Unmaking Waste in Production and Consumption : Towards The Circular Economy

The legacies of a century of fossil-fuel based development andoverconsumption, of treating the environment as a waste sink for industryand agriculture, have left devastating impacts on the earth's air, water andland, and these are directly implicated in Climate Change. In response, anumber of global institutions and nations, including the European Unionand China, have committed themselves to the development of a 'circulareconomy'. This will require a transformation of today's 'linear economy' of'make, use and dispose' as the market dictates, into a Circular Economy.The aim of the Circular Economy is to decouple economic growth fromresource and energy use through iterative, systemic social, economic andtechnological reform. This book presents new theoretical and practicalinsights into this concept, based on case studies from both the developingand developed world, with an emphasis on economic and materialtransformation, design for reuse and waste reduction, industrial 'symbiosis'(the planned circulation of resources and energy within an industrial setting),and social innovation and entrepreneurship.Four central themes emerge through the essays presented here: theimportance of 'restorative design' in transforming resource flows throughboth production and consumption, the value of understanding andenumerating wastes in more detail to enable their reuse, the central roleof advancing technology and applied science to further this transformationof materials for reuse, and finally, a reconfiguration of design, consumptionand retail, so that the present 'linear' economy of 'make, use and trash' canbe replaced with a more 'circular' model.