Linear consumption is reaching its limits. A circular economy has benefits that are operational as well as strategic, on both a micro- and macroeconomic level. This is a trillion-dollar opportunity, with huge potential for innovation, job creation and economic growth.
The last 150 years of industrial evolution have been dominated by a one-way or linear model of production and consumption in which goods are manufactured from raw materials, sold, used and then discarded or incinerated as waste. In the face of sharp volatility increases across the global economy and proliferating signs of resource depletion, the call for a new economic model is getting louder. The quest for a substantial improvement in resource performance across the economy has led businesses to explore ways to reuse products or their components and restore more of their precious material, energy and labour inputs. A circular economy is an industrial system that is restorative or regenerative by intention and design. The economic benefit of transitioning to this new business model is estimated to be worth more than one trillion dollar in material savings.
