// circular economy

All signals tagged with this topic

Oct 14

Second-life battery storage boom signals manufacturing overcapacity

A funding surge in battery upcycling companies alongside manufacturing slowdowns shows the market has shifted from cell scarcity to glut. The competitive advantage has moved from gigafactory scale to reverse logistics and software. Companies now profit by capturing residual value in used packs rather than producing virgin cells faster. This shift will accelerate consolidation among battery makers while creating new business models in energy storage and grid services.

theme-consumer circular economy fashion consumption sustainability behavior

Oct 8

Redesign Services Offer Third Path Beyond Donation and Resale

Source: Vogue

As fast fashion saturation pushes consumers toward their existing wardrobes, a new service category—custom alterations, reconstructions, and upcycling—is emerging as a profitable middle ground between keeping and discarding. These businesses monetize the gap between sustainability sentiment and actual behavior: consumers favor paying for customization over thrifting or donating. The model works only if redesign costs less than replacement and delivers visible transformation, making execution and branding as critical as environmental messaging.

theme-connected battery technology circular economy waste infrastructure

Sep 30

New Approach Targets Lithium Battery Recycling Bottleneck

Source: Hackaday

Battery recycling remains a fragmented, low-margin business where collection logistics and shredding dominate costs—not chemistry. Any meaningful solution must address the fact that most discarded batteries never enter formal recycling streams because scattered consumer devices make aggregation uneconomical compared to virgin mining. If this approach genuinely simplifies either the reverse logistics or the separation process rather than just the chemistry, it could unlock the 95%+ of lithium batteries currently landfilled or informally processed, directly affecting EV supply chains and grid storage viability.

theme-connected battery recycling ev supply chain circular economy

Aug 1

China's EV recycling advantage could reshape global battery supply

Source: Ars Technica

China's dominance in EV manufacturing creates a closed-loop opportunity that Western competitors lack: as its massive fleet of first-generation EVs reaches end-of-life, recycled batteries and materials can feed directly back into production, reducing dependence on mined lithium and cobalt. Chinese manufacturers gain a structural cost advantage that compounds over time, allowing them to undercut rivals on input costs while meeting circular economy standards that appeal to Western regulators and consumers.

theme-consumer consumer behavior circular economy repair culture

Jul 26

Right to Repair Startups Now Sell Broken Devices as Teaching Tools

Source: Hackaday

Team Repair is monetizing repair education by intentionally shipping broken electronics to consumers who want to learn hands-on skills—reversing the typical e-waste flow and creating a direct revenue model from something previously discarded. It solves two problems simultaneously: manufacturers' reluctance to support repairability, and consumers' growing frustration with planned obsolescence, turning a compliance gap into a new product category. The model treats repair knowledge as a marketable skill in a sector where manufacturers have systematically eliminated repair as an option rather than a choice.

theme-connected infrastructure energy circular economy

Jun 6

Waymo's Used Robotaxi Batteries Find Second Life in Grid Storage

Source: Slashdot: Hardware

Waymo and B2U Storage Solutions are creating a closed-loop supply chain where degraded EV batteries—no longer efficient enough for autonomous vehicles but still holding 70-80% capacity—become grid-scale energy storage. This partnership addresses a concrete problem in EV adoption: disposing of millions of batteries reaching end-of-life over the next decade. It also provides utilities cheaper storage than new battery packs, which could accelerate grid decarbonization in regions with high renewable penetration.