DAVOS – At the World Economic Forum, which gets underway in Davos today, impact organisation Circle Economy has launched a new report which finds that whilst global material consumption has grown to top 100 billion tonnes per annum for the first time ever, reuse and recycling efforts are dwindling.
The Circularity Gap Report 2020 details worrying new figures that only 8.6 per cent of all minerals, fossil fuels, metals and biomass used each year are in fact circular, compared to 9.1 per cent two years ago.
“We risk global disaster if we continue to treat the world’s resources as if they are limitless,” warns Circle Economy’s CEO, Harald Friedl. “Governments must urgently adopt circular economy solutions if we want to achieve a high quality of life for close to 10 billion people by mid-century without destabilising critical planetary processes.”
The report’s author says national governments must shift from a linear to a circular economy if they’re to introduce damage control. To kickstart efforts to this end, Circle Economy has categorised countries based on their economies, production outputs and consumption levels to establish whether they need to build, grow or shift – offering suggestions on how each of these can be achieved.
