Source: OCSE

5. Circular economy and waste


5.2 Why do we need a circular economy?

In our current economic system, resources are typically extracted from the earth, made into products, then wasted in landfill on a mass scale. These processes have devastating impacts on our environment. The United Nations has declared that unsustainable consumption and production patterns are the root cause of our planet’s biggest problems: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

This is because every item we purchase – from clothes to electronics to food – has an environmental impact both at the start of its life (when it is made) and the end of its life (when it is thrown away).

How often do you think about the lifecycle of the things you buy?

It takes a lot of energy and resources to make new products. Let’s look at a t-shirt as an example. The image below illustrates the many steps that occur between ordering a t-shirt online and receiving it in the post.

Source: OCSE.

Throughout this complex process, water is used to grow the cotton and wash the fibres, energy is used to power the machinery (most likely using fossil fuels), and greenhouse gas emissions are released to transport the product long distances between each stage. It’s important to understand that the amount of resources that go into making a product are far greater than just what we see in the final product itself.

Products also have an environmental cost at the end of their lives. Everything we throw away has to go somewhere. Waste generation places pressure on the environment, requiring land for its disposal and ongoing management to stop contamination and pollution. Globally, most things that are thrown away end up in landfill. Depending on how landfill sites are managed, they can have a range of environmental impacts.

  • Landfills release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.
  • When it rains, chemicals and other harmful toxins in the landfill combine with rainwater to form leachate, which can filter through the ground to pollute soils and waterways.
  • Air pollution released by landfills can impact the health and amenity of people living nearby. This often disproportionately affects marginalised communities.
  • Establishing landfill sites can involve clearing natural areas, leading to biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation.
The Mugga Lane landfill in Canberra. Source: Transport Canberra and City Services

The more we consume, the more waste we create. High-income countries like Australia have much higher levels of resource consumption than low and middle-income countries. In the ACT, our ecological footprint is more than nine times the size of the ACT, meaning we consume and produce a lot more waste than our land can support (see Human settlements – Ecological Footprint).

What’s clear is that our current rates of consumption are unsustainable. In a world of limited resources, we cannot continue to ‘take, make and waste’ forever. Instead, we must transition to a circular economy.