<h2 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">➡️ What is a closed loop?</h2>Closed loops are one of the main concepts that are used in circular economy in order to decrease environmental impact. At its core, the concept describes avoiding waste by using circular economy principles and strategies.Let’s take a look at the production of an X product as a simple example. In order to create the X product, the process that starts with the supply of raw material continues with its entry into production, and its launch in the market for sale. Of course, logistics take part in this entire process, and the X product eventually reaches the consumer. Because the linear economy, the current system in which we exist, has an open loop, there’s no information available or deemed necessary on what happens to X product after it reaches the consumer.Closed loops, which are expected to exist in the systems of circular economy, are involved in the life of the X product after the consumer’s use of it is completed, and aim to put it back into the cycle. Either the various substances that make up the X product are included in the production of another product, or as a last result, they are entered into the recycling process to close the loop.🔎 Circular Economy 101’s take: Recycling is a process that shouldn’t exist in circular economy, it is only to be used as a last result if absolutely necessary. However, it looks necessary for the closed loop concept to be realized. Closed loops are included in a majority of the resources about circular economy. However, that doesn’t validate ignoring that this recycling process actually devalues resources and doesn’t completely prevent waste.<h2 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">➡️ The discussion of demand</h2>The ongoing discussion of closed loops within academic circles is the main subject of this article. While seeking an answer to “How beneficial are closed loops in the path to environmental sustainability?” we will draw from the discussions included in the article, “Closed-loop systems to the circular economy: A pathway to environmental sustainability?”Concerning the creation of making circular products, circular economy centralizes innovation. Because it aims to create a new system from scratch by creating new and innovative business models without covering up the problems of the current linear economy and producing technologies that would completely reverse the negative impacts. However, the first salient point here is that circular economy is not just a set of “engineering &amp; technology”-based strategies, on the contrary, it is a system that uses engineering and technology in an innovative way.The fact that circular economy is an economic system reveals that it will be shaped according to the demand in the market. This makes it unclear whether it is difficult to produce products that are the exact equivalents of existing products, or whether consumer demand will be in this direction or not even if extraordinarily innovative products are produced. The main reason for this is that circular economy wants to prevent the supply of unused raw materials by offering products that do not fit the consumption habits of the consumer yet, such as reuse and second-hand production. In other words, circular economy can reduce the use of resources, reuse materials to produce second-hand items, and preserve the value of resources. However, it can’t clearly answer whether there will be consumer demand for these products.&nbsp;This brings out the fact that it doesn't make much of a difference whether economic systems actually have open or closed loops. Market demand for recycled products and the price of these products are the two most important factors that will determine whether they can replace brand-new products.<h2 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">❌&nbsp;The negatives of the closed loop</h2>Closed loops come from recycled, reused products. At first, this may bring to mind a decrease of the environmental impact through little usage of resources. However, when this process is analyzed as a whole, things may not be so positive.The recycled and reproduced products may lead the consumers to think “I already use a much less detrimental product,” and feel good about consuming more. This can cause an extraordinary increase in consumption, and therefore in production. In an economy where there is more production and more consumption, it would be unfeasible to suggest that environmental impact would decrease.The reduction strategies of circular economy are generally based on consumers consuming less. At the same time, it is another prediction that circular products will directly replace existing products. However, as mentioned above, although it is theoretically possible to change consumers’ consumption habits, they are not easily controlled in real life.Let's consider products that are recycled through circular economy strategies. These strategies degrade materials because of the present technologies they use. This can result in consumers having to use straw paper instead of paper of higher quality because of this recycling system. Another example is construction materials. Recycling is a process that reduces the quality of materials. This will cause a decrease in the quality and durability of the metals used in construction, for example. This, of course, may prevent the security of quality standards.The last example, which is much easier to understand, is refurbished smartphones. Electronic waste is of critical importance due to the excess of valuable materials in it. Based on this, “refurbished phones” that would be obtained through renewing old smartphones would most likely be sold in countries that don’t have access to newly manufactured smartphones. While this offers economic growth for the second-hand phone market, it will not reduce the habit of buying new phones in countries that already have uninterrupted access to smartphones. This can lead to the production of new products and the increase of renewal and logistics processes of old products at the same time, thus increasing the environmental impact instead of decreasing it.<h3 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">➡️&nbsp;It can increase consumption indirectly</h3>As we can experience it today, closed loop recycled products have a relatively lower price than brand-new products that were produced for the first time. Of course, this is due to reasons such as decreasing quality of the products due to recycling and the fact that they have been used before. This change in prices may indirectly cause a change in consumption habits.Prices of brand-new products which will compete with affordable products may go down in price in the free market, causing consumers to buy more products at lower prices. This will lead to an increase in production and consumption again.Another indirect example would be people’s budgeting habits. Consumers who have the possibility to consume at lesser prices will spend the remainder on developing consumption habits that didn’t suit their budget beforehand. For example, consumers who shop for an affordable price can now direct the money toward purchasing travel services. This can cause a consumption frenzy on a great scale that is hard to calculate for the time being.<h3 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">🌱&nbsp;Let’s discuss: What is necessary for the solution?</h3>There is a boring yet crucial fact:&nbsp;Circular economy is way more than a few “extraordinary” waste management strategies. Reducing circular economy to processes such as engineering &amp; technology-oriented waste prevention and second-hand product production leads us to ignore the "economic" factors, which are the most basic components of the concept of the circular economy. These economic factors, of course, are of critical importance to trigger social transformation.For this reason, one of the most critical yet common mistakes is to blindly adhere to closed loops focused on recycling, to limit circular economy to "circular waste management processes," as the private sector does, and to not pay enough attention to raising awareness among consumers. It is useful to remind ourselves how critical it is to raise awareness among individuals, who are also the starting point of Circular Economy 101, economically and therefore socially.What do you think? What needs to be done to consider circular economy as a whole and to correctly calculate its impact?

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