Originally published on Bonfire
Nearly all the materials we deploy end up at landfills or in the air as carbon dioxide. This is addressed, for example, in the World Circularity Gap report (Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative – Home (circularity-gap.world)). What is particularly concerning is that the global recycling rate has decreased from 2018 (9.1%) to 2023 (7.2%). However, this is not because recycling has not increased – it is because the use of virgin materials is increasing even faster. In fact, no material is recycled at a sufficient level globally, not even gold (approx. 30–40%). Mathematically speaking, this leads to two critical facts: the amount of biomass will decrease, and non-renewable resources will eventually run out.
There are various estimates as to when our different resources will be fully consumed. The reserves of various metals that are important to humans are at risk of being consumed within 20–60 years, for example, copper in 60–80 years, zinc in 20–60 years, and certain rare earth metals in less than 20 years. Without copper and rare earth metals, it is not possible to build renewable energy. In addition, one raw material worth mentioning is phosphorus, which is at risk of being exhausted within 50–100 years. Without it, modern agriculture would not be possible.
“Without copper and rare earth metals, it is not possible to build renewable energy”
At first, 20–60 years may seem like a long time, but in terms of humankind, we are talking about short-term, at worst, less than a generation. At the moment, the unsettling reality is that political decision-makers and companies do not understand how serious this issue is. Just as climate change may force us to adapt, the over consumption of materials may cause a significant societal imbalance and accelerate biodiversity loss. As a result, the decline of materials may lead to searching for them in locations critical to biodiversity.
Obviously, estimates regarding the exhaustion of resources have many uncertainties and, therefore one should note that the time span may be longer. However, it may also be significantly shorter than assessed. In particular, if the consumption of virgin materials continues to increase, we may run out of certain materials even faster than expected.
Unsustainable linear economy practices are at the core of the problem
Today, if a material becomes scarce, the most typical way to solve the issue is to find another material to replace it. It is important to note that by acting so, even the replacing material will eventually become scarce. Unfortunately, it is rare that companies would start looking for an alternative way of value creation and ask themselves: how can I produce the same value for my clients by using the principles of circular economy?
The important first step is to identify the challenges resulting from the scarcity of materials and to start solving them early enough. I wrote about the bottlenecks of circular economy in my previous blog (Transition to circular economy happens in phases ). The key bottlenecks are the lack of understanding on circular economy business models as well as regulation supporting the circular economy. Companies should imagine what their business would look like following the principles of circular economy: how can we create value for our clients while using materials efficiently? Society, on the other hand, needs to create legislation that makes it beneficial to deploy operating models that follow circular economy principles.
