History of the Circular Economy. The Historic Development of Circularity and the Circular Economy
This chapter distinguishes four types of ‘circularity’, which exist in parallel in many parts of the world: (1) Circularity has been inherent in nature—water, CO2, matter and energy—and early humanity—reuse, barter and cascading. Sustainable consumption o
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The Historic Development Nature is built on circularity principles, with no waste and without time pressure and financial constraints: witness the water and carbon cycles, the weather and seasonal cycles. However, if mankind floods nature with waste, be it CO2 in the atmosphere, plastic objects in the oceans or objects in space, nature may take a long time to absorb the ‘new food’, and the solution may not be to our liking: when fish eat plastic molecules instead of plankton, people will eat plastic fish, with unknown effects on human health. Early man had to cope with whatever resources were available and could be used as, or transformed into, shelter, food, products or tools. This was a circular economy based on scarcity, as expressed in an old New England maxim: use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. Circularity was a necessity for most; only the rich and mighty lived in relative comfort. This situation can still be found in less industrialised countries. More than two hundred years ago, the Industrial Revolution enabled society to overcome scarcities of shelter, food and objects. Extensive iron ore and coal mining led to the development of iron and steel, and steam engines became more productive and powerful machines than horses. Hundred years later, electricity enabled men to conquer the third dimension in mobility and to decentralise the use of power; electric cables replaced transmissions. These new energies enabled mass production of anything and turned scarcities first into plenty, then abundance and a plethora of waste.
W. R. Stahel (B) Product Life Institute, Geneva, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] Circular Economy of the European Commission, Brussels, Belgium © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. Eisenriegler (ed.), The Circular Economy in the European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50239-3_2
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But throughout this period, reuse and repair approaches of the circular economy have remained omnipresent in society, silently and invisible. Next to the deafening noise and visual attacks of the publicity of the linear industrial economy, people are unaware that numerous small repair shops flourish as SMEs outside their fields of interest, such as shoemakers and violinmakers, and that they are constantly buying and selling used objects such as coins and banknotes, or trading goods with others through garages sales and charity events in a circular economy simply because it makes common sense. Economists focused their attention on manufacturing and regarded activities related to the utilisation of goods as unproductive and negligible services.
The Pioneering Phase of the CIE The tide started to change in the early 1970s, at the end of the golden quarter century of high economic growth, which followed the Second World War. Among the thinkers questioning mainstream economics was a group of American economists (Hermann Daly, Fay Duchin, Roberto Costanza, Hazel Henderson and others, many of which have been members of the Club of Rome), the Chilean Max Neef (bare
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