To build a circular economy, we need solutions that will allow organizations to integrate circularity across their business.
The take-make-waste model isn’t cutting it anymore, for the planet or for business. Did you know that the OECD estimates just 9% of the plastic waste we produce each year gets recycled? The United Nations Environment Program did the aftermaths: that’s 36 million tons of the 400 million tons of the plastic waste we produce annually. The remaining 364 million tons gets incinerated, or finds its way into landfills or the oceans. By 2050, Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates there could be more plastic in the seas than fish!
Plastic isn’t the only problem: Our steel, concrete and carbon-based energy production industries are all based on extracting raw materials, with very little thought given to what happens when we’ve finished using them. Even extracting those materials imposes environmental costs. Take copper: To get 2kg or less of copper out of the ground, 100kg of earth needs to be moved, refined and disposed of.
There are clear business implications for this as well. All this waste also represents massive value leakage from our supply chains. According to research from the WEF, transitioning to a circular economy could be a \$1 trillion (€913.64 billion) opportunity.
But in order to build a circular economy – that is, an economy that prioritizes sustainable design, waste minimization and material reuse – we need solutions that will allow organizations across industries to make the changes they need to integrate circularity right across their business. For many of the businesses I speak to, circularity remains a great theory – less something easily put into practice. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. We just need to show that way. We need to see circularity in action.
