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  2. What we do
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  4. Circular Economy

A Circular Economy

A circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials at their highest possible value, and regenerating natural systems.

A circular economy, and the practices it incentivises, has the potential to deliver profound benefits for businesses, organisations, projects, value chains, society and the wider environment in which we operate. 

Benefits are particularly relevant for driving clean growth, preserving natural capital and reducing waste, achieving net zero goals, reducing cost and improving industrial resilience in the UK.

The goal of a circular economy is to eliminate value leakage (across materials, waste, energy and water) across a resource lifecycle, whilst creating industrial symbioses and regenerating natural capital.

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The challenges

WSP understands the challenges that organisations and development projects face when starting their journey towards circularity:

  • what does best practice look like?
  • how do we secure senior management advocacy? 
  • is it possible to set a clear boundary for stewardship? 
  • how do we collect and interpret data (and which metrics do we use)? 
  • how should we tackle data / commercial confidentiality issues?
  • how do we keep momentum and evolve responsibility and skills?
  • how do we engage and bring forth innovation from our value chain?

Where to start your circular economy journey?

To help organisations and/or projects start their journey to circularity, WSP has developed a Circular Economy Matrix and Toolkit.  

The Matrix has been designed as a quick and effective way to kickstart informed conversations on collaborative sustainable resource management. It is based on a combination of information from British Standard 8001 (BS8001) and industry best practice.

We can help organisations work through the Matrix and Toolkit, applying the following process:

  1. Agree which circular economy topics should be the focus of the assessment – whether materials, waste, water or energy (or a combination of these).
  2. Understand the core principles of BS8001, and how these manifest themselves across different maturity levels.
  3. Complete a simple self-assessment, to baseline an organisation or project’s position against BS8001 and best practice circular economy principles. 
  4. Review a series of automatically populated charts (across the key topic areas, scoped in), to help identify where further action should be targeted (mindful of ability to influence).

The user outcomes from using the maturity matrix and toolkit are:

  • An understanding of BS8001 and its key principles.
  • A clear picture of what is relevant (material) to an organisation’s activities, its value chain and stakeholders.
  • The organisational or project boundaries for circular economy action.
  • A set of graphics that articulate where current (and future) actions should be focussed.
  • A platform from which advocacy and action can be spearheaded.
  • The ability to map, visually, an organisation’s journey to circularity.

Find out more about what the tool can offer from the graphic below.

CE2

What we do

WSP is an industry leader in designing and delivering sustainable outcomes. We work across the built and corporate environments, helping organisations and projects transition to a low carbon, low impact future.  

Our goal is to understand, articulate and capture the benefits of sustainable interventions that must be made to achieve client and other goals, across a development lifecycle.

This includes approaches to delivering a circular economy, in accordance with BS8001 and other best practice measures, as part of our commitment to help our clients and the wider industry to achieve net zero.

Our team offers services across a range of technical disciplines. Our sustainable resource management knowledge and experience covers circularity assessment, client training and strategy / metrics development, materials and waste data auditing and validation, low impact design, industrial engineering and economic modelling.

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