A circular supply chain that sources finished products directly costs less and moves faster than the linear model. Instead of extracting raw materials through mines and factories, circular systems find existing products, do minimal processing, and sell them. A t-shirt requires five factories in the traditional way; a car needs twenty.
If we imagine a supply chain that sources a finished good instead of a raw material from the planet, we can actually go faster and be cheaper in theory than if we start from the planet every single time. So what I mean by that is in today's land, when we make a product, of course we start from a mine or an oil field, forest, and then that goes through many, many, many different factories, 5 or 6 if you're a t-shirt, 20 if you're a car. So many, many, many different areas, and then that becomes an item. A circular ecosystem says, look, source the item that you actually want to end up with, do as little to it as you can, get somebody else to pay you for it. And that's the economic part of circular economics. And supply chains need to be in charge of that.
