Circularity & Whole System Design

  • Rare-earth recycling moves to commercial scale. Cyclic Materials opened its first commercial-scale rare-earth magnet recycling facility in Mesa, Arizona, on September 9. The 144,000-square-foot plant can process up to 25,000 metric tons of end-of-life products annually, recovering critical materials for EVs, robotics, AI and manufacturing. This is circularity becoming supply-chain infrastructure rather than simply waste management. (Trade.gov)
  • Products could be designed to identify themselves for recycling. Japanese researchers unveiled a design framework combining product geometry with terahertz sensing to distinguish plastics such as PET and polystyrene that can be difficult for sorting systems to tell apart. The larger shift: recyclability can increasingly be engineered into products before they are manufactured. (EurekAlert)
  • Waste materials become construction inputs. The Circular Design Cement project tested 17 waste streams—including glass, ceramics, fishing nets, eggshells and industrial by-products—as inputs for lower-carbon cement products. It points toward construction materials becoming repositories for recovered resources rather than one-way consumption. (The Times of India)
  • Circularity is shifting toward regional operating systems. The Solid Waste Association of North America and National Recycling Coalition announced a Circularity Forum focused on extended producer responsibility, recovery systems and cooperation between cities, counties, recyclers and producers. (SWANA Website)

System signal: Waste is increasingly being reframed as domestic material supply.


Events & livestreams

Events

There are currently no events.


People & projects

No listings found.


Take part

Step 8: Build the “Take part” section

This is the most important part.

Under Take part, give people a few clear pathways:

Share a solution

Post a problem

Add a project

Add an event

Submit a story

Offer your expertise

Each should link to the appropriate existing Mobilized form or page.

Do not build new forms if you already have one serving that purpose.


Step 9: Add the Mobilized participation pathway

Near the top or bottom of the page, add:

Discover → Learn → Connect → Build → Act

Then explain it very briefly:

Discover what is happening.
Learn what is changing.
Connect with people and projects.
Build useful collaborations.
Act where you can make a difference.

This becomes a consistent language across the site.

Step 10: Test the journey yourself

Open the Sector Hub as a normal visitor.

Try this sequence:

Sector Hub → Story → Event → Solution → Member directory → Take part

Ask yourself:

Can I keep moving, or do I hit a dead end?

Every dead end is a connection we need to fix.

Step 11: Do not automate yet

This is important.

For now, you manually curate the hub.

Do not install:

  • a new filtering plugin,
  • an AI recommendations plugin,
  • another directory,
  • another member plugin.

First prove that the structure works.

Step 12: Once the first hub works, duplicate the structure

Then create the other nine:

Circularity & Whole-System Design
Personal & Digital Democracy
Food Production & Distribution
ICT & Cybersecurity
Public & Planetary Health
Smarter Cities & Communities
Mobility & Transportation
Ethical Finance
Media & Storytelling

Every hub should use exactly the same six headings.

What we have built so far

You now have the beginnings of a common language across four systems:

Posts
→ Sector Tags

Events
→ Sector Categories

Exchange
→ Systems This Connects To

Members
→ What are you interested in?

And the Sector Hub becomes the place where they meet.

So the architecture becomes:

STORY

SYSTEM

EVENT + SOLUTION + PROJECT + PERSON

NEXT ACTION

That is the next real connection layer.

After you create the first Clean & Renewable Energy Sector Hub, the next thing I would tackle is the BuddyPress member-search layer so people can actually find others by interests, capabilities, needs, and location.