As I delve into the connection between circular economy and enabling the reuse of resources that go into making the goods and products we consume, I am starting to realize that everything is made up of something.
By goods, I mean the "stuff" or the "things" that you and I consume or use in our daily lives - like our phones or our jackets or the bags or the food that we eat- where does all the "stuff" that goes into making that "stuff" come from? And what happens after you and I are done using them?
What is amazing is that everything can be connected back to our beautiful planet. So all the "stuff" that you and I consume - ultimately, it comes from something, somewhere on our planet. Our planet is like an enormous cookie jar, and we keep dipping into it. And by the way, not only are you and I consuming more, there are more of us consuming. In the 1960s, there were three billion of us. Now, there are eight billion of us (https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population). But the size of our planet has remained the same.
So how can our planet keep up? Like the vanishing cookies in the jar, what happens when no more cookies are left? It is wild to think that we continue to act and live oblivious to the thought that our planet is made up of finite resources and ignore the fact that, at some point in time, the jar will become empty. Then what? In our hunt for "stuff" to make "stuff," we have uprooted trees, destroyed forests, and transformed green oasis to barren deserts. Oh wait - we are not done yet. We then dig deep into the core of our planet, hunting for even more "stuff."
With so many pressing problems to address, the debate around insatiable craving for products, resource exploitation and its harmful effects on our planet and climate keeps getting shifted, punted and passed on—from one century and generation to the next. Stats like Earth's temperature will rise by X degrees in the year 2100 seem and feel so far out and inconsequential when there is so much immediate turmoil and pressing issues to be addressed.
Works Cited (updated Feb 2023):
The Amazon in crisis: Forest loss threatens the region and the planet. (2022, November 8). WWF. https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/the-amazon-in-crisis-forest-loss-threatens-the-region-and-the-planet
Boissoneault, L. (2017, March 24). What Really Turned the Sahara Desert From a Green Oasis Into a Wasteland? Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-really-turned-sahara-desert-green-oasis-wasteland-180962668/
Gross, T. (2023, February 1). How “modern-day slavery” in the Congo powers the rechargeable battery economy. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893248/red-cobalt-congo-drc-mining-siddharth-kara
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