Expert view: Design for many lives with Rebecca Earley
Rebecca Earley is professor of sustainable textile and fashion design at Chelsea College of Arts and director of the Textile Futures Research Centre at University of the Arts London.
People understand recycling. It’s easy to respond to. The barrier used to be technology and material flow — literally nothing changed in recycling for about 100 years. There were no new developments, no new service methods, simply shoddy down-cycling or incineration. Now there’s a flood of entrepreneurialism around it, driven by the rise in cotton and oil prices.

The next big opportunity is bringing the consumer in. Without consumers, the circular economy can’t work: we need people not only to buy, but to bring back. They have to understand that circular works for them. What we need to start doing with communications in brands, and more broadly in media, is designing and visualising a different cycle. People can still have products, but we need more services to achieve a coherent, circular flow.
The biggest opportunity is to enable people to be part of building or rebuilding their own economy locally. The growth in the maker economy, and more localised, democratic processes, means we can have local regeneration and manufacturing hubs that will bring local benefits: not shipping stuff to China to be reprocessed, and then buying it back.
It could be part of our weekly routine to send our stuff somewhere that benefits us locally, whether that’s through remanufacturing, repurposing or recycling. I believe the future lies in helping develop products, mindsets and services that will make us more self-sufficient. Behaviours, mindsets and habits will be the most radical part of the circular economy: people will become both happier and richer when they are involved in recycling.
We’ll see the Airbnb equivalent for wardrobes, repair cafés will grow, as will fashion libraries, mending services, making services. These circular behaviours will save money, we’ll have original products, and it will make us feel good. Some of the most exciting research is on our brains: recycling and reclaiming are correlated with a sense of wellbeing.
“Behaviours, mindsets and habits will be the most radical part of the circular economy: people will become both happier and richer when they are involved in recycling”
For high-volume high-street stores, as well as recycled fibres, bring-back centres would be one way to go. You go out with a bag as well as coming back with one! And perhaps come back with fewer but more considered items, and keep stuff moving instead of hoarding.
I can see us living differently in 10 years’ time, but at the moment, the intention-behaviour gap is huge. Until we see some well-priced alternatives, economic and time pressures mean people won’t change their buying habits. Incentives and legality are the biggest behaviour changers: you either encourage something or you ban it.
IMAGINE: Exploring the brave new world of design and manufacturing,
is a SPACE10 publication investigating manufacturing in the digital age, materials of tomorrow and circular economies.
Read the next part:
Chapter 6. Closing the Loop: Welcome to the Circular Economy
IMAGINE is also available as a free download. Grab your own copy here.




