The Contested Circle – Part 1: Beyond Take-Make-Waste: The Promise and Physics of Perfect Loops
The Contested Circle: A Critical Roadmap to the Circular Economy 1 The Contested Circle – Part 1: Beyond Take-Make-Waste: The Promise and Physics of Perfect Loops 2 The Contested Circle – Part 2: Green Growth's Illusion: Why Efficiency Alone Cannot Sustain the System 3 The Contested Circle – Part 3: The Systemic Choke Points: Overcoming the Economic and Logistical Barriers 4 The Contested Circle – Part 4: Quantifying the Decoupling: How Circularity Mitigates Carbon and Secures Supply 5 The Contested Circle – Part 5: The Mandate of Justice: Governance, Labor, and the Equitable Framework ← Series Home The Implosion of Linearity: Why the “Throw Away” Model Must End The prevailing economic structure, inherited from the Industrial Revolution, operates on a stark and finite logic: take, make, consume, throw away. This linear economic model functions as an open-ended material flow, relentlessly extracting vast quantities of cheap, easily accessible virgin materials, manufacturing products, and then discarding them as waste after a single, limited use. This systemic reliance on high material throughput has yielded significant economic growth but has proven fundamentally destructive to planetary systems. In 2022, the average European consumed 14.9 tonnes Average raw materials consumed per European in 2022 ...