Road to Zero-Waste 2024
Zero-waste is a movement that still feels early but will become absolutely necessary in the near future. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the circular economy is a $4.5T market opportunity. Waste is a resource that is only going to become more expensive. From reducing landfill space to higher environmental taxes, the over-extraction of materials will force the cost of goods to increase over time. Finding new ways of keeping materials in the system and extending their life as much as possible is an absolute necessity to ensure that society can reduce its impact on the world and reduce global greenhouses by 50%. While the road is long, and in some ways just getting started, the opportunity is clear. The circular economy offers one of the biggest opportunities of growth in human history. The systemic changes necessary for the circular economy are not as big as they are feared to be. As this report has shown, some steps to becoming more circular are small. Consuming less is easy to do in practice, but the economic model of constant growth makes the appetite difficult to comprehend. It depends on what your time horizon is. There will be an inflection point - when policies catch up, virgin materials become too expensive, and consumer sentiment has flipped - that will trigger the exponential growth of the zero-waste movement. Just like how renewable energy has reached that inflection point, and it is now cheaper to source energy from renewable sources than fossil fuels, the same will be done for our material consumption. Time will tell.
It’s really great info! As someone from the industry, I resonated with several of the trends and challenges. I also learned new things that have kick started more questions and ideas to continue the journey forward.
Key Takeaways
- Learn about the current state of zero-waste
- Where the industry is heading into 2025
- Insights from industry leaders shaping the future