In last week’s episode, we discussed the impact of the European Green Deal on the development of the Circular Economy. Having such a large and powerful partner actively supporting a transition to a Circular Economy is sure to be a great boost that will help bring this model to the mainstream.
This week, we are going to talk about poverty and the Circular Economy. These are two concepts that may seem unrelated at first, but in reality an evolution to a Circular Economy will make it much more possible to reduce poverty worldwide.
Inequality and sustainability
The first factor I want to look at between Circularity and poverty is sustainability. One of the key pillars of the Circular Economy is to not only be economically and ecologically sustainable, they also promise social sustainability. Circular Economy as a concept aims to reduce inequality and to help people around the world achieve a better quality of life. This better quality of life can be achieved in multiple ways. Firstly, there is the aim to reduce waste and pollution. In the present day, waste generated in richer countries often finds its way to be disposed in poorer countries. By reducing, and eventually eliminating, waste and introducing the cradle-to-cradle concept, waste will be a productive resource that can be worked with. There are a lot of possibilities in this waste-as-a-resource concept.
Additionally, we are currently seeing that poorer countries and regions tend to get hit harder by the effects of climate change. Think about for example the long-term droughts in parts of Africa or increasing monsoon floods in South Asia. The Circular Economy promises a reduction in pollution and hopefully that leads to a rebalancing of our ecosystem over time. So a reduction in pollution should also lead to less frequent and less intense natural disasters.
Poverty and the Linear Economy
In order to make the comparison to the Circular Economy, I first want to show the current, problematic relationship between the Linear Economy and poverty.
Some of you may be familiar with the term: World Overshoot Day. This is the day when the worldwide usage of ecological resources in that year exceed the resources that the Earth can generate in a year. In 2020 this date fell on the 22nd of August. After that date, we are essentially “stealing” resources from future generations. This Overshoot Day calculation is based on the worldwide consumption of resources.
Another way to look at this overconsumption is the research by De Chant. He calculated the per capita consumption of each country and then calculated how many earths we would need to sustain this rate of consumption if the whole world consumed the same way that one country would. If we look at France as an example, we would need 2.5 times our Earth to give everyone the same quality of life as the people in France.
And this is where the issue with lifting people out of poverty comes in. The Western way of life and consumption is essentially balanced out by the many, many people living in poverty. In a Linear economy, the rich countries are almost incentivised to keep poor countries poor in order to maintain their quality of life. In a Linear, wasteful economy, we are sustainably and ecologically unable to lift billions of people out of poverty.
That is why the Circular Economy and poverty interrelate so significantly. In order to lift people out of poverty we need to make a high quality of life more ecologically attainable. In a Circular Economy, we can achieve a high quality of life in a sustainable way. We are decoupling economic growth and consumption from resource usage, so we can still offer people luxuries such as smartphones, cars and so on, but in a sustainable way.
So achieving Circularity is not only a sustainable and ecological goal. It is also a socio-economic goal. Circularity aims to make the world a better place in more ways than one.