Circular Economy Material Flows

Material Flow Controls

Circularity 70%

Material units 60

Flow speed 1.0x

Reset resource stock

Recycled loops (total)

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Landfilled units (total)

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Virgin material extracted

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Resource stock left

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How it works

Each glowing sphere is one unit of material circulating through the economy: Production shapes it into a good, Consumption uses it up, and then it faces the fork that defines an economy's shape. In a circular economy the unit is diverted to Recycling and looped back into Production, so the same atoms keep re-entering the system. In a linear economy it instead falls into the Landfill pillar (which visibly grows) and is gone for good — a fresh unit must then be pulled from the shrinking Resource stock sphere to keep production running.

P(recycle) = circularity
P(landfill) = 1 − circularity
resourceStock -= 1  per unit landfilled & replaced with virgin material

Circularity — the share of consumed units routed to recycling instead of landfill; 100% approximates a fully closed-loop cradle-to-cradle system, 0% is a pure take-make-dispose linear economy.
Material units — how many units circulate at once; more units make the aggregate flow easier to read but do not change the ratios.
Flow speed — how fast units move between stations, approximating faster production/consumption cycles.
Resource stock — a finite virgin-material reservoir that only depletes, never refills except on reset; under low circularity it drains far faster because more landfilled units must be replaced with freshly extracted material.

Real-world relevance: this is the core argument for circular-economy policy — every percentage point of circularity gained is landfill volume avoided and virgin extraction deferred, which is why cradle-to-cradle design, extended producer responsibility and recycling infrastructure are treated as climate levers, not just waste-management tools.

Production Consumption Recycling Landfill Resource stock

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