The production,
processing, and disposal of material in our modern throwaway society
wastes not only materials but energy as well, thus producing
unnecessary, climate-disrupting carbon dioxide emissions. In nature,
one-way linear flows do not survive long. Nor, by extension, can they
survive long in the expanding global economy. The throwaway economy
that has been evolving over the last half-century is an aberration,
now itself headed for the junk heap of history. The potential for
sharply reducing materials use was pioneered in Germany, initially by
Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek in the early 1990s and then by Ernst von
Weizsäcker, an environmental leader in the German Bundestag.
They argued that modern industrial economies could function very
effectively using only one quarter the virgin raw material prevailing
at the time.
