Humanity Risking 'Global Disaster' as Material Consumption Passes 100 Billion Tons Annually

A new report released Tuesday at the World Economic Forum’s annual summit in Davos reveals humanity’s annual material consumption has now passed 100 billion tons per year, leading the study’s authors to urge world governments and communities to drastically reduce waste.

The global think tank Circle Economy showed in its study (pdf) that global consumption just in the last two years has risen by 8% while the reuse and recycling of materials has gone down by half a percentage point—the exact opposite of what needs to happen to build a sustainable global economy.

The group detailed the “circularity gap” on social media.

“The negative trend overall can be explained by three related, underlying trends: high rates of extraction; ongoing stock build-up; plus, low levels of end-of-use processing, and cycling,” Circle Economy says. “These trends are embedded deep within the ‘take-make-waste’ tradition of the linear economy—the problems are hardwired. As such, the outlook to close the circularity gap looks bleak under the dead hand of business as usual. We desperately need transformative and correctional solutions; change is a must.”

Circle Economy advocates for economies wherein the use of renewable energy allows materials that go to waste and pollution to be reduced to zero.

“Business as usual is dead. We must commit to taking action at scale to make the circular economy reality.”
—Peter Bakker, World Business Council for Sustainable Development

“A circular economy is…about retaining value and complexity of products as highly as possible, for as long as possible—ideally, without any degradation, or fallout,” reads the report. “At the same time, they also reduce the requirement for new inputs to produce new products for replacement.”

In 2017, the last year the group has data for, humans used 100.6 billion tons of materials.

While the global population has doubled since 1970, Circle Economy found consumption has quadrupled since then.

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