Cutting the Crap

Our current resource consumption overshoots the Earth’s natural capacity by 1.5 times, and forecasts are we would need 3 to 5 Earth’s worth of resources by 2050 to sustain our predicted level of consumption. If we don’t take rapid and drastic action we will see severe economic disruption, increasing poverty, environmental degradation and quite possibly resource wars. The concept of circular economy describes the direction we need, one where we eliminate waste and keep all resources in a closed loop. However, moving to this circular economic system will be much easier and cheaper if we first dramatically reduce the amount of resources our economy uses. This is a similar concept to how energy efficiency makes the transition to 100 per cent renewable energy easier and cheaper. Changing Markets is working with our partners to make resource efficiency very concrete and tangible by focusing on the retail sector.