Timo Huhtamäki: ”Circular consumption isn’t deprivation – it’s inspiration”.

“Circular consumption isn’t deprivation – it’s inspiration.”

The average Finn buys 38 garments a year for 700 euros. That’s 18.5 euros per item. With the same money, you could buy seven pre-loved designer pieces of much higher quality. We just haven’t learned to see the abundance within circular living.

“If we don’t learn to buy services, we won’t be able to operate a circular economy.”

I admire Finland’s do-it-yourself culture. But we’re not very good at using services. In a future where resources stay in use, people can’t do everything themselves, like sell their own used goods, recycle every item, return bottles and fix appliances. We need specialized services for all of that.

The most material-intensive industries today – the ones that use the most resources – employ the fewest people. They’re automated and energy-heavy. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if those industries shrank a bit while the service economy grew, creating more jobs.

“We could cut overconsumption without losing well-being.”

We could reduce consumption dramatically without sacrificing happiness. Most people don’t crave more stuff; they want safety, meaning and connection. A sustainable world could actually bring us closer to those.

“There will be only one economy: the circular one.”

The more interesting question is: why aren’t we there yet? This shift is like the move from the analog to the digital world, which required a lot of unraveling of old structures. Today, taxation and resource pricing still support the un-circular model. And not to forget behavioral aspects that are really hardwired into us. A funny example: we wouldn’t buy used bed sheets for home, yet we think of hotel sheets as luxury.

People usually don’t believe in change before it happens. The AI transition was just like that. Everyone knew twenty years ago that one day, artificial intelligence would be capable of this. But it was only a couple of years ago that people began to realize it was actually happening. I believe the same will happen with the circular economy. As a society, we need to get close enough to that moment of truth, and then things will start to happen fast.

“We need to change our concept of time.”

We as humans have a bias in our thinking: we’re extremely focused on the present, even the very short term. The farther away something is, the harder it is to grasp.

That’s a real problem. You could ask: what mechanisms in this world actually think a hundred years ahead? Business doesn’t, its time horizon is short. Politics thinks in four-year election cycles. We have very few hundred-year thinkers. Foundations are one of those mechanisms. And maybe, to some extent, family-owned companies. 

If we cut down a forest now, it takes a hundred years to regenerate. Simply put, if you cut down a tree, it should be in use for a hundred years.

“Finland sells its green gold too cheap.”

If you look at our forests and the level of processing, the vast majority is exported around the world in its rawest possible form. The same goes for agriculture: most of our grain ends up as animal feed, not as food products.

“We’re wasting critical minerals on cat toys and pepper grinders.”

What we don’t seriously consider is the amount of critical future minerals that are currently wasted on junk. Cat toys and pepper grinders with built-in electronics consume critical minerals – and there’s no viable recycling system for them.

“CEOs should already be planning for scarcity.”

If a CEO looks a few decades ahead, they’ll see that material scarcity will drive prices up significantly. If you put those future resource costs into today’s balance sheet, you’d clearly see it’s smarter to live in a circular economy, where resources come from existing materials rather than virgin ones.

The real question is: will this dismantling of old structures happen in a controlled way, or only once a key raw material runs out and we’re forced into circularity? We need to figure out how to align the economy and the environment, without having to go backwards in history.

“AI can wake up sleeping resources.”

If we want to transition to circularity, we need to get sleeping resources into use: things sitting unused in closets, warehouses, or idle equipment. How many of us have an old, unused phone or a few sitting somewhere in a box? The problem is, we lack data on what’s underused. AI makes that visibility possible, and once we know, we can put it back to use.

“I’m an impact-driven person.”

My motivation comes from seeing the effect of what I do. Right now, the place where I can truly make an impact is at Luonnonperintösäätiö. When you look at old-growth forests, the amount of protected forest in Finland is still so small – but increasing that area has an enormous effect. Few people for example know that old forests bind significantly more nutrients, which prevents them from flowing into, for example, the Baltic Sea. 

The more we protect nature, the more we create incentives for the economy to keep materials in circulation, because protection creates scarcity.