The Circular Economy: Is It A Real Thing?

The zero-waste community advocates often and heavily for a circular economy. Let’s talk about what that circular economy is:

The circular economy is a theory. The word circular implies that all waste products of consumer culture should be put back into the production cycle. Zero waste.

diagram found via http://aerocircular.green

Realistic Attainability

Experts in the zero-waste community emphasize the circular economy as a mindset. Companies should minimize waste and recycle everything possible. Similar to zero-waste in practicality, the circular economy is something to strive for but not truly attainable. What do we do with medical waste, for example? Can we make new cell phones? A circular economy would also have to be a stagnant economy, and that is not reality. The world markets are always interacting and growing and exchanging information, money, etc. A circular economy would be briefly possible in an extremely small, primitive, hunter-gather society with little to no contact with outside societies.

If a society produces new electronics, it probably has to mine those more-specific precious metals. If the metals are not entirely sourced from previously produced electronics, this society is thus automatically not circular. While recycling electronics is great, we cannot expect that the future of our technology can produced with things we already have. Similarly, we are not an economy relying 100% on clean energy. As long as we’re using fuel sources with waste by-products, those items are not part of a circular economy. Additionally, as long as we support clean energy sources with unmindfully assembled equipment: that energy will not save our economy from waste. Solar panels, for example, are notoriously water-intensive, and required minerals are super difficult to harvest. We don’t have a long-term, eco-conscious battery storage option yet, either.

Photos from my Thanksgiving trip to Joshua Tree National Park

An economy cannot move towards zero-waste as long as it is inventing and improving the current society. That’s not how knowledge works: we have so much yet to learn, and there is so much innovation yet to happen in the species. Striving for zero is the best-case scenario, but actually getting to zero is probably detrimental.

If you would like to learn more about the zero-waste movement, check out this post + this episode of ECO CHIC!

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