There is a world of opportunity to rethink and redesign the way we make stuff.
Through a change in perspective we can re-design the way our economy works - designing products that can be “made to be made again” and powering the system with renewable energy. It questions whether with creativity and innovation we can build a restorative economy.
In a circular economy, economic activity builds and rebuilds overall system health. Economy needs to work effectively at all scales – for large and small businesses, for organisations and individuals, globally and locally.
Transitioning to a circular economy does not only amount to adjustments aimed at reducing the negative impacts of the linear economy. Rather, it represents a systemic shift that builds long-term resilience, generates business and economic opportunities, and provides environmental and societal benefits.
We must distinguish between technical and biological cycles. Consumption happens only in biological cycles, where food and biologically-based materials (such as cotton or wood) are designed to feed back into the system through processes like composting and anaerobic digestion. These cycles regenerate living systems, such as soil, which provide renewable resources for the economy. Technical cycles recover and restore products, components, and materials through strategies like reuse, repair, remanufacture or (in the last resort) recycling.
The notion of circularity has deep historical and philosophical origins. The idea of feedback, of cycles in real-world systems, is ancient and has echoes in various schools of philosophy. It enjoyed a revival in industrialised countries after World War II when the advent of computer-based studies of non-linear systems unambiguously revealed the complex, interrelated, and therefore unpredictable nature of the world we live in – more akin to a metabolism than a machine.
With current advances, digital technology has the power to support the transition to a circular economy by radically increasing virtualisation, de-materialisation, transparency, and feedback-driven intelligence.
As for the world of plastic processing and usage, the plastic industry intends to provide answers to important and pressing questions.
Regarding circular economy, the aim is to offer new products as well as optimisations which contribute to energy efficiency and resource conservation in the fied of materials and management.
Many Companies are working to give contributions to the complex area of sustainability.
Responsible use of pastics starts with product design and doesn’t end until we finally go full circle at the end of the product’s lifecycle. Attention is not only focused on visionary concepts for the the future but on practical soutions as well to increase the efficiency of production lines. |