Circular Economy
In our household, items such as clothes and toys would have multiple lives before being thrown out, and leftover food would be transformed into tomorrow’s lunch. In other words, my mother was an early advocate of the circular economy, in which materials and products have multiple iterations, and the waste of one process loops back and becomes the input for another.
For people of her generation, these are commonly held values. But younger generations have largely strayed from these ideas, opting instead to produce and consume more and more. Some of the waste is recycled, but that only goes so far towards addressing the problem that the planet has limited resources to offer.
The finiteness of this supply distinguishes materials from energy. There’s little doubt that in the future we will be able to capture more solar power and even build nuclear fusion reactors to abolish energy scarcity forever. But for material resources, no such technology is in view.
How to make plastic less of an environmental burden
For people of her generation, these are commonly held values. But younger generations have largely strayed from these ideas, opting instead to produce and consume more and more. Some of the waste is recycled, but that only goes so far towards addressing the problem that the planet has limited resources to offer.
The finiteness of this supply distinguishes materials from energy. There’s little doubt that in the future we will be able to capture more solar power and even build nuclear fusion reactors to abolish energy scarcity forever. But for material resources, no such technology is in view.
How to make plastic less of an environmental burden