| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Action Plan | Not a wish list — a real set of steps with dates and names on them. What you’ll actually do, and when. |
| Anaerobic Digestion | Breaking down organic material — like food scraps — in a sealed container with no air. The result is biogas (useful energy) and a soil-improving sludge. A fancier version of composting. |
| Behaviour Change | Small shifts add up — what you buy, fix, share or compost is part of a bigger story. One person changing isn’t much; a community changing is everything. |
| Biodegradable | Can be broken down naturally by living organisms — bacteria, fungi, worms. Food scraps, paper, cotton: biodegradable. Plastic, glass, metal: not. |
| Biological Cycle | Nature’s loop. Materials that came from the ground — food, paper, cotton, wood — should safely return to it through composting or natural breakdown. No toxins, no landfill. |
| Carbon Footprint | Your share of the emissions — smaller than a big corporation’s, but still yours to own. Everything you buy, eat, drive or fly adds to it. |
| Circular Design | Making products from the start so they don’t become rubbish. Designed to be fixed, shared, taken apart and used again — not thrown away after one use. |
| Circular Economy | What happens when we stop treating resources as rubbish and start treating them as valuable. Nothing is wasted — everything is kept in use, fixed up, or safely returned to nature. |
| Circular Lifestyle | Living in a way that your grandparents would half-recognise and your grandkids would thank you for — buying less, repairing more, wasting nothing. |
| Community Economy | Economic activity that prioritises local relationships and mutual benefit over profit. Think farmers markets, tool libraries, repair cafes — things that keep money and goodwill circulating locally. |
| Composting | Letting organic material — food scraps, garden waste — break down in the open air into rich soil. One of the easiest circular things anyone can do at home. |
| Conscious Consumer | Someone who asks “where did this come from, and where will it go?” before buying. Not a guilt trip — just paying attention. |
| Durability | How long something lasts before it packs it in. Built to last = circular. Built to break = linear. Check whether something is made to last before you buy it. |
| Finite Materials | Resources that can’t be replaced once we’ve used them up — metals, coal, oil, sand. We’re burning through these as if there’s no tomorrow. There is a tomorrow. |
| 5 R’s, The | Your hierarchy for reducing impact — Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle. Start at the top: refusing and reducing beats recycling every time. Recycling is the last resort, not the solution. |
| Food Hub | A facility that gathers locally produced food from multiple growers and gets it out to buyers — shops, restaurants, households. Keeps local food local instead of sending it off to a warehouse interstate. |
| Landfill | A site where we bury rubbish. On an island like Tasmania, what goes into landfill stays with us — we can’t ship the problem away. In circular economy thinking, landfill is the last resort. |
| Lifespan / Lifetime | How long a product lasts from when it’s made until it’s beyond fixing. The longer the better — a product that lasts 20 years is far less wasteful than one that lasts 2. |
| Linear Economy | The system we’ve been running on: dig it up, make it, use it once, chuck it in the tip. Take, make, waste. It’s broken — and we’re living with the consequences. |
| Localisation | Shifting purchasing and production closer to home. Buying local, growing local, making local. It matters more than you think — shorter distances mean less emissions, more jobs, and stronger communities. |
| Maintain | Keeping something in good working order before it breaks. Oil the hinges, clean the filter, service the engine. It’s cheaper than fixing, and cheaper still than replacing. |
| Material Flow | The journey of a resource through the economy — where it comes from, how it’s used, and where it ends up. Most stuff flows one way: into landfill. Circular economy fixes the flow. |
| Non-Virgin Materials | Materials that have already been used before — recycled steel, reclaimed timber, secondhand clothing. Using them again saves energy and reduces demand for new extraction. |
| Policy | The rules set by governments that either make the circular economy easier or harder to achieve. Good policy rewards circular behaviour; bad policy keeps subsidising waste. |
| Product as a Service | Paying for the use of something rather than owning it outright. Rent a tool, subscribe to a service. The business keeps the product, so it’s in their interest to make it last. |
| Recyclability | How easy it actually is to recycle a material in practice — not just in theory. Some things say “recyclable” on the label but can’t be recycled locally. Worth checking before you buy. |
| Recycle | Breaking a product down into raw materials and making something new from them. It uses energy, so it’s better than landfill but worse than reusing or repairing. Last resort, not first response. |
| Redistribute | Getting a product to someone who needs it instead of letting it go to waste. A supermarket sending surplus food to a food bank. A tradesperson passing on good-condition offcuts. Simple and effective. |
| Refurbish | Bringing something back to good working order — cleaning it up, replacing worn parts, maybe giving it a fresh coat. Not brand new, but as-good-as. Cheaper than new, and keeps stuff out of landfill. |
| Regenerative | Giving back to nature instead of just taking. Farming that builds soil. Forests that grow back. Systems that leave things better than they found them — like composting your kitchen scraps back into your garden. |
| Regenerative Production | Growing or making things in a way that actually improves the natural environment — healthier soil, better water, more biodiversity. The opposite of farming that strips the land bare. |
| Remanufacture | Rebuilding a product to as-new condition with the same or better performance — not just patching it up. Remanufactured products typically come with a proper warranty, same as new. |
| Renewable Energy | Energy from sources that don’t run out — wind, solar, hydro, tidal, geothermal. Tasmania is actually doing well here. The opposite of burning fossil fuels that took millions of years to form. |
| Renewable Materials | Materials that grow back or replenish themselves — timber, wool, cotton, hemp. Unlike minerals or oil, they can be replaced if we don’t take more than nature can produce. |
| Repair | Fixing something that’s broken so it works again. Costs less than replacing. Keeps stuff out of landfill. Keeps repair skills alive in the community. Worth doing before you bin it. |
| Repair Cafe | A free community event where volunteers help you fix broken things — toasters, clothes, bikes, electronics. Started in the Netherlands, now in Hobart and spreading. Bring your broken stuff; leave with it working. |
| Repairability | How easy a product is to fix. Some things are designed to be unrepairable — that’s deliberate. Before you buy, ask: can this be fixed if it breaks? Are spare parts available? |
| Reuse | Using the same product again — same purpose or a different one. A glass jar becomes a vase. A hand-me-down jumper gets another decade. The product stays valuable instead of becoming waste. |
| Reverse Logistics | The supply chain that runs backwards — getting products and materials back from the customer for repair, reuse, refurbishment or recycling. The infrastructure that makes circular economy actually work at scale. |
| Sharing Economy | A system where products are shared or rented rather than owned individually. One good drill shared by twenty neighbours beats twenty drills gathering dust in twenty sheds. |
| Social Enterprise | A business that prioritises social or environmental goals alongside profit — not instead of it. Repair cafes, food co-ops, community gardens that sell produce. Doing good while staying financially sustainable. |
| Supply Chain | All the steps between a product being made and landing in your hands — raw materials, factories, shipping, warehouses, shops. Most supply chains are long, opaque and wasteful. Shorter is usually better. |
| Systems Thinking | Seeing the whole picture, not just your bit. Understanding how things connect — how your food waste affects soil, how your shopping affects jobs, how your council affects your options. Everything is linked. |
| Technical Cycle | Industry’s loop. Materials that humans made — metals, plastics, glass, synthetic fibres — can’t go back to nature safely, so they need to stay in industry: reused, refurbished, remanufactured or recycled. |
| Tool Library | A shared collection of tools you can borrow rather than buy. Like a book library but for drills, ladders, tile cutters and the like. Saves money, saves space, builds community. |
| Upcycling | Transforming waste or unwanted materials into something of higher value. Old timber into furniture. Worn denim into bags. Not just recycling — actually improving what you started with. |
| Virgin Materials | Materials that have never been used before — freshly mined ore, newly grown cotton. Using virgin materials when recycled or reclaimed alternatives exist is a choice. Often an unnecessary one. |
| Waste | Resources we haven’t figured out a use for yet. In a circular economy, there’s no such thing as waste — only materials in the wrong place, waiting to be useful again. |
| Zero Waste | A goal to send nothing to landfill by redesigning how we consume and produce. Not about being perfect — about rethinking the system so “waste” stops existing in the first place. |
Some definitions draw on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Circular Economy Glossary (May 2026), adapted for a Tasmanian community audience.