In the Circular Economy, Products Are Designed to Be Recycled

Take, make, use, dispose. For decades, this has been the standard approach to production and consumption. Companies take raw materials and transform them into products, which are purchased by consumers, who ultimately toss them out, creating waste. But as warnings about climate change and environmental degradation grow ever louder, people are starting to challenge the sustainability of this model. Many business leaders and governments — including China, Japan and the U.K. — argue that we should ditch this linear system in favor of a so-called circular economy of take, make, use, reuse and reuse again and again.

It often leads to a system that is inefficient, costly and depletes natural resources. The mining of commodities from gold to coal can spoil ecosystems and disrupt nearby communities. Making steel from ore requires a large amount of energy, which produces Earth-warming carbon dioxide. A byproduct of the linear model is material waste, which takes up space and may include contaminants. Trash ends up in undesirable places. The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch is only the most well-known example of global-scale plastic pollution. Yet products like steel and plastic can be reused, refurbished and recycled to capture untapped value. A totally circular economy — with no waste and no new materials at all — is likely impossible to achieve, but squeezing the maximum waste out of the system could curtail use of new resources.