economy has always depended on cheap energy to power it. It has lasted this long only because energy was, until recently, still relatively inexpensive and abundant.
This cheap energy also drove the mindset that our stuff needs to be made cheaper and cheaper. We made everything so cheap, in fact, that it was easier to just throw something away and buy a new one. Cheap energy devalued everything else, bringing in cheap materials, cheap labor, and cheap credit to buy it all with.
Unfortunately, the extraction and use of fossil fuels is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and the climate crisis facing humans today.
The oil age is over. Because it’s no longer cheap or abundant, the cracks are starting to appear in the façade. The famous English economist John Maynard Keynes famously said, “If the facts change, I change my mind; what do you do, sir?”
The fact is that fossil-fuel-based energy is expensive and destructive to the climate. As our dependence on fossil fuels must change, so too must our linear economic model change.
We’re Making the Wrong Stuff
The linear economic model of take-make-waste isn’t flawed only in the resources we’re taking; what we’re making is also out of step with reality.
Every year, humans produce 300 tons of new plastic, most of which ends up in landfills or oceans. If you look around your home, you quickly discover how many items are made of plastic. If you take a peek into your trash and recycling bins, you might also notice how much of that is plastic as well.
Companies use plastic because it’s durable, flexible, colorful, and washable, but more importantly, because it’s cheap. The raw materials for plastic are easily available, and you can mold it into any shape you want. That’s why we humans use so much of it.
Relying on plastic for so much of what’s produced isn’t the only issue with the stuff we make. There are several common problems with all the stuff we produce:
Poor materials: The product uses cheap materials that pollute during the production process.
Lack of durability: The products are designed to break, forcing customers to buy new ones after a short time.
Energy intensive: The products require massive amounts of energy to produce, which results in the release of carbon emissions.
Produces waste: Every ton that’s produced creates many times that amount of waste.
Doesn’t reflect the product's true cost: The cost to operate or maintain the product is paid later on by the consumer.
Doesn’t reflect the product's true impact: The damage to the environment isn’t paid for or cleaned up by anyone.
Not upgradable: The product can’t be upgraded after parts are outdated.
Not repairable: The product isn’t designed to be repaired.
Not recyclable: The product mixes materials that makes recycling them difficult or impossible.
Doesn’t disassemble: The product cannot be taken apart to make recycling or repair easier.
Not as useful as possible: The product has a single, limited, or short-term use that isn’t as useful as it could be.
Not local: The product is produced from materials sourced from faraway or that must be shipped long distances to reach the hands of customers.
You’re buying trash
Because the linear economy depends on the excessive consumption of take-make-waste, it means that everything people buy is expected to end up in the landfill at some point. If everything is designed to end up in the landfill, then everything we buy is really just trash in an earlier form.
Even kids can build with blocks
Your smartphone is a technological marvel, but will that always be the case? Next year, the latest smartphone model will be released, with a new camera, better screen, and faster chip. You want that new phone, but your current phone still works perfectly fine, and it seems a waste to discard it. If only you had another option between keep-the-old and buy-new-and-discard?
Imagine instead that your smartphone is smart enough to be modular. That way, you could pop out your old camera module and pop in the newest version. You could pop out the old screen and pop in the new one with a higher resolution. You could even pop out the processor chip and replace it with a newer, faster model.
This approach allows for each component of a product to be upgraded, and extends the useful life of that product by years or even decades.
Trying to recycle the unrecyclable
If you’re one of those green-minded folks who recycles everything in your house, that’s great! You’re doing your part to minimize your impact and to keep valuable resources from ending up in the landfill.
Unfortunately, most of the materials that humans recycle weren’t designed to be recycled. Even materials such as glass, aluminum, plastic, and paper still require complex machinery and large inputs of energy in order to make them recyclable.
This statement isn’t intended to discourage you from recycling, but rather to highlight the need to use materials that are easily recyclable in the first place. In addition, some people might assume that it’s okay to continue buying single-use plastic, because they know they will recycle it, but this strategy just perpetuates the linear economic cycle. Instead, we need to engineer innovative new materials that are designed to be recycled.
AirCarbon is a new, alternative plastic, made by capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This alternative is carbon-negative: It uses no fossil fuels and can be made into virtually any product that would normally use plastic. At the end of its life, the AirCarbon can be collected and remade into new products again and again. For more on AirCarbon, check out its manufacturer's website at www.newlight.com.
We’re using materials that are bad for us
Perhaps the most tragic part of this entire story is that most of the products we use every day contain known cancer-causing (carcinogenic) chemicals that are harmful to human health.
That cute new baby blanket you just bought? It contains brominated flame retardants that are known to be linked to a host of neurological and cognitive problems in children.
That handy, reusable plastic water bottle you take with you every time you go for a run? It probably contains a hardening agent known as BPA (Bisphenol A) that has been linked to an increased likelihood of Alzheimer's, childhood asthma, metabolic disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.