Why is it necessary to think about a circular economy?

Waste is generated only by humans, nature does not know this word and never will.

Indeed, in biological systems the waste of someone is someone’s other food, resources grow from soils, die, and are absorbed again by the earth allowing the birth of something else.

The earth needs this balance: when a resource is extracted from earth it somehow also need return to it. In the nature, this system works absolutely perfectly.

Unfortunately, the worldwide economy currently does not work this way. It follows instead a linear approach, where rare resources are taken from nature to create always more sophisticated products, of which we get bored usually after a relatively short time-frame. Therefore, we usually throw away those goods; maybe without correctly separating it for recycling. In this way, we generate an incredible amount of waste and very often this has as consequence the misspending of a lot of resources. As we are such a consumer society, we always demand for more and more products. The problem is that in this way we continuously extract resources from earth, without giving it back and creating an imbalance. It is known, that if every country would consume as Switzerland, there would be the need of 3.3 earths! This means that we are consuming too fast the resources that our earth is giving us, taking them from future generations.

It is for this reason that everyone should start to think about a circular economy, remembering that generated waste gives the possibility to build capital instead of only destroying it. The best answer would however be to diminish consumerism and the amount of generated waste, instead of searching for solutions to better deal with it!

Sources:

Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015 (https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/overview/concept)

Wackernagel, D. M. (2016). National Footprint Accounts 2016. Global Footprint Network

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