In early April, we had the chance to speak at Laurea’s Circular Economy Living Lab webinar, a conversation we found ourselves genuinely energized by. This post is our way of continuing it, capturing the thinking we brought into the room that day and sharing it with those who weren’t there. The webinar recording is available here.
When reflecting on circular economy services, we often come back to a simple question: who did the service provider have in mind when designing this? The answer is often kind of a silent average, someone middle-aged, perhaps Finnish-speaking, digitally confident, in stable work, without any particular access needs. Nobody decided this person would be the template for who gets to participate in the circular economy. They just became it, quietly, through several small assumptions that were never spoken aloud and therefore never questioned. And as Kang Liu’s doctoral research (University of Jyväskylä, 2025) shows, this matters more than we tend to think: circular economy solutions that look like they are working can simultaneously be deepening inequality, precisely because the social dimension was left out of the design from the beginning.
Inclusive design begins at the moment we make that assumption visible, and ask honestly who we are leaving out.
Inclusion is not a checklist
Inclusive design is not an accessibility checklist you complete at the end of a project. It is not a compliance requirement, or a way of accommodating ”special groups” once the real solution is already built.
It is a choice about whose reality becomes the starting point. And when that choice is made with care, it makes services better, not just for people close to the margins, but for everyone who uses them.
Barriers accumulate
The circular economy carries a genuine promise: resources circulate, the environment benefits, society becomes more resilient. But the promise contains a quiet assumption about participation, and participation is not always self-evident.
We thought about three services that we both like very much and work well for many people: Tori.fi, second-hand shops, and ResQ Club. Each requires language proficiency. At least two of these require digital access. Each asks you to trust an unfamiliar system, and to have a certain relationship with time, mobility, and money.
Separately, any one of these barriers might feel manageable but together, they close the door from participating. And the same person can encounter all of them, across all three services, on the same day.
This is the pattern that concerns us. When circular economy services are designed around a silent average user, the benefits of the transition tend to flow toward people who already have resources, flexibility, and physical or digital access . The people for whom affordability is a necessity rather than a lifestyle choice, the ones who would arguably benefit most, are the ones least likely to be reached.
This is not just an equity problem. It is a design problem, and a business problem. Every person the service cannot reach is a market that does not exist yet, a use case that has not been discovered, a material stream that stays outside the loop.
Designing from the edge strengthens the whole
Inclusive design is not a corrective measure you apply once the circular economy service is finished. It is a way of deciding whose reality shapes the service from the very beginning. And when that starting point shifts and the design process includes people whose lives look different from the average, the solutions that emerge tend to be more robust, more adaptable, and more genuinely useful for us all.
The person who is hardest to reach is not extra work. They are a signal about where the service is still fragile. Building from their experience does not narrow the solution. It stress-tests it in ways that benefit everyone.
A circular economy that works only for people who are already well-resourced is not yet the circular economy we need. The social and environmental transitions are not separate tracks. They succeed together, or they do not fully succeed at all.
Empact helps organisations design services that genuinely work for diverse and underserved populations. If this raised questions about your own services, we’d be glad to talk.
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