Local Circular Economy Principles
- Linear vs. circular systems
- Linear economy: products are made, used, and then tossed
- Recycling is a fake loop / a bandaid for the problem
- Circular system: waste products should be creatively used to facilitate the creation of something new
- Redefine what waste means
- Activity
- Two types of systems: Forest & Plastic
- We created concept / process maps for each system
- Takeaways:
- The plastic systems is messy and requires a lot of resources, repeatedly
- There is no quick fix to the plastic system — e.g. bioplastics take palm oil, and who’s going to grow the crop?
- Plastic (linear systems):
- Inputs: many
- Resources
- Labor
- Machines
- Time
- Land
- Outputs: 1 (plastic)
- Lots of unintended outputs! Pollution, health, heat
- Forest (circular systems):
- Competition: how many co-ops is too many?
- When there’s more than one, that’s competition
- Everything finds its niche in a circular system — too many = all need are met
- Depends on abundance of resources
- In a linear economy, you want to produce as much as possible, even if it floods the market
- In a circular economy, things are self-balancing (there are negative feedback loops)
- Self-interest vs. collective interest?
- Shared economic success — build self-sustaining systems
- I don’t think I really understand this, since capitalism is also a darwinistic ecosystem? So the market economy seems circular to me in many ways as well
- You can support small businesses by reusing waste products
- It’s cost-effective to share resources and lifts all boats
- How to make plastics more circular?
- What policies / ownership strategies to get plastics from disposal into inputs for new products?
- Decrease demand via banning, taxing
- Should companies be responsible for the byproducts of plastic production?
- Consumers look toward producers, and producers look toward consumers to solve the problem
- Localize production? Reduces transportation costs & creates jobs