost in the humanitarian aid sector rather than policy, shows how revolutionising approaches to disaster response and resilience is at the vanguard of a broader application and learnings around how we make and move things in industrial economies.
Making Room for the Community Based Circular Economy (2018)
If You Aren't Making Locally, You Don't Have A Circular Economy
Creating a circular economy requires an industrial-scale response, but this can be complemented by a community-based response. Community-based shared fabrication spaces offer ways to help people develop materials literacy, reconnecting people to the origin of their material lives, and can serve as sites of cultural transformation, enabling and demonstrating changes to the way we design, make, use and dispose of materials.
The Real Circular Economy (2016)
How Relocalising Production With Not-For-Profit Business Models Helps Build Resilient and Prosperous Societies
A real circular economy would expand the definition of the circular economy to one where its operating system is regenerative not extractive not only towards nature, but people; one where wealth is equitably circulated and shared. A truly circular economy would mean that the circular ethos is also reflected in our social systems, including our financial services, our business structures, and the political frameworks and cultural norms that influence human behaviour.
The Flying Taboo & Carbon Reductionism (2012)
In Defence of Flying
Eschew carbon reductionism and guilt, because unless we cut the abhorrent waste our society produces (everything from food to boomerang trade) which has a far greater carbon impact, we’ll be prioritising waste over enjoyment.
Limits Literacy (2010)
Local Metaphors for Global Challenges
Goyder’s Line is part of the South Australian psyche, and is cultural shorthand for nature’s limits and what happens if they are breached.
Do We Fit On the Planet? (2001)
Sustainability, Overshoot & the Ecological Footprint
A report on the work of the Sustainability Program at Redefining Progress, Oakland, California and its applicability to South Australia.
