Beyond the Material: What Cycling Kit Can Teach Us About Circular Design

A real world exploration of what circular design looks like when you stop focusing on individual materials and start looking at the entire system around a product.

We often talk about sustainable design as a question of materials. Is it recycled? Is it renewable? Is it low carbon? But choosing a better material doesn't necessarily create a better system.

Lily Rice, founder of The Long Run Club, takes an unexpected case study, the humble cycling jersey, to explore what circularity really looks like in practice.

Drawing on the experience of building a B Corp certified business around responsible materials, European manufacturing and circular thinking, Lily will explore the decisions that happen before, during and long after a product is designed: material selection, supply chains, manufacturing, longevity, procurement, customer behaviour and end of life.

If we can rethink something as seemingly simple as a cycling jersey, there are lessons for how…