There’s a new kind of greenwashing taking hold, as insidious as Madeira vine. It’s the creeping misuse of the words ‘circular economy’.
The true circular economy is a rigorous model designed to keep materials and resources in use for as long as possible, through recovery, repair, remanufacture, and recycling, creating a closed-loop system that minimises the use of precious raw materials and reduces ecological impact.
It doesn’t matter how many hands a product passes through, or how ‘local’ it seems; if it ultimately ends up in a landfill, it’s not part of a circular economy by any stretch of the imagination.
When the term ‘circular economy’ is misused, it ceases to describe sustainability and becomes a tool of deception – a marketing con dressed in green.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
