**The circular economy in action: Sunday second-hand market in London, 1958.** ETH Library Zurich, photo: Gustav Neuenschwander

A brief history of the circular economy

The term is relatively recent but the concept is as old as mankind: the 'circular economy' where goods are reused, recycled and repaired.

Daniela Schwab

Daniela Schwab is a historian and curator for prints, old prints and rare books as well as Swiss graphic design at the Swiss National Museum.

Although the term 'circular economy' has only been around since the second half of the 20th century, its underlying ideas and methods are as old as mankind. It centres on (re)using whatever is to hand. For example, 30,000 years ago people made flutes out of mammoth bones left behind after the meat had been consumed: an early case of production waste recycling. An almost 3,000-year-old garment pin converted into a fishhook is another example of people being creative and finding a new use for something.

**A somewhat unconventional fishhook: the vase-shaped decorative head suggests it was once a garment pin, c. 900 BCE.** Swiss National Museum

The throw-away society is something of an anomaly historically speaking. Of course, there has always been waste, but throughout history people tended to make the most of whatever they had. Their motivation in doing so was not so much to reduce waste, it was more because things were too valuable to simply discard – waste not, want not. Two developments were the main drivers in reducing the value of things. The Industrial Revolution made items cheaper to produce and, as a result, less valuable. The second development was the '1950s syndrome' caused by the flooding of the global markets with cheap crude oil during the 1950s. Transport costs fell, and lower oil prices also caused other commodity prices to fall due to the reduced production costs of raw materials. This in turn made the products manufactured using these raw materials considerably cheaper. Hence the emergence of 'disposable products' and growing mountains of waste.

**Cholwald landfill in Ennetmoos (NW), 1996.** Keystone

The price ratio between products and labour also changed: products became cheaper while the cost of labour increased. In the pre-modern era, it had almost always been the other way round: labour was cheap, while materials and goods were relatively expensive. That meant it was no longer worth paying people to service or repair a product. It was cheaper to buy a new product instead. This led to more consumption and waste.

**Mending things, the norm throughout history: women doing needlework in the farmhouse while the men repair tools. Graphic print, probably by Jakob Kaiser, c. 1850.** Swiss National Museum

The fundamentals of the circular economy – reduce, reuse, recycle – have always been used to define how people treated their possessions and materials. Since antiquity, there have been countless examples of things being reused. Shipwrecks laden with copper scrap and glass fragments for recycling show there was a market for recycled glass and metals during the Roman empire. The reuse of wood can be evidenced by shipwrecks from the Middle Ages made with timber from other parts of the world, usually from other ships. Textiles are another example of material recycling and conversion to another type of use: when it was beyond repair, the cloth was used in paper production. Fibre cloths, or rags, were highly sought after and in short supply, which is why they were subject to a strict export ban in many places to support the domestic paper mills. Until the late 19th century, paper production was a laborious process comprising several stages. It started by breaking up and rotting the rags, then washing them and turning them into pulp. The paper was then filtered from the pulp through a wire sieve.

Technical layout of a paper mill: old rags are cut up at the top, below the rags are mechanically shredded by means of a crushing device powered by a mill wheel and fragmented into individual fibres in a Hollander beater from which the pulp was produced. ETH Library

However, before objects were recycled, they were also passed on, normally from the top of the social hierarchy downwards. In fact, overconsumption by the nobility drove the trade in used goods in pre-modern times. To keep acquiring the latest accessories – and other items required for representation purposes – people needed to find buyers with deep pockets for their old possessions. This resulted in excessive consumption by the nobility, creating a market in exclusive second-hand goods for the middle classes. But the second-hand market was not the preserve of monied folk, featuring instead in all types of social settings. The circulation of used goods was an integral component of these markets.

An urban market in the Middle Ages in Brunetto Latini’s “Book of Treasures”. — **An urban market in the Middle Ages in Brunetto Latini’s *“Book of Treasures”*.** Bibliothèque de Genève

Nowadays, we approach the circular economy and its constituent mechanisms from a different perspective than in the past. In 2022, Switzerland had already reached Overshoot Day by 13 May. That means the resources we consumed on the other 262 days of the year were on credit, which is unsustainable. These days, the idea of a circular economy is usually seen as a means of improving sustainability, i.e. not consuming more resources than the Earth can replace. One way of preserving resources is to design things that are reparable and reusable. Circular design is when items and their constituent raw materials are created with the circular economy in mind during the design and development phase. These methods do matter but they often overlook the third principle, i.e. reduce. And that is the most important of the three circular economy fundamentals. Having less, going without, reducing are indispensable to effectively lowering resource consumption. One example of reduction is “tiny houses”, i.e. small houses with a smaller surface area and lower energy and resource consumption.

**A 'tiny house' is normally made of sustainable materials.** Wikimedia / Ben Chun

The second life of things. Stone, metal, plastic

14.06.2024 10.11.2024 / National Museum Zurich

Our throw-away and consumerist society is a recent phenomenon in the history of humanity. The way people handled materials and objects used to be driven by scarcity and shortages. Up until the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, it was normal to hand down clothes, repair tools, reuse building materials, melt down bronze objects to make new ones, and recycle glass containers. Whether they were made from fabric, metal, stone or glass – it was possible for all manner of things to have a second, third, or even infinite life. The exhibition takes a look at the methods of the circular economy past and present. Objects from the Stone Age to the present day show how their history can raise awareness of the value of things.

More of: Exhibitions Protohistory Classical antiquity Middle Ages Modern Age 20th / 21st century Economy Nature

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