Topic 3 Emerging jobs in circular economy
Recent searches of LinkedIn, Indeed and SimplyHired revealed scores of jobs featuring circular economy terms. The circular economy is celebrated as a trillion-dollar opportunity beginning to penetrate industries around the world. There’s no sector or region left untouched by the potential for reinventing systems, products and services in a fashion that ultimately creates no waste and even regenerates natural systems. At least that’s the hope among evangelists of circularity, notably the Ellen MacArthur Foundation alongside many hundreds of corporations aligned on various ambitious circular goals.
Circular concepts and business models are already taking off internationally, maybe most visibly in Europe. But even in the United States, there’s no shortage of job postings that include explicitly circular terms in their descriptions. In other cases, you’ll have to read between the lines when scouring other sustainability roles, which is easy enough if you wear the lens of rewriting any or all of the “take,” “make” or “waste” flows of business.
These roles are helping to drive early circular economy transformations (Product and packaging designer, Product lifecycle manager, Circular investment specialist.
Now, try to explain how the CE could be implemented in your job sector. Write down your thoughts using a writing tool (digital or in paper).
- Imagine being in a job interview and answering the question: What are your strengths from a job point of view? Use a writing tool (digital or in paper) to write your answer.
- Make a list of the soft skills you think you have and check if these skills are contained in the job advertisements of the following portal. If you find a strong match between the skills required and yours, then you are more ready than you thought to take part in the circular economy job market.
