The rate at which Earth's natural resources are being consumed by humanity, is higher than the rate at which the planet can regenerate them. Damaged ecosystems, declining biodiversity, and climate change are results of these actions and have been observed in various environments already. The continuous draining of these natural resources, that sustain our current wealth, will undermine the very foundation of our global economy.
92 billion tons of resources follow a linear, "take-make-waste" economic path each year, just to be discarded at the end of the value chain. Our modern economies extract these great volumes of resources, use them in production processes and then throw them away, to pile up and never to be used again.
The circular economy offers a more sustainable alternative to this linear approach. The circular economy allows for the decoupling of resource extraction from economic growth, by centering the design of the entire product life cycle around the circular flow of resources. Value chains are turned into value cycles by fully closing the resource loops. These resource loops address the sustainable usage of the raw product materials, the resources in the production process itself, the end-of-life strategy for recovering from the production process, and ultimately the reuse of spent resources.
Benefits for companies that embrace circular economy practices include the prevention of environmental collapse, the promotion of social stability and the ensuring of economic prosperity for the company, it's wealth, people, and resources.