Transitioning operations.
From linear to circular.
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6 steps to operational circularity
The following six-step tool will help you and your coworking space transition to circular operations. It will help you and your team understand the materials you're using on a daily basis. After the application of the steps below, you will have identified around 3 circular opportunities that are not only realistic for your coworking space, but can be implemented quickly.
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The process will be most effective and fun if you get another colleague on board, or even start a collective email or shared folder. Depending on the availability of data, it should take you no longer than a month to start your operational transition.
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You don't need to be an expert on circularity, all you need for these six steps is creativity, dedication and a little bit of patience. But to get on the same page, here's a little crash course on what we're aiming for:
In a circular economy...
waste doesn't exist.
Operations are circular if...
inputs align with regeneration and outputs with absorption rates.
Worldwide only a handful of coworking spaces...
are circular.
Until now!
Now let's get started.​
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Pick a place to start
It’s impossible to change all your operations in a day. Before you start the process, decide where you want to start. That could be one of your facilities, an operational department, or an area like a meeting room or the coffee bar.
Ask yourself
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Which facility potentially has the worst enrivonmental impact?
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Which department do I know the most about?
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Which area requires the most products?
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You should also pick a time frame that you want to visualize - a month, a quarter, a year, a day. The choice is yours, but it’s easiest to start with the time frame your order list includes, so you don’t need to recalculate anything.
Gather as much data as you can
Circularity Expert Nadinè Galle said it wisely: “You can’t improve what you don’t measure!”
It’s about looking at what your products are, where they come from, and where they end up after you’ve used them. This is extremely important, because the sum of all materials that enter your coworking space greatly determine your own environmental footprint, not only the footprint of the suppliers or your members.
You’re the gate, the connecting piece between them, and with distributing products comes a certain responsibility to choose the right ones when we’re talking sustainability.
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So, here’s the plan: we separate your data into inputs, processes, and outputs. But no worries, we'll take it step-by-step.
TIP: Create a shared document and try to get a colleague on board!
Inputs
As the first step, try to gather comprehensive data about the products you feed into the ecosystem of your coworking space. Your order lists are a good place to start to find relevant information about inputs. Make sure to write down everything you find.
Found your list? Then take a closer look:
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What kind of products can you find?
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How many do you order?
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What categories do you find (food, printing, etc.)?
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Which bi-products come with the product? (e.g. packaging)
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Where or from whom do you order?
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How often do you order?
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How does your budget influence what you order?
Processes
Now take a look at what happens to your products after they arrive. Do you just unpack them and place them in the right spot?
In case you change anything about the product (like cooking food example), write notes about these transformations. You can come back to them later, and create a Service Blueprint to look for process failures to get deeper into how your processes affect your materials.
Ask yourself these questions:
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Do you repair something if it breaks?
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Are there any quality standards or KPIs that influence whether you offer a product to your members?
Most coworking spaces outsource these kinds of transformations though, so let’s move on to the next step.
Outputs
Think about what is left of your product after it has been used or consumed. Packaging? What kind? Paper? Plastic? Are there products that go into the laundry?
Try to write down answers to these questions:
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What kind of packaging remains?
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What other parts still exist?
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What products do you reuse? What do you have to do in order to use it again?
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Where does your waste go? What kind of waste do you separate?
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Which waste do you create the most of?
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For complex products with many parts, check out this worksheet.
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Great! Enough with the tracking. Let’s get to the fun part.
Material Flow Analysis
Materia... what?
Material Flow Analysis is a tool that will help you find out where to start, by visualizing your inputs and outputs.
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We will use the free online tool Sankeymatic for your Material Flow Analysis.
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To get things started, you need to convert the data you collected previously into this format:
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Your product input [Quantity of Product in Numbers] Facility/Department
Facility/Department [Quantity of Product Outputs Your product output
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You can decide to stick with this format or go more in detail and include the destination of your output. So the format changes to this:
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Your Product Input [Quantity of Product Inputs] Facility/Department
Facility/Department [Quantity of Product Outputs] Your Product Output
Your Product Output [Quantity of Product Outputs] Destination of Output
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Now let's see what version 1 and version 2 look like for some typical office amenities. Just click through the slideshow to see both versions in action.
TIP: Here are some templates to make this quick and easy for you.
They are pre-filled with the most popular products used in coworking spaces.
If your list is complete, copy and paste it into the window into the left window called "Inputs" in Sankeymatic . Click ‘Preview’ and tada! You made it!
Optional: You can adjust the design of your flow in terms of curviness, width, height - if only we could edit ourselves that easily. Should you get an error warning, untick the box ‘Flow-Cross-Check’ in the ‘Advanced’ tab.
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Eventually, you will end up with something like the example below. It shows the material flows of the housekeeping department within the coworking space.
Evaluate Impacts
Now it’s time to solve the riddle.
When you look at your material flows, which ones do you think have the most negative impact? There’s a couple of different ways to approach this:
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Tackle the flow with the largest quantity
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Tackle a specific material (e.g. toxic chemicals)
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Tackle a flow that has the largest environmental impact
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Tackle a flow which would have a much lower footprint if you would reduce/reuse/repurpose it
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Get rid of a flow that isn’t actually needed
When you evaluate the impacts of your products, try to focus on the input stage first. Only if you think that there is absolutely no way to exclude this product from your orders (e.g. through alternative, more sustainable products), see if there is something else you can do with its outputs other than simply disposing of it.
It’s important to keep in mind that quantity doesn’t necessarily equal high impact. Some ingredients or parts are more harmful to the environment even in small amount than others in larger amounts.
Take some time to get to know your products. Find out as much as you can about them.
Check the ingredients, check the packaging, check where they come from. These steps will also reveal information about the product’s supply chain, product compositions, packaging materials and end-of-life destination. In the case that you can’t find enough information online or in a store, try contacting your supplier. You might even create a ripple effect, awesome!
Now that you’ve done some product research and understood your leverage points, you’re ready to pick the material flows you want to fix first. Choose no more than 3 at a time. Write them down in your document. Note down the reason why you want to fix it. It could look something like this:
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I will fix product X because it creates X output
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I will fix output X because we can utilize it in another way
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I will make sure no more products include ingredient X
Is your colleague still on-board?
Yes? Great! No? Time to share your progress with them!
You’ve just laid the groundwork of the operational circular transition of your coworking space! You can mark your leverage point in your Material Flow Analysis.
Your Circular Opportunities
For the 3 critical areas you chose, start by brainstorming what you could do about it.
A couple of questions to get your juices going:
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Does the input really serve a purpose? Is it truly needed?
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Can you somehow extend the times a product is used before it is thrown away?
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Can you get a similar product from another supplier, that is more sustainable that your current supplier?
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Can you make the product yourself?
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Can you buy a more sustainable version of the product?
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Can your outputs be valuable for someone else?
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Can you reuse someone else’s output to replace a product you order?
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Can you offer repair options to keep a product in use for longer?
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Can you buy a product second-hand instead of new?
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Can you upcycle a product instead of buying it?
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For a product that is unavoidable and not exchangeable, can you create a better output destination?
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Can you replace a technical (man-made) product with a biological one?
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Can you lease or share the product?
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Can you find a replacement in product-as-service options?
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Is there something you can do in-house with unwanted by-products like packaging waste?
If possible, your opportunity should be as high on the 7R's latter of circular principles on the left!
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The higher your opportunity scores, the more priority it should get.
Pick the winners
Got your ideas ready? Let’s see which ones will win.
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Rank your ideas among the axes in the slideshow below. The ones you place in the upper left corner multiple times, are your winners.
