Current Affairs
20 August, 2024
Circular economy
The way we live now is using 60% more resources than the Earth can provide – and creating
too much waste, according to experts.
Switching to a circular economy is widely considered to be the way forward.
What is the circular economy?
In a circular economy, things are made and consumed in a way that minimizes our use of
the world’s resources, cuts waste and reduces carbon emissions. Products are kept in use
for as long as possible, through repairing, recycling and redesign – so they can be used
again and again.
At the end of a product’s life, the materials used to make it are kept in the economy and
reused wherever possible, the European Parliament explains.
The circular economy could unlock $4.5 trillion of value by 2030.Image: European
Parliament
Why is the circular economy important?
The circular economy is an alternative to traditional linear economies, where we take
resources, make things, consume them and throw them away. This way of living uses up
finite raw materials and produces vast quantities of waste.
For example, the European Union produces more than 2.5 billion tonnes of waste a year.
Extracting and processing raw materials impacts the environment and increases energy
consumption and CO2 emissions.
A circular economy could unlock $4.5 trillion of value by 2030, a report by Accenture
estimates.
What changes could make the world more ‘circular’?
A more circular world would require system change. Consumers, businesses and politicians
all need to make changes to how goods are designed, produced, sold, manufactured and
reused. Some shifts could include:
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Design: A circular economy will require designing products so they can be easily
recycled or disassembled (for repair, reuse or resource recovery). This could mean
designing consumer products with fewer raw materials or capital equipment designed
for serviceability, modularity, and refurbishment. For instance, mobile phone
maker Fairphone developed the world's first smart phone built with circularity and supply
chains in mind, creating an Android phone with a modular design that's easy to repair
and purchase spare parts for.
Business models: Product-as-a-service (where a provider retains the ownership of a
product and the customer purchases access to it), sharing economy (where assets are
shared across many owners) and others show alternative approaches to business that
embed sustainability into way business is conducted.
New metrics and shared data: Better data on availability of materials used for hard to
abate industries such as construction can help slash emissions and protect biodiversity
with reuse. For instance, the Netherlands Department for Public Works together with
Rotterdam and Amsterdam, developed a national bruggenbank, or National Bridge Bank
that serves as a marketplace for soon-to-be dismounted bridges and materials to
maximise their reuse. Better data will also be critical as there's currently no standardized
set of metrics to track progress on things such as reuse, something vital to tackling
plastic pollution or protecting vital resources. To this end, World Economic Forum’s
Consumers Beyond Waste (CBW) initiative is helping to develop a set of standardized
metrics, a key step in speeding the shift to reuse models.
Policy: Creating incentives for businesses and communities to build more circular
habits is key to triggering long-term change. France, for instance, passed a law phasing
out single-use plastic packaging by 2040 that has set other objectives reduction, reuse,
and recycling. In September 2022, the residents of Zurich voted to include the circular
economy in the canton's constitution. Additionally, the European Union recently
released the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), putting forth reuse
targets across select industry sectors.
Is recycling part of the circular economy?
Recycling involves converting waste materials into new materials and objects. This process
itself uses energy and creates emissions, so can still contribute to global warming.
In an ideal circular economy, products are redesigned so they last through several life
cycles – rather than being immediately recycled.
This can include refurbishing and redistributing products.
What is the state of global circularity?
According to The Circularity Gap Report, published February 2023, the amount of secondary
materials being cycled back into the global economy has shrunk from 9.1% of total material
inputs in 2018 to 7.2% in 2023.
"This isn’t simply because we’re failing to cycle more," it says. "It’s also due to increasing
virgin extraction and the fact that we are putting more and more materials into stocks like
roads, homes and durable goods."
Total material extraction has more than tripled since 1970 and almost doubled since 2000,
putting it at 100 billion tonnes per year, the report says. It estimates that a circular economy
could cut global material extraction by a third – and it is sorely needed, with the world having
breached five of nine "planetary boundaries" that measure environmental health.
The waste of raw materials won't just disrupt lifestyles (It's estimated that 6 of the key
elements for mobile phones will run out in the next century). It can slow our progress
towards other, bigger goals. (Many materials lost to landfills as e-waste today will be key to
the energy transition.)
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Continuing on this path could lead to "total breakdown of Earth’s life support systems, which
are already at a breaking point", the report says.
Global material extraction has more than tripled since 1970.Image: The Circularity Gap
Report
How can innovation fuel the circular economy?
There are a growing number of circular economy initiatives and technologies already under
way.
Examples include the Circulars Accelerator, a six-month programme run by UpLink, the
World Economic Forum’s innovation crowdsourcing platform, to help circular economy
innovators scale their ideas. In 2022, 17 start-ups are taking part in the programme.
They include Aquacycl, an American company that generates electricity from untreatable
waste water; Done Properly, a company in Chile developing sustainable food ingredients
and Green Mining, a company in Brazil that recycles consumer packaging.
Innovation is key to progress. Research from Forum initiative Scale360° and ScaleUpNation
found that startups that look to build ideas that scale while tackling system change can have
an outsized impact on entire industries, accelerating work toward the United Nations
Sustainable Development Goals, triggering change that would not be possible through
classic commercial strategies.
The four key circular economy principles. Image: The Circularity Gap Report
The Circularity Gap Report says there are four key circular economy principles that we need
to follow to achieve a 33% reduction in material extraction and consumption – use less, use
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longer, use again and make clean. It calls for increased public-private collaboration to make
this vision a reality, and points out the ultimate reason why things need to change: "By
upgrading to a model that maximizes the value that we extract from our precious materials,
we can better ensure the well-being of present and future generations, while respecting the
boundaries of our planet."
How the Banni grasslands of Kachchh, Gujarat can be restored
The Kachchh district in Gujarat houses one of the largest tracts of grasslands in the
country. In a new study, researchers have assessed the suitability of different areas of
Banni for sustainable grassland restoration, considering ecological value to be the
primary criterion
Grasslands are one of the largest ecosystems in the world. They are distributed mainly in
semiarid and arid areas, and include savannahs, grassy shrublands, and open grasslands.
They harbour a large number of unique and iconic species and offer a variety of material and
intangible advantages to people, including several ecosystem services such as carbon
storage, climate mitigation, and pollination. Like other types of biodiversity, they face the
problem of degradation due to deforestation, overgrazing, agriculture, urbanisation, and
other natural and human-made reasons. As much as 49% of grassland areas worldwide are
estimated to be experiencing degradation.
The Kachchh district in Gujarat, in the western part of the country, houses one of the largest
tracts of grasslands in the country. Popularly known as ‘Banni’, it once covered an area of
approximately 3,800 sq. km but it has now decreased to about 2,600 sq. km.
Grassland expansion should also not be much difficult in the third “moderately suitable”
zone. Further, the “marginally suitable” and “not suitable” zones can also be managed
through interventions such as terracing; with supplementary inputs like fertilizers; and by
protecting from high water run-off and erosion, and salt intrusion,
The study could provide the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and policymakers a robust
foundation for crafting policies aimed at protecting and rehabilitating degraded grasslands.
Study fills the gap and also covers more aspects to get as comprehensive a picture as
possible. We have analysed multiple characteristics of soil also, such as the availability of
the three important nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, and four essential
micronutrients, iron, manganese, zinc, and copper, … soil acidity, soil texture, soil organic
carbon, salinity, the water holding capacity, cation exchange capacity, bulk density, and
infiltration rate
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Many bird species — such as the great Indian bustard and the Bengal florican — prefer to
breed in grasslands, but grassland areas are shrinking constantly due to anthropogenic
activities, threatening biodiversity as well as the ecosystem services they provide.
Places in News
Tungabhadra dam
A flood alert has been issued in Karnataka’s Koppal district after one of the 33 crest gates of
the Tungabhadra dam was washed away.
The dam is located across the Tungabhadra river, which is formed by the confluence of the
Tunga and Bhadra rivers near Shimoga in the Western Ghats.
The Tungabhadra river, flowing into the Krishna river at Sangamaleshwaram in Andhra
Pradesh, has a catchment area of nearly 70,000 sq km.
Kursk region
Ukrainian troops have advanced 30 km into Russia’s Kursk region, marking Kyiv’s largest
incursion into Russian territory since the war began in 2022.
Russian forces are currently engaged with Ukrainian troops near the villages of Tolpino and
Obshchy Kolodez- which are about 25 km and 30 km from the Russia-Ukraine border.
Nankai Trough
Japan’s government has issued a warning against the country’s first-ever “megaquake
advisory” on August 8, hours after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck off southwestern
Japan.
The Nankai Trough is an underwater subduction zone (nearly 900 km long) where the
Eurasian Plate collides with the Philippine Sea Plate, pushing the latter under the former and
into the Earth’s mantle.
St Martin’s Island
The recent ousting of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has brought St Martin’s Island under the
spotlight.
The island is located in the northeastern region of the Bay of Bengal, close to the border
between Bangladesh and Myanmar. It is nine kilometres away from the southern tip of
Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf peninsula.
Noble pen shells
Fan mussel (pinna nobilis) clams, also known as noble pen shells, are one of the most
popular and beloved species in the Mediterranean Sea. An attractive sight on the sea floor,
these huge clams can reach 120cm (47in) in height and live for almost half a century.
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Their ability to filter water, using the nutrients for food and transforming pollutant particles
into pseudo faeces that get deposited on the sea floor, combined with their large size mean
they are also an important species for the marine ecosystem. A single clam can filter up to
2,000 litres (440 gallons) per day. Meanwhile, their huge shells serve as small biodiversity
hubs, harbouring up to 35 different species.
The charismatic clams have long been cherished, including by ancient Greeks and Romans,
who used the filaments that keep the clam attached to the sea floor as expensive sea silk for
the clothes of the wealthiest citizens.
Populations of the clams saw some decline through the 20th Century due to fishing and
habitat degradation, and were added to several protected species lists. But in 2016, whole
previously healthy populations of fan mussels suddenly started dying all across the
Mediterranean Sea.
