Circular Cities and Beyond

A forward-thinking company to follow: Metabolic

Today’s Resource Friday post features the Netherlands company: Metabolic. In short, they use systems thinking to work towards a circular economy for the cities, regions, and companies they work with.

Since our founding in 2012, Metabolic has helped over 400 forward-thinking cities and regions and companies put circular economy strategies into action, in sectors ranging from food and finance, to industries.

Projects include clean industry in Portland, timber construction in Europe, sustainable packaging in the Asia Pacific, managing food waste in Canada, leveraging digital technology and tools, and many more.

Metabolic sees its work as reinventing the way we do things and redesigning global systems.

The circular economy is an opportunity to reinvent the way we live and do business. It’s about redesigning our global systems – how we make products, how we produce our food, and how we manage resources – to generate new types of value, and solve human health and environmental challenges.

Here is founder Eva Gladek explaining her motivation and goal in founding Metabolic.

Over the years, the company has expanded from its core consultancy work to do research, develop software and tools, and aid communities.

Metabolic is made up of five entities working together in a symbiotic way. Each exists to address what we believe are the critical leverage points for systems change:

• Our Consultancy, to steward organizational change

• Our Institute, to build collective intelligence

• Our Ventures arm, to create future infrastructure

• Our Software arm, to develop scalable tools

• And our Foundation, to empower communities

I invite you to check them out! Circular Economy (metabolic.nl)

A helpful way to understand complex systems is to think of a Rubik’s Cube. Moving one coloured square affects more than that square alone; it disrupts the colours on five other sides of the block. Our earth system is similar. While social and environmental problems can often feel independent from one another, issues like climate change and biodiversity loss, human health and economic stagnation, are all inextricably linked. Source: Metabolic, Systems Thinking