{"id":2753,"title":"Linear, Recycling or Circular Economy!","description":"What is to be done? It must now be evident to even the dimmest of wits that we face an environmental crisis such as mankind has never known.  How did it come to this? What are our politicians doing to get us out of this mess?. .and, most importantly, what really needs to be done to prevent this situ","content":"<ul><li><p><strong><u>What is to be done?<\/u><br \/><\/strong><br \/>It must now be evident to even the dimmest of wits that we face an environmental crisis such as mankind has never known. How did it come to this? What are our politicians doing to get us out of this mess?...and, most importantly, what really needs to be done to prevent this situation from developing into an existential crisis. Read on\u2026<br \/><\/p><\/li><\/ul><p><br \/><img src=\"https:\/\/images.teemill.com\/5e4f74643069b4.64249321.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=auto\" alt=\"\" title=\"46185434\" \/><br \/><br \/><\/p><ul><li><p><strong><u>Where we are now.<\/u><br \/><\/strong><br \/>This diagram pretty much sums up the lifestyle of Mr and Mrs Average, at least in the western world. Fast food, fast clothes, fast and disposable pretty well everything. The latest i-phone\u2026got to have it. New kitchen every few years\u2026.of course, why not. New car on the front drive\u2026of course, what will the neighbours think of us if we don\u2019t. Of course, big business, financial institutions and our politicians love this model. It\u2019s what they call \u201caspiration\u201d, code word for spend, spend, spend, very often with money that people don\u2019t have. No chance of jumping from that boring job, debts have got to be serviced. Do people ever stop to think, \u201cDo I really <u>need<\/u> this to lead a happy and fulfilling life?\u201d Do people ever stop to think what happens to all those electrical goods that have been thrown away, what happens to all that perfectly good food that gets put in the bin (approximately 30% of the weekly shop, according to statistics), what happens to those clothes we bought oh so cheaply, wore once or twice and then binned? A trip to your local landfill might prove instructive.<br \/><br \/><strong><em>How politicians claim to be addressing our environmental crisis<br \/><\/em><\/strong><br \/>Recycling\u2026ah yes, the magic word, the silver bullet for all our ills. <br \/><br \/>Leaving aside the point the fact that so much of what is easily recyclable (glass, plastic, tins, paper) is not actually recycled at all by councils, but simply put into landfill or, just as bad, incinerated, the fact of the matter is that recycling alone will not solve this problem. Recycling <u>is<\/u> a desirable thing, no doubt, and certainly has a role to play, but it is not enough. Politicians, as they tend to do, like to pretend they have got a handle on things, but the issues at stake are far greater than can be solved by recycling paper and plastic bottles.<br \/><\/p><\/li><\/ul><p><\/p><ul><li><p><strong><u>What can be done?<\/u><br \/><\/strong><br \/>Back to our original question! <br \/><br \/>A greater mind than my own once wrote that the hardest thing in politics is to change people\u2019s mindset. It requires leadership, of course, but if ever there was a time when a radical change in behaviour and mindset was called for, it is now. The present economic model manifestly isn\u2019t working. Time to call a halt on the \u201cthrow away\u201d, consumer driven society. Do we need two or three cars sitting on the drive? Do we need to replace the carpets in our home every two or three years\u2026I could go on, you get the drift. Even more fundamentally, we need to ask what happens to the goods that we throw away. This also is not without an environmental cost. Just look at the damage caused by discarded plastic in the oceans of the world, to cite just one example. It is time to think how we can actually use and reuse what we already have. The irony of all this, of course, is that this is not a new concept. We need to relearn that happiness is wanting what you already have. This is not only a practical proposition, but also a moral one. Previous generations knew this: shoes can be repaired, children\u2019s clothes, once outgrown, can be handed on to other children, we don\u2019t need to buy a new television just because it is a few years old. I concede that financial constraints often dictated such parsimony, but is a mindset of \u201cwaste not, want not\u201d such a bad idea? Is today\u2019s younger generation with its addiction to fast food healthier or for that matter happier than for example the war generation who very often had to grow their own food and (shock horror) cook it themselves.<br \/><br \/>The German poet, Goethe, wrote \u201cDie and become\u201d. This is very sound advice. Once a good has outlived its initial purpose it can be repaired and\/ or put to another use. Just as we in our personal lives have to reinvent ourselves, learn new skills, get new jobs, so we have to learn that material goods can be reinvented, put to a new use. This is also nature\u2019s way, all living things die and are reborn. We need to rediscover this old wisdom\u2026and quickly.<\/p><\/li><\/ul><p>\u00a0<br \/>Olivier Teoule<br \/>Founder of RivalEarth<br \/>www.rivalearth.com<\/p>","urlTitle":"linear-recycling-or-circular-economy","url":"\/blog\/linear-recycling-or-circular-economy\/","editListUrl":"\/my-blogs","editUrl":"\/my-blogs\/edit\/linear-recycling-or-circular-economy\/","fullUrl":"https:\/\/rivalearthwear.com\/blog\/linear-recycling-or-circular-economy\/","featured":true,"published":true,"showOnSitemap":true,"hidden":false,"visibility":null,"createdAt":1582260867,"updatedAt":1605111298,"publishedAt":1585867513,"lastReadAt":null,"division":{"id":57181,"name":"REWEAR - by RivalEarth"},"tags":[{"id":436,"code":"circular-economy","name":"CircularEconomy","url":"\/blog\/tagged\/circular-economy\/"}],"metaImage":{"original":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/5e4f69ab637148.65142445.jpeg","thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/5e4f69ab637148.65142445.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/5e4f69ab637148.65142445.jpeg.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"metaTitle":null,"metaDescription":null,"series":[],"similarReads":[],"labels":[]}