Circular economy: Philosophy, history, and prospects

Excerpts of a lecture delivered at Sri Jayewardenepura University — Part Ill

- By W.A. Wijewardena

Need for putting resources to the maximum use

THE core principle of circular economy underlies the need for putting the scarce and limited resources to the maximum use by people. It requires people to recycle what is being used on one side and establish a production model that would use the output of one economic activity as inputs for another economic activity, on the other. This differs from the existing linear economic model in which resources are converted to outputs for use by people. Once used, they disappear from the system leading to the accumulation of waste-matter in environment. Thus, in the circular system, resources are put to the maximum use before they disappear from the system.

Poverty: driver of recycling

At the individual level, it is driven by a lack of sufficient income to meet ends or conscious efforts to attain the same through cultivated disci plines. In 1950s and 1960s, students coming from low-income families in Sri Lanka were guided by their parents and teachers to use the textbooks carefully, sell to bookstores at half the listed price at the end of the school year and buy the textbooks needed for the next grade at a discount by using the sales proceeds. Thus, used textbooks were eternally recycled till such time they are being prescribed for schools.

Recycling in the Buddha's time

This is not a new discipline acquired by students in the 20th century. According to a story in the Dhammapadatthakatha, it has happened even at the time of the Buddha in the 6th century BCE. The story says that when Elder Ananda, personal aide to the Buddha, and 500 of his supportive bhikkus had been offered expensive silk robes by Samavati, chief consort of King Udena, an issue had arisen whether they had accepted those robes out of greed, a defilement which Buddha's disciples should have eradicated within them. On inquiry by the king.