Learning from Goethe: Reclaiming circularity as a tool for European resilience

How Europe can turn circular economy into industrial strategy by designing the structures and incentives needed to deliver resilience, material independence, and long-term value at scale

Today, when we speak of European competitiveness, we must begin by redefining the term. No longer can it mean short-term efficiency gains or narrowly measured economic growth. In the face of ecological limits, material volatility and shifting geopolitical alignments, competitiveness must be understood as the capacity to sustain and improve collective wellbeing within planetary boundaries: in other words, resilience.

Resilience is not a fallback. It is a strategic stance. As history shows, it is not built through protectionism or austerity, but through the intelligent design of institutions, infrastructure, and innovation systems. That is why resilience must now sit at the centre of Europe’s industrial ambition not just to manage risk, but to generate long-term value.

Last week, I had the pleasure of being in Brussels, delivering a keynote at the Sustainable Construction Summit, which gathered representatives from industry, the Parliament, the Commission, and NGOs all working to futureproof Europe. This gave me great insight into what is happening and what needs to happen in Brussels.

I spoke about this very shift, how materials we once assumed infinite, like sand, are now understood as constrained, strategic resources. That realisation, echoed by a representative from the largest industry players, is emblematic of a larger transformation: the systems and materials underpinning our economies are not only ecologically vulnerable but institutionally outdated. Continuing to build the future with linear tools will only deepen our fragility.

But this is not only a moment of threat. It is also an opening: a chance to rethink how we innovate, govern, and share responsibility for the systems that sustain us.

We have done it before. In 19th-century Weimar, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, today better known as a poet than a policymaker, but that time the key advisor to Karl August the sovereign Duke of Saxe-Weimar and helped catalyse the modern german optics industry by creating one of the first examples of industrial policy (super facinating and you can read more about it in the great book It’s a material world). Recognising the need to move beyond artisanal craft, he supported the establishment of institutions capable of sustained scientific experimentation. What emerged was not just better glass, but a globally competitive optics sector built on strategic alignment between public investment, scientific knowledge, and industrial application.

A century later, when Germany lost access to imported nitrates, the response was not retreat — it was reinvention. The Haber–Bosch process, developed with state backing by BASF, synthesised nitrogen from the atmosphere and transformed not only military logistics but global food production. Again, the breakthrough was not merely technical. It was institutional: a response to crisis enabled by coordinated, long-term capacity across sectors.

These stories are not about nostalgia. They are about structure. And they offer a clear lesson for today: innovation must be directed. Scale must be supported. And resilience must be designed.

This is the opportunity and the challenge now facing the circular economy.

Over the past decade, circularity has been widely adopted as a framework for reducing emissions, eliminating waste and designing for reuse. But somewhere along the way, the promise of circularity has been narrowed, its radical edge dulled. Too often, it has served as a modest improvement to the existing rather than a tool for transforming the underlying logic of production and value creation.

That must change. Because the circular economy, at its core, is not about waste. It is about resilience and our power to design systems that are materially independent, ecologically safe, and socially fair. In a world of interlocking crises climate volatility, biodiversity collapse, supply chain disruption circularity becomes not a technical fix but an industrial strategy.

And yet, we must be honest: the circular economy has not yet delivered on its transformative potential. It has been domesticated by the systems it set out to change. That is not a failure of concept, but a failure of courage and a failure to build the structures and values that enable innovation to scale.

The shift we need is not from linear to circular, but from marginal to structural. This means moving beyond pilots and projects, beyond corporate roadmaps and EU strategies, and into the difficult work of reconfiguring how value is defined, how decisions are made, and who gets to participate in shaping the economy.

From this perspective, the true power of a circular economy lies in what it makes possible. By designing products as services, we can unlock better quality without breaking either the planet or the bank. By embracing reuse and modularity, we can build cities that flex with climate uncertainty. By reducing our dependency on virgin materials, especially those extracted from afar, we can secure supply chains, reduce pressure on biodiversity, and re-anchor value creation in local contexts.

But none of this happens by default. Like Goethe’s glassworks or the Haber–Bosch process, it requires direction, support and alignment a deliberate choreography across policy, finance, culture and industry. It requires designing not only new products but the enabling environments in which new systems can take hold: from strategic procurement and risk-tolerant investment to education, storytelling and public legitimacy.

This is not coordination. It is co-responsibility.

Denmark offers a glimpse of what this looks like. In 2011, a record heatwave triggered investment in climate adaptation across Copenhagen. But more than risk mitigation, the city leveraged the moment to reposition itself as a laboratory for sustainable urbanism. The result was not only a more resilient city but an export platform for solutions and proof that public value, when designed with care, can become a competitive advantage.

Europe now stands at a similar inflection point. The question is not whether to change, but how and for whom. Circularity, if reclaimed as an innovation tool and designed as a shared platform, can help deliver the resilience we need.

But we must choose wisely. Because systems, once built, have momentum. They reward what they are designed to reward. And if we want different outcomes, we must design different rules.

This is not about returning to Goethe. But it is about learning from him. About recognising that resilience is not inherited. It is built. And that the work of shaping our economic future is, in the end, an act of deliberate design.

Ps. If you want a cap yourself, check out my friend Jens Martin’s company and website c55 as he rightly points out: THE FUTURE IS OURS TO SHAPE