We are drifting from Covid19, to the pending recession, then to the even greater threat of Climate Change and will finally arrive at Biodiversity Collapse. Our failure to appreciate, care and love God’s world will be complete.
We are already approaching earth overload day, when consumption demand outstrips supply.
We have yet to understand that the world has the ability to supply only a finite amount of raw materials and biomass products yet our forecasts for GDP growth remain based on a continuously growing supply of materials and food.
The recent OECD Report, “Global Material Resources To 2060” predicts the demand for materials to 2060 and discusses the economic drivers and environmental consequences.
The report suggests that the world develops a “Circle approach” to recycling for all types of materials and predicts this will be the fastest growing area for science, technology and new industries.
The OECD report does not state the simple truth that everything we eat, make and own is produced using earth’s resources and that these are reducing at an alarming rate due to the impact of Climate Change, Biodiversity loss and our lack of sharing and care for God’s world.
The benefits of circle recycling, where the aim must be to use all materials over many times and possible for different uses are: –
- Reduced waste going into landfill and incinerators.
- Increased economic security through using domestic sources of materials.
- Conservation of the remaining material resources such as timber, water and minerals.
- Reduced pollution by reducing the need to collect new raw materials.
- Saving in total energy usage.
- Creation of new jobs, new technologies and new cleaner industries.
The share of the recycling industry in the global economy is 10X smaller than the share of mining industries. However, recycling is predicted to grow quicker than the mining industry or the materials sector within the period to 2060.
Material extraction has several environmental consequences and carries increasing costs. Recycling is projected to become more competitive compared to the extraction of primary materials.
More than half of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are related to materials management activities.
The scale of the challenge to achieve a circle of sustainability can be assessed by realizing that even today many global areas of high population density do not have simple waste collection facilities and even in the UK the concept of total recycling is still far off.
Roger Williams
2/10/2021