They further outline a place for business’s to start on their journey to a circular economy system more aligned with natural flows:
Steps to Eco-Effectiveness (Braungart, M and McDonough,W, 2002)
1. Get “Free of” known Culprits
2. Follow informed personal Preference
- Prefer ecological intelligence
- Prefer Respect
- Prefer delight, celebration and fun
3. Create a passive Positive List
- The x list – Must get rid of
- The gray list – doubtful
- The p-list – preferred list – definitely ok
4. Activate the positive list
5. Reinvent
All of this all boils down to the simple reality that we all have an intuitive understanding of — everything is interconnected to everything else in some way. Nothing living is in isolation, and we are require other systems to survive—thus we are all in an interconnected, interdependent relationship with everything else.
We live of a closed ecosystem that is perfectly calibrated for success. Our bodies are small versions of this, and we benefit every second of the day from the services that this giant ecosystem provides us.
So when we are seeking to solve and evolve some of the more complex problems humanity faces, we must start first with a shift in mindset from the one dimension of a linear plane to a three-dimensional perspective of the interconnected and dynamic nature of systems at play in the world around us.
Short of us finding a sustainable (and desirable!) way of leaving planet earth, our journey to a circular economy, over the long term has to be inevitable. In many cases the business, and social cases to do so are already compelling. This is an exciting future to think about, one where our anthropocentric activities actual contribute to improve the function of this planet we live on.
Great References