conscious capital
The Circular Economy Is an Employment Strategy
Ajay Wasserman,
Founder, author, host of Conscious Capital
6 minutes
03 November 2026
Listen to the podcast here
Audio Title: The Circular Economy Is an Employment Strategy
Description:How investors can turn repair, reuse and remanufacturing into viable enterprises, productive skills and safer jobs across African economies.
Table of Contents
Introduction
A broken pump can become scrap, or it can become the starting point for another cycle of productive use. Repairing it may involve diagnosis, replacement parts, machining, testing, transport and a service relationship with the next owner. Those activities create opportunities for businesses and workers. Whether they become durable livelihoods depends on how the enterprise is financed and run.
That is the investment case for treating the circular economy as an employment strategy: retain useful value, build capable local enterprises and make the resulting work safe and economically sustainable.
Recognise the work already taking place
The ILO and its partners estimate that 121–142 million people work in sectors contributing to the circular economy, including repair, second-hand trade, recycling and waste management. This is an estimate of existing employment in fully or partially circular activities, not a forecast of new jobs waiting to be created. Many of these workers operate informally and face insecure incomes and weak protection.[1]
For African investors, the starting point should therefore be the businesses and capabilities already present. A repair workshop may need diagnostic equipment, reliable spares and customers who trust its workmanship. A collector may need safer handling, transparent weighing and dependable payment. A remanufacturer may need testing facilities and orders that justify investing in trained technicians.
Capital becomes useful when it addresses the specific constraint between existing capability and a dependable income.
Worker at WEEE Centre, Kenya, safely sorting e-waste for reliable income.
Source: Getty Images
Preserve the highest useful value
UNEP’s Global Waste Management Outlook applies the waste hierarchy and life-cycle assessment to the choices involved in reducing and managing waste.[2] The practical implication for investors is to examine what can remain useful before assuming that everything collected should be processed into raw material.
Consider a business evaluating returned commercial equipment. Some units may need maintenance. Others may be suitable for refurbishment, component recovery or material recycling. Each route has different costs, skills, safety requirements and customers.
A collection target measured only in tonnes can obscure those differences. A tonne of functioning equipment sold cheaply for scrap may represent lost productive value. Equally, keeping an unsafe or highly inefficient product operating indefinitely may create costs that outweigh the benefit. The investment assessment should compare realistic alternatives, including energy use, transport, reliability and final disposal.
The objective is useful service delivered with fewer wasted resources. That gives maintenance, repair and refurbishment a place in the investment pipeline alongside recycling plants.
Underwrite the whole operating cycle
Circular businesses need the same commercial discipline as any other enterprise, with particular attention to the condition and consistency of what they receive.
A refurbishment model should demonstrate a margin after purchasing returned products, collection, testing, replacement parts, skilled labour, warranty claims and the responsible handling of unusable material. A recycling model needs evidence that buyers will accept its output at a price that covers the full cost of producing it.
Before financing capacity, investors should test three relationships: a dependable source of inputs, a credible route to customers and a quality standard both sides understand.
Cash timing matters too. Workers and suppliers may need payment well before a refurbished item is sold. Finance tied only to machinery can leave the enterprise unable to buy stock or pay its technicians. Working capital, supplier terms and warranty reserves belong in the funding plan.
Expansion should follow demonstrated recovery rates, repeat orders and reliable margins. A larger warehouse cannot solve the absence of a paying customer.
Sorted plastic bales at Mr. Green Africa, Nairobi, Kenya, awaiting buyer off-take.
Source: This is africa
Give skills a route to revenue
A South African example shows how enterprise capability can form part of the response. An ILO project in Limpopo, reported in August 2026, supported 22 young entrepreneurs drawn from 22 municipalities with technical, business and cooperative development skills.[3]
Those are concrete programme outputs. They do not, by themselves, establish how many sustained jobs or profitable enterprises resulted.
An investor assessing the next stage would ask whether trained participants have suitable equipment, safe premises, access to materials and repeat customers. Can a technician progress from training into paid work? Can the business earn enough to maintain its equipment and employ another person without a continuing grant?
Training finance should be connected to realistic commercial pathways. Apprenticeships attached to actual service contracts, competent supervision and recognised practical skills offer a clearer route from participation to earning capacity.
Make decent work part of the cost structure
The joint 2023 evidence review by the ILO, Circle Economy and the World Bank highlights the importance of working conditions, skills and the inclusion of informal workers. Labour-intensive circular activities can expose workers to hazardous materials and precarious employment.[4]
Investors should translate that evidence into operating requirements. Safe handling, ventilation where needed, appropriate equipment, training and proper treatment of hazardous residues must be costed before returns are presented. A business whose apparent margin depends on workers absorbing those costs has an incomplete business model.
Existing collectors and repairers also need a place in the transition. Transparent purchase terms, predictable payment and accessible supplier arrangements can help them participate in a growing enterprise. Replacing an established collection network with a concession that removes livelihoods requires an honest assessment of who gains and who loses.
Job quality belongs in management reporting alongside output and revenue: earnings, injuries, hours, training progression and worker retention. Employment volume alone cannot establish whether an investment is improving people’s lives.
Gjenge Makers’ durable plastic bricks in Nairobi, Kenya, proving successful material recovery.
Source: Colossal
Be precise about the employment claim
A circular enterprise can create new jobs, improve existing work and preserve capabilities that might otherwise disappear. Those are different outcomes and should be reported separately.
Hiring fifty people is a clear operating result. Claiming fifty additional jobs across the economy requires a wider assessment of displaced activity and the alternative use of the capital. A workshop that doubles the dependable earnings of existing technicians may deliver meaningful progress even if its headcount changes little.
The same discipline should apply to environmental claims. Collected material, material successfully recovered and material sold into productive use are different measures. Investors need evidence that the process reaches a useful destination.
For a family office or investment committee, the practical task is to connect the claims: a customer pays for something useful; the enterprise earns a durable margin; workers share in that value through safer and better livelihoods; resources remain productive for longer.
When those relationships hold, circularity can support an enduring business. The capital is financing the skills, systems and customer relationships that allow people to earn a living by keeping value in use.
Follow one repair through to cash
Take an illustrative refurbishment business selling a repaired pump for R5,000. If the used unit costs R1,500, parts R1,000, labour R800, transport R300 and the allowance for warranty work R400, the contribution is R1,000. Rent, administration, financing and tax still have to come out of that amount. A selling price is not a margin.
If the business pays these direct costs before delivery and refurbishes twenty pumps at once, it needs R80,000 to fund that batch before customers pay. The investor should therefore test both the repair economics and the cash cycle. These invented figures illustrate why a machinery loan alone may leave an otherwise useful workshop unable to trade.
FundiFix mechanic in Kwale, Kenya repairing a pump, requiring working capital upfront.
Source: FundiFix
Article Sources & further reading
[1] Between 121 and 142 million people are employed in the circular economy globally — International Labour Organization, reporting the joint Circle Economy–ILO–World Bank Group study with UN-PAGE (2025-12-04)
Supports: Estimated existing global employment in activities contributing to the circular economy is 121–142 million people; many workers are informal and face unstable incomes and precarious conditions. This is an employment baseline, not a forecast of additional jobs. Fully or partially circular scope was additionally verified on https://www.ilo.org/topics-and-sectors/circular-economy.
[2] Global Waste Management Outlook 2024 — United Nations Environment Programme and International Solid Waste Association (2024)
Supports: Waste prevention and management should follow the waste hierarchy; the report uses life-cycle assessments to compare alternative waste-management pathways. No 2050 scenario result is presented as an observed outcome in this article.
[3] E-Waste for Youth Employment in Limpopo — International Labour Organization (2026-08-25)
Supports: ILO project equipped 22 youth entrepreneurs with technical, business and cooperative development skills and established e-waste recycling workstations across 22 municipalities. These are documented programme outputs, not proof of 22 sustained jobs or profitable enterprises.
[4] Decent work in the circular economy: An overview of the existing evidence base — Circle Economy, International Labour Organization and World Bank Solutions for Youth Employment (2023-05)
Supports: Evidence review identifies labour intensity, informal work, hazards, precarious employment and skills/reallocation requirements; it calls for attention to job quality and existing informal workers alongside job creation.