History of Circular Economy: How far back does circular thinking go?

The answer: Really far back.

Blog History of Circular Economy

History of the Circular Economy

The history of the circular economy is far older than the term itself. Although 'Circular Economy' was only formally introduced in 1989 through D. W. Pearce’s work on environmental economics (Aggeri, 2021), the concept did not emerge in isolation. Since the early 2000s, organizations such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation have played a key role in popularizing the circular economy through accessible frameworks and visual tools, including the well-known Butterfly Diagram (see Figure 1 below).

Figure 1: “Butterfly Diagram” created by Ellen MacArthur Foundation characterizes the potential of a circular economy Source: Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2021b

Pre-Industrial Revolution Era

Despite its modern terminology, circular thinking has shaped human societies for centuries (Aggeri, 2021). Practices such as maximizing the use of available resources, repairing goods, and sharing materials (think of libraries or communal land ownership) were essential strategies long before industrialization. These longstanding behaviors form the foundation of the history of the circular economy, demonstrating that circular principles are deeply rooted in everyday life rather than being a purely modern innovation.

So, it is only natural that these types of ideas pop up and persist throughout time. For a lot of human history, you had to use, reuse and repair what you already had. What wasn’t reused could be left to decay naturally within a few years. It was only during the industrial revolution where these ideals were cast out in favor of the quick and simpler synthetic products. 

Today we see the outcome of this shift: the majority of our waste in almost every ecosystem around the world, taking decades to centuries to break down. The change to convenience we see is, among many other things, slowly breaking food webs with the integration of synthetic materials from forever chemicals (PFAS) to plastics into the environment (Carson, 1962; Myers & North, 2025). 

Post-Industrial Revolution Waste Reduction

People started to make a conscious effort to reduce waste once over-production became an issue after the industrial revolution. One of the early published articles with resource conservation is from 1937 explaining how industries can work together and use waste products and share resources. There were also efforts to reuse waste products of industries such as wood, steel, minerals, oil, sewage, and agriculture waste (Lezius, 1937).

At the time, these industries were doing what they could to both cut costs and to add revenue to their industry by utilizing even the waste products of their main product. While this isn’t always the way towards a circular economy, cutting down waste was an important first step toward a self-sufficient economy with less input from the environment.

The World Wars Efforts to Reduce Waste

Many ideas around waste reduction and reuse of materials came out of the war effort as there was an increased need to be mindful about how to utilize minimal goods and resources. Be it to re-sew an old shirt or to use all the food available, waste was rare within the household. With a severe lack of resources, it was highly fashionable and socially encouraged to reuse or repair what people already had (Middleton, 2023).

Figure 2: 1930s and 1940s advertisement directed towards women and housewives in the UK  to decrease household waste during the world wars. Source: Imperial War Museum, 1943

Additionally, with the increase of industrialized agriculture, there was a surge of waste products available. These were soon taken up and used as substitutes or additional materials for other manufacturing. The benefits of waste reduction were clear from early on as materials once seen as waste could be transformed into products with worth. We can see this effect today with some materials that started out as agricultural waste currently used in home buildings (Ganasen et al, 2023).

Early Beginning of Circular Thinking

In 1950 the ideas started to be refined and classified into sections outlined as the “General System Theory” - essentially the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This would be the foundation for systems thinking and looking at how to create stability within a system by having interactions between branches or components instead of the individual parts (Von Bertalanffy, 1950). 

Additionally, the first founder of the modern thinking around circular or closed-loop economy was written in a book by Kenneth Boulding in 1966 (Aggeri, 2021). Boulding’s book “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth”, started the path towards a circular economy. But these ideas were buried by social preference for single-use materials that were popularized in the 1950’s and 60’s.

Post-War Consumer Shift

Refurbishing and reusing products quickly grew out of fashion after the wars in the 50’s and 60’s (Monroe, 2019). With the acceleration of production funded by the economic boom after the world wars, manufacturing took off. With this era came the “Take-Make-Dispose” economy and the “Throwaway Life”, which emphasized the disposable lifestyle. These advertisement tactics were mainly focused on modern life in the post-war era. Many manufacturing companies would purposefully make the lifespan of materials shorter so consumers would have to buy their product repeatedly - sounds familiar to current manufacturing (O’Brien, 2013). 

Figure 3: Life Magazine article describing the benefits of disposable kitchen ware for “Throwaway Living”, popularized in the 1950s and 1960s. Source: Life Magazine, 1955, p. 43

These plastics were not only made en-masse in the 1950’s but the world wars had a big hand in advancing the technologies which advanced plastic production (Stanley et al, 2025). Since it was ideal to have lightweight and durable materials to deliver food, water, and other essentials to the fronts. This acceleration helped the rapid replacement of reusables in the household after the world wars. 

Figure 4: Displays the historical timeline of plastics from discovery to modern versions focused on sustainability. Source: Stanley et al, 2025, p.17

This also went hand in hand with the idea that getting new products was more “hygienic” and quickly discarding used products (Stanley et al, 2025). This was a powerful argument with housewives as life within the family got busier and there was less time for women to clean up. Having disposable plates, cooking prep (such as TV dinners), etc., was extremely attractive to women working in the home. 

Conversely, increased hygienic practices in the medical field led to a massive increase in single use plastic for doctors (Greene, 1986). Plastics were found to be a better way to store blood compared to glass, a fact that many plastic companies are going to prove the importance of plastics in healthcare (Loiselle & Hudson, 1960). Many argued that natural materials in hospitals lead to epidemics and stigmatized the reuse of materials in medical spaces (Aggeri, 2021). In many ways it did help decrease risks of infection at the time, however there are currently better ways to use our resources to limit single use plastics in the medical field (Jani & LeBeaud, 2022).

Figure 5: Landfil Source: Fisk, 2020

With the creation of landfills, infrastructure for recycling didn’t matter. Since landfills were cheaper than trying to recycle waste there was little incentive to change this mindset. There were efforts to increase public interest in recycling in areas like the UK; however, recycling had fallen out of the public eye and lack of resources, thus leading to increased use of landfills (O’Brien, 2013; Tarr, 1996).

Present and Future of Circular Economy

Now with climate change and the ever-present news about plastics or - more commonly - microplastics, many governments have redoubled their efforts to use circular thinking with production and use of products. With the rising awareness of landfills and how they impact our environment, people have started to take more initiative to recycle (Bergquist et al., 2023). 

While there has been more legislation to support recycling, it is still not as good of a system as refurbishment and reuse (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2021). Implementing circular thinking back into society will take time, but it is worth it for consumers and companies, both for the near and distant future.

Written by Sophie Gies

Bibliography

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