Five hundred billion tons. That’s the amount of resources consumed globally over the past six years, between COP21 in Paris in 2015 and COP26 in Glasgow. The sum was calculated by the think tank Circle Economy that, like it does every January since 2018, presented the new Circularity Gap Report.
The document, which captures the development of the circular economy in the world, does not bring good news: Still more than 90 percent of the resources extracted and consumed do not return to the production cycles, but become waste. Today, only 8.6 percent of the world economy is circular. And it’s not getting any better.
The 50th anniversary of The Limits to Growth: Where are we now?
The year 2022 marks an important anniversary: 50 years ago, Club of Rome published the first report on “The Limits to Growth,” issuing a clear warning about the risk of collapse of an economy and a society based on infinite growth. Unfortunately, this warning has remained largely unheeded, given that since then, annual resource consumption has quadrupled, rising from 28 billion tons in 1972 to over 100 billion tons today. Read More
