Circular
Journey
One planet.
An enormous volume of material moves through our cities every year.
How much, exactly, depends on who is counting and what they count. That question is itself part of the research.
Every country is solving this differently.
Some solutions are technological.
Some are social.
Some are built through policy.
Some begin with one person, in one street.
We want to understand them.
Not to rank them. Systems are not leagues, and the interesting part is the trade-off.
So we go there.
We meet the people who built them.
And we ask all of them the same five questions.
We document what we learn, including what failed.
Then we ask: what could India actually use?
Not what sounds impressive. What survives Indian conditions, Indian budgets and the livelihoods already built around waste.
This is Circular Journey.
Why this matters
The problem has no border. The solution cannot have one either.
A product is designed in one country, built from minerals mined in a second, used in a third and discarded in a fourth. Carbon released anywhere joins one atmosphere. Plastic in a river becomes somebody else’s coastline.
One planet. One connected problem. A circular journey for shared solutions.
02The initiative
We do not travel to see the world. We travel to understand how it is solving its resource problems.
Circular Journey is an independent field research and knowledge-exchange initiative. Between 2027 and 2029 it will visit waste and resource systems around the world, document how they actually work, and connect the people who built them with practitioners in India.
It runs in both directions. What can India learn from the world — and what can the world learn from India? India is a research destination on this map, not only the place findings are carried back to.
The programme runs to 2047. That is a long horizon on purpose: the systems worth studying took decades to build, and the ones worth copying will take decades to hold.
We publish the questions before we travel, and the limitations alongside the findings. Where a system failed, we say so. Where we have not been yet, the page says that too.
Where the programme stands today
- 0target 30 by 2029
- Countries researched
- 0target 250 by 2029
- Experts interviewed
- 0target 120 by 2029
- Case studies published
- 0target 10 by 2030
- India pilots running
Field research begins in 2027, so these are zero. They will stay zero until there is something real to count. Every figure on the impact dashboard carries its methodology and date.
03What we study
The whole cycle, not just the bin
Where the research looks
Collection
The point where material is either captured or lost. Most systems are decided here.
Research on collection04 — The journey
Where the research goes
05Field missions
Every mission runs the same eleven stages
06Research framework
Twenty-two questions, asked everywhere
The same framework is applied in every country, from waste generation through to whether a model could work in India. It is why the Atlas can be filtered rather than merely browsed, and why a finding in Hanoi can be set beside one in Berlin without comparing two different methods.
Read the methodology07First mission
Vietnam
Waste management in a rapidly urbanising economy
Vietnam is urbanising and industrialising at speed, and its waste system is being rebuilt while it runs. Formal collection, an established informal recovery trade and new extended producer responsibility rules are arriving at the same time, in the same cities.
Open the Vietnam researchThe research question
When a waste system is formalised quickly, what happens to the people and the material flows that the informal trade was already handling?
What we want to understand
- 01How household segregation is actually practised, as opposed to how it is mandated.
- 02What share of recovered material moves through informal channels, and who captures the value.
- 03How the 2022 extended producer responsibility provisions are being implemented in practice.
- 04What happens to organic waste in cities without large-scale composting capacity.
- 05Which parts of the system depend on export markets for recovered material.
08The roadmap
Twelve countries, chosen for their differences
09The Atlas
A knowledge base that admits what it does not know
Every Atlas entry follows the same template, and two of its sections are compulsory before anything can be published: limitations, and what did not work. A system described without its failures is marketing.
There are no rankings and no “best in the world” claims. Comparison views put trade-offs side by side and leave the judgement to the reader.
Bank Sampah: community waste banks in Indonesia
Neighbourhood-level collection points where households deposit sorted recyclables and are credited for them, often through a savings account. Widely replicated internationally, with highly variable survival rates.
Integrated energy recovery and offshore ash disposal, Singapore
A national system in which almost all non-recycled municipal waste is incinerated with energy recovery, and the residual ash is landfilled on a purpose-built offshore site.
Why these are marked planned
The Atlas template is built and the scope of each entry is set, but the field work happens in 2027. Entries move to published only when the evidence, sources and limitations sections are complete.
10 — Expert interviews
The same five questions
Every practitioner we interview answers an identical set. It means a municipal engineer in Seoul and a waste bank operator in Surabaya can be read against each other, and it stops the interview becoming a profile piece.
Interview archive- 01What problem were you trying to solve?
- 02What solution did you develop?
- 03What made it work?
- 04What challenges remain?
- 05What could another country learn from your experience?
No interviews have been recorded yet. Every published interview will carry the participant’s consent, their organization and a full transcript.
11Documentary
Season 01 — Southeast Asia
12Short form
Clips
13 — Global to India
How a model actually travels
- 01
Global model
A system observed working somewhere.
- 02
Research
Studied on site, with its limits recorded.
- 03
Adaptation
Reworked for Indian conditions and budgets.
- 04
Pilot
Tested at small scale, in one place.
- 05
Measurement
Against criteria agreed before it started.
- 06
Results
Published either way. Failures included.
Community deposit model adapted to an Indian ward
Test whether a community deposit and credit model can operate in an Indian ward without displacing the collectors already recovering material there.
What it would have to surviveDecentralised organic treatment at ward scale
Test small-scale organic treatment sited close to where the waste is produced, against the transport cost and load it is meant to avoid.
What it would have to surviveProducer responsibility for small and informal producers
Examine whether producer responsibility obligations can be met by very small producers without pushing them out of the formal economy.
What it would have to survive14National context
Viksit Bharat 2047
India has set out a national vision for its centenary year. Circular Journey is not part of that programme and holds no government mandate. What it can offer is independent research: evidence about what works elsewhere, tested against what India would actually need.
The dedicated page keeps those two things structurally separate — the stated national vision on one side, our independent contribution on the other — so neither is mistaken for the other.
How the two relateThe long horizon
- 2026BuildPlatform, framework, network, Atlas.
- 2027ExploreFirst field missions.
- 2028AdaptIndia conditions and pilot design.
- 2029ConveneKnowledge-exchange summit in India, proposed.
- 2030+ScaleWhat held, extended. What did not, reported.
- 2047ContributeA long-term body of public evidence.
15 — Proposed, India
A gathering,
if the work earns it
Global Sustainability & Circular Economy Summit, targeted at 2029
Two years of field research, then everyone in one room. The point of 2029 is not the event; it is that by then there should be something worth convening about. It is a target, not a date: no venue, programme or speakers are fixed.
Proposed · dates, venue, speakers and programme all unconfirmed
16Take part