The concept at it’s most basic, creating economic systems that are zero waste through circular flows is great. It’s appropriation by the cold war II industrial agents is not good at all, but completely predictable. Their polemic that we can continue ‘business as usual’ and we can simply reduce waste by cycling it back into the supply stream is utterly flawed.
Here is a case in point, posted recently on Linkedin “5 U.S. States Are Repaving Roads With Unrecyclable Plastic Waste–And Results Are Impressive, Headache-inducing plastic waste such as printer cartridges and plastic bags are being turned into aggregate material for asphalt road mixtures around the country.” The average life span for a sprayed seal surface is usually around 13 years on most asphalt surfaces it’s around 26 years. So in less than 1/4 of a century that plastic will be back out and loose in the environment.
Plastic bottles are fakecycled into clothes which shed their toxic plastic load into the environment in the form of micro-plastics when they are worn and even more so when they are washed. Another aspect of this fakecycling of plastic bottles to clothes is the degradation of a resource, plastic bottles can, in many cases be recycled into more plastic bottles, plastic based clothes cannot and end their lives in landfills or waste to energy power plants. Another major problem with fakecycling is that most reports don’t factor in the energy costs, most often there is a commentary saying that a recycling plant will, at some time in the future use renewable energy …. In fact one of big oils strategies in this cold war II is to hide the fossil fuel dependancy of many of the alternative energy, recycling etc industries.
Once upon a time we talked about the three R’s, reduce, reuse, recycle. The first is of no interest to an industry, the second only as a marketing strategy, the third has been corrupted into fakecycling - continue consuming as much as you want but through your rubbish into the appropriate bin. In the US only around 35% of waste is ‘recycled’ and the figures don’t reveal what the waste is recycled into, a considerable quantity goes into waste to energy power plants. This would seem to be stretching the definition of ‘recycling’ beyond it’s elastic limit.
Another industry approach is to produce stuff which is “biodegradable”. It’s ok to use our products because they biodegrade by ‘natural’ processes. Not data is produced to show what these biodegradable products biodegrade into. One example of these materials is the polylactic acid-based plastic (PLA) which is sold as a biodegradable plastic yet a study showed that after 31 weeks of home composting NONE of the plastic had biodegraded. Yet another eco-fraud with at least two things that are unsaid, 1. what does it degrade into and 2. how long will it take, after all given enough time most things will biodegrade.
This hijacking of the circular economy model is a major concern and the question is what can we do about it? Well … don’t believe the hype as they say. We cannot continue to produce goods that can’t be reused or recycled in a way that uses as little energy as possible. We cannot continue to produce goods that haven’t, before their production starts, been given a cradle to grave analysis. We cannot continue business as usual and think that, thanks to the fakecycling industry, used goods will be magically transformed into something else.
Is there a solution? Well the caveat emptor/buyer beware problem can be solved by changing our global economic paradigm and replacing it with a local ethical and ecological economic paradigm. The emphasis goes to creating local sustainable economies that minimise industrial inputs and replace them with artisanal ones. Once many countries reused glass bottles which would have a deposit on them to encourage their return. Due to weight and breakage considerations they were replaced with plastic bottles. In a local artisanal circular stationary state economy transport is minimised and glass bottles can find their place again. Within such a system it is possible to design the material flows in a rational way, the secondary products of one element are a resource for the next activity. Product containers are reused and if necessary recycled, broken glass bottles to glass bottles for example.
Permaculture design places a lot of importance on adjusting and redirecting flows, it also adds a big E to the three R’s. ELIMINATE the production of anything which damages the Earth, us and all other forms of life.