Dump it!

Over time, humans have forgotten how to operate resource-efficient economies. But the path to a circular economy is still there. As proof, we needn’t just look back to the past. Positive approaches exist in the present, too – although there is still much to accomplish.

Text: Marlene Etschmann, Roman Scherer, Robert Habi

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Time for change

Today economies operate in linear fashion: extraction of natural resources on an ever grander scale, manufacturing them into products with the heavy emissions that entails, and consumption of those products, which then end up being discarded. But this means humans are overexploiting the Earth. And it has consequences: climate change, environmental pollution, species extinction, raw materials shortages, water scarcity. The circular economy, on the other hand, aims to keep products and materials in use for as long as possible, and to close material and energy cycles. Circularity conserves resources and avoids impacts on nature, so it can regenerate.

The value of things

Today’s throwaway, consumer society only came into existence just over 150 years ago with the start of the industrial revolution. Crafts were displaced by mechanized production. Goods could now be made quickly, cheaply and in high quantity. Low-cost oil in the 1950s fueled the trend towards short-lived products. Yet throughout the preceding millennia it was scarcity and shortages that governed humanity’s relationship with objects and materials. So in order to preserve their value for as long as possible, things were repaired, reused or recycled.

Our predecessors of 500,000 years ago, the Neanderthals, were already adept at turning their broken flint axes into new, smaller tools.

The Colossus of Rhodes is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. An earthquake destroyed the 30-meter-high bronze statue around 226 BC. Word has it that 900 years later, a merchant bought the fragments and had them melted down.

Prior to the industrial revolution, clothing was always mended. Irretrievably worn-out textiles went into papermaking, or were picked apart and their threads re-woven into fabric for new garments.

Circularity Gap

The annual Circularity Gap Report examines the extent to which raw material cycles are already closed. Spoiler alert: it’s not as good as you’d hope. And there is a big gap between talking about it and taking concrete action. In the past five years the number of published articles and discussions about the circular economy has tripled. Meanwhile, just seven percent of raw materials consumed worldwide came from recycling in 2023, down from nine percent in 2019. This is due, in part, to increasing general demand for materials. Which is to say that right now, the gap between the circular and the linear economy is widening rather than narrowing.