What does circular economy look like in real life?

Imagine if your local recycling centre upcycled all your unwanted furniture, toys and clothes by redesigning them and giving them a second lease on life…

This is the reality of ReTuna, the world's first recycling mall, located near Stockholm, Sweden. ReTuna was ideated and is owned by Eskilstuna municipality. In its quest to become a model for sustainability and conduct competitive operations in the energy and environmental areas, the municipality had the idea of creating a shopping mall with stores that sold only used and upcycled items from their recycling centre. 

The idea became a reality in 2015 with the support of local politicians. Cleverly, the mall is placed at the exit of the municipality's recycling centre, attracting a receptive audience who is conscious of its environmental impact. It doesn't work as the UK's charity shops do since the goal for the shopkeepers is to make their units within ReTuna as enticing as regular, glitzy mall shops.

The idea has received worldwide attention and has been identified as an excellent model of circular economy, however, ReTuna has struggled with the complex logistics of collecting the right quantity of items, of good enough quality to be sold as they are or redesigned and upcycled into something else; the labour intensive process of sorting and upcycling each item; the resources needed to maintain and staff a 5000 sq m store; and the challenge of what to do with excess, unsold or unusable items.

While, like any other commercial activity, ReTuna goes through some challenges, over the last 10 years it has been providing a valid alternative at a local level to the linear make-use-discard model while creating jobs and providing many opportunities for local artists and artisans to promote traditional craftmanship and to engage the community meaningfully. It offers courses on circular economy and environmental awareness, and it strives to minimise waste and carbon. Additionally, there is evidence that its economic model is working - while finding recent economic and environmental data has proven difficult, in the first four years of operation, ReTuna sold £2.8m worth of products and in 2018 it attracted 700 visitors per day.

This model has the potential to be replicated elsewhere (and it has already been: from local repair cafes popping up worldwide to more similar ventures, like La Recyclerie in Paris), provided that some key factors are in place: strong local support from the community - as it relies on donations - and local political powers; the long-term logistics are worked out in advance; wider, public acceptance of buying second-hand; and general environmental and waste awareness in the local community.

What local reality have you experienced that has broken previous stereotypes around sustainability and made it into a successful business model?

Resources:

• retuna.se
• Hedegård, L., Gustafsson, E., & Paras, M. K. (2019). Management of sustainable fashion retail based on reuse– A struggle with multiple logics. The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 30(3), 311–330. 
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-47001188
• https://www.circularcityfundingguide.eu/case-studies/retuna-...

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