Introducing the circular economy

- 100 billion tons. That's how much raw materials our current linear economy uses every year, but the rate of recapture and recycling of these materials is nowhere near this. So many of the valuable materials that we use end up as waste. And the more we discard, the more materials we have to go to nature to extract. This is part of the unsustainability of our current linear economy. We use up natural resources at a rate that is faster than the Earth can replenish them. So we literally can't sustain the rate of production and consumption in the world right now. This happens because our current economy is based on what's called a linear model where raw materials are extracted from nature, processed into usable goods, sold, and then used by you and me before they're discarded. This is what's called the take make waste model, and herein lies the problem. The more we waste, the more we have to go back to nature to extract to feed the linear system. This means we are continually destroying all sorts of ecosystems and threatening the life support systems that sustain life on Earth. But it does not have to be this way. We can redesign the economy to be circular whereby waste is actually designed right out of the system from the start. The circular economy is a model of production and consumption that eliminates waste by changing business models to deliver products that close the loop on the linear model. To achieve circularity, we have to design all our goods and services to flow through an intentionally designed system that collects products at their end of life and reuses them before they become waste. This includes things like repairing, re-manufacturing, and redeploying these materials and services back out into the economy. This will dramatically reduce raw material needs, leaving more for nature to do its life-sustaining thing. And because we have a more efficient system under a circular model, companies save money on materials and processes, and we can start to resell goods over and over again. Done well, the circular economy is a win for nature and a win for us. So the circular economy is about eliminating waste and ensuring that all production processes are regenerative. To achieve this, we need to redesign products and services so that they last longer, can be repaired, can be recaptured, of course, all before we recycle them. The goals of the circular economy are to eliminate waste entirely. Redesign everything so that products and materials in our lives last longer and are recaptured before being reused and recycled. We reduce the extraction of raw materials by maintaining and reusing the ones we already have. We change production processes so they're regenerative, meaning they give back more than they take. This requires creating entirely new business models. So materials are engineered to be digested back into nature or to be infinitely recycled back through industrial processes. The last resort is to downcycle or discard, in which case we should always do it responsibly. Already there are companies in the jeans, food, and phone sectors that are offering these new types of business models. So let's take a minute, stop the video, and have a think. How could you potentially change your company's products or services to be circular? Can you imagine how different the world would be if we could create products that were infinitely reusable? However, despite over a decade of strong progress, increased education, and commitments from governments and companies around the world, we are still a long way off getting to a fully circular future. But this is where the opportunity lies. By developing the skills needed to design solutions that fit within this model, you can help create innovative approaches that are resource efficient, benefit nature, and ensure that our supply chains are ethical. These are all things that we will be diving into in later videos in this course.