Part 6: Duties to the Environment

88 How do companies create circular economies?

Companies create circular economies through a variety of practices, including encouraging product re-use, using recycled materials, and making products that last.

Companies create circular economies in many ways. Read about Patagonia’s efforts here: https://www.patagonia.com/stories/our-quest-for-circularity/story-96496.html. Then, compare these with Nike’s efforts, here: https://www.nikecirculardesign.com/.

For a humorous example, compare the two IKEA ads below.

This ad does a wonderful job of selling IKEA products. It also appears to show highly linear economic principles. Perhaps in response, IKEA later released the following ad:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=qZJ38gSCW9Q

Exercises

  1. How may using circular economy principles help a company’s economic bottom line? How may it negatively affect the economic bottom line?

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Business Ethics: 100 Questions Copyright © by Jeff Lingwall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.