The Circular Economy as the New Normal
This case study explores the steps that must be taken to apply circular thinking in the real world. It gives examples, shares experiences, and discusses the importance of a multi-stakeholder approach. It also describes the need for upscaling and innovation from a pragmatic and programmatic approach and shows how implementation gaps can be bridged.
Why is cooperation in the value chain needed at a multi-stakeholder level? If capitalism and industrialization are responsible for social and environmental degradation, what economic reforms are needed to create a circular economy?
The Circular Economy as the New Normal
Our dominant economic system focuses on the creation of wealth. It is based on capitalism in combination with industrialisation. In its early form, this combination helped develop and innovate means for the production and consumption of goods and services. It also provided a means for social mobility and helped give rise to the middle class and growing social equity within the developed world. Competition, supported by modern science, has been instrumental in driving technological progress, leading to a steady increase in quality of life. The driving economic factor of competition within finite markets, however, also gave rise to latter-day developments such as the exponential concentration of disposable wealth to an increasingly small number of people. Our current system also caused the unacceptable build-up of waste and pollution. The increased call for efficiency to safeguard profitability has widened social chasms.
As a result of this, society appears to be preparing for a change and shift of equilibrium, much like the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, when the social order was revolutionized and power shifted from the elite to include much broader sections of society. Then and now, perceived inequality and the wish to negate it, lie at the heart of the matter.
The existing structures being challenged, currently often global corporations and their supporting governmental and financial structures, typically respond with protectionism, wishing to extend the status quo. This prompts the question: which dominant thesis will be responsible for breaking this status quo and reform our economic system?
Source: Guido Braam and Dionne Ewen, https://archive.org/details/Breakthrough2180910
This work is in the Public Domain.