DISRUPT OUR ECONOMY

The planet needs us to take drastic action

- BY DAME ELLEN MACARTHUR AND JONQUIL HACKENBERG

OUR 19TH CENTURY ECONOMIC MODEL is running on borrowed time. Finite resources are used to make things that we soon discard. Even if some are recycled, it’s a wasteful, polluting system that’s too fragile for today’s world.

Resale sites and companies building circular business models into their operations are making strides. And there are steps toward a global plastics treaty to address how plastic is made and used, not just how it’s recycled.

The circular economy is a strategic counterattack against cascading global threats. Some 55% of large businesses have circular-economy commitments or strategies, and more than 75 countries are actively developing circular-economy road maps.

Yet global challenges are still outpacing the solutions, and we face the question of how to achieve economic change to address the issue.

We believe it’s with collaborative action and collective advocacy. Change starts in key industries, ripe for disruption, where circular solutions can have the biggest impact. That means creating the conditions to scale up at local levels, including developing infrastructure and redesigning fiscal policies to let circular business models compete with traditional ones, then applying the lessons learned in other strategic local contexts.