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How to globalize the circular economy

Set up an international platform to share data and experiences, and coordinate industrial policies and trade to conserve resources and energy, urge Yong Geng, Joseph Sarkis and Raimund Bleischwitz.
  1. Yong Geng

    1. Yong Geng is professor and dean at the School of Environmental Science and Engineering and deputy director of the China Institute of Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University; and an adjunct professor at the Shanghai Institute of Pollution Control and Ecological Security, Shanghai, China.

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  2. Joseph Sarkis

    1. Joseph Sarkis is professor of management at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA; and a research fellow at the Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland.

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  3. Raimund Bleischwitz

    1. Raimund Bleischwitz is chair in sustainable global resources at the Institute for Sustainable Resources and director at the Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, University College London, UK.

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Chemical fibre textile materials made from waste plastic bottles

A worker checks polyester fibres made from waste plastic bottles in Binzhou, China. Credit: Yoshinori Kageyama/Barcroft Media/Getty

Industry must rethink its approach to resources. Manufacturing is wasteful. It takes a tonne of metal, silicon and plastic to produce a laptop computer weighing a few kilograms. Waste is an afterthought. Each year, 8 million tonnes of plastic are dumped into the oceans. Greenhouse-gas emissions are out of control. Producing cement releases as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year as Europe’s 300 million cars: 1.5 billion tonnes1. Water is squandered — we calculate that it takes 1,250 litres of water to grow 1 kilogram of rice in China.

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Nature 565, 153-155 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00017-z

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