PRESENTER: Each year, Joe Citizen discards more than half a ton of garbage, everything from empty pizza boxes and eggshells, to broken dishes, appliances, old tires, and the kitchen sink. Worldwide, that's almost a billion tons of stinking trash every year. And somehow all of it needs to be either recycled or otherwise disposed of. So how do they do it? It's 6:00 AM in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Mike Abate and his refuse wrangling colleague, John Fuston, are starting their weekly garbage collection round. For most of us, remembering to put out our trash bins is the end of the story. But in fact, it's just the beginning of an extraordinary, epic journey. A few years ago, strong men had to wrangle your garbage into the back of their truck. These days, a robot arm takes over that duty. One truck for recyclables, another for the truly trashy. Thanks to these robotic refuse collectors, Mike and John can empty 600 bins every trip. And once they're full of trash, the trucks head for a delightful spot known as the Davis Street Transfer Center. Trucks carrying waste for recycling deposit their load here. To you and me, it just looks like rubbish. But to the discerning eye, there's gold in them there hills. Each truckload is worth hundreds of dollars. But no one is going to pay for it in its present state. First, these vast mountains of trash need to be separated into the various components of paper, metals, plastics, and glass. Doing that by hand would require a small army. So it's a good thing they have George Atrestain and a friendly garbage monster known as the single stream recycling facility. GEORGE: It's pretty incredible. It's noisy. It's dirty. It's very unglamorous. But it's a fun place to be. PRESENTER: George's smelly monster is a state of the art garbage sorting machine. Housed in a building that's barely 300 feet long, it contains almost a mile of conveyor belts constantly fed by loaders. It can sort over 300 tons of waste every day and relies on George to keep the wheels turning. First, high power fans blast a jet of air through the trash, suspending lighter paper, metal, and plastic, leaving the heavier glass bottles to fall into a separate pile. Next, a steep conveyor bounces the garbage across a series of rubber wheels. This causes the light paper products to continue upwards, while heavier metals and plastics drop down onto yet another conveyor belt. Powerful electromagnets then whisk away anything made of metal, leaving behind the plastic and other materials. Unfortunately, that's where the machine runs out of tricks. The conveyor transports the remaining waste to a team of operatives, who grade the plastic into various bins under George's eagle eye. GEORGE: This is our container aisle. And it's a fun, noisy, very unglamorous place to be. But most of our staff actually prefer to be up here, because the pace of work is brisk, and there's always a chance of finding someone else's nugget, something fun and exciting. PRESENTER: Once George and his team have finished having their fun, the waste must be prepared for sale and transportation. So it's fed into these high-powered baling machines, which turn everything into identically sized cubes. Each of these bales of paper is now worth around $200, while this bale of aluminum is worth almost 10 times as much. Thanks to their uniform shape, they can be easily lifted with standard forklifts and loaded onto trucks, which will carry them off to start a new life as a pizza box or a coffee cup. But of course, some garbage is just garbage. This stuff is no good to man or beast. So it's about to be sent down into a trashy hell from which nothing returns. This is what George and his chums call the pit. It's huge. It's noisy. And it stinks. It's as deep as a four-story house and the size of a football field. Every week, this monstrous cavern swallows up the waste from over 1 million people. The garbage is heaped in at an extraordinary rate. But where does it go? Underneath the pit is a never ending line of massive 18 wheeler trucks, which park beneath an opening, allowing a combination of bulldozers and grabbers to fill them up. No sooner has one truck been filled to the brim with stinking trash than another appears, ready for loading. Each truck carries five times as much garbage as a dump truck. And once they've accepted their load, they head for the burial ground.

31 miles outside of San Francisco, the trucks finally arrive at the Altamont Landfill site. Right now, it's like the barren landscape of some cold, unfriendly planet. But today's landfill is tomorrow's golf course. Stuck underground in various parts of California sits 1.2 billion tons of waste. The massive basin currently being filled has been lined with clay and a huge impermeable membrane made from high-density polyethylene and geotextile. This lining means each basin acts a bit like a giant plastic container, preventing the waste from contaminating the surrounding soil and water table. Almost half of this waste is organic material like chicken legs and rotten tomatoes. And as it decomposes, it generates potentially explosive gases. What's more, any trapped air can cause potentially dangerous subsidence. So to remove the air and make the trash good to build on, it needs to be squashed. And that's a job for the lords of the landfill, a team of enormous bulldozers and compactors. With over 7,700 tons of waste arriving every day, they must work quickly. First up is the compactor. With a pressure of nearly 40 pounds per square inch, its 50-ton wheels act like giant rolling pins, crushing the waste into solid mass. Next, it's the bulldozers' turn. They cover the waste with a layer of soil and recycled car upholstery known as auto fluff, which helps to seal in the smell and deter scavenging animals. Finally, everything is covered with a permanent layer of soil. But that's not quite the end of the story. Because even this buried waste is put to good use. As the rubbish rots, it gives off valuable methane gas, which is harvested by these wells, which are scattered across the site. The methane extracted feeds a gas turbine, which produces enough electricity to power over 6 and 1/2 thousand homes. What's more, there is also a pilot project to turn some of the methane into liquid natural gas, which will eventually fuel the city's fleet of refuse trucks. So, next time you leave your bins outside of the house for collection, take a moment to ponder the incredible journey it's about to take. And remember, everything you throw away began life underground. Thanks to landfill sites like Altamont, it all ends up back there. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

LEON MEKITARIAN: Organic recycling is a mucky business. There's no point in being precious about it, yeah? It's dirty. It's smelly. It's basic. It's elemental. Linking what we do back to agriculture is nothing new. The Norfolk four course rotation, on which agricultural fertilizing has been founded since time immemorial, is based on returning organic manures and materials to land as fertilizers. We just got lazy in the last 40 years and bought them from an oil pipeline instead. Currently, food waste is rejected from restaurants, hotels, school canteens, and the kitchen table, put into the domestic refuse bag, and taken away and sent to landfill. Food waste in landfill generates methane. Methane is 18 times more damaging to the ozone layer than CO2 emissions. So every kilogram of food waste that ends up in landfill has the potential to dramatically increase greenhouse gases. Recycling of food waste is one of the most important things you can do. It's better for the environment than changing your car for a hybrid. The great thing about this process is it's self-heating. It's called autothermal thermophilic aerobic digestion. That's a bit of a mouthful. It basically means it's a self-heating compost heap. So, we use minimal energy here and let the bugs do all the work. This is a controlled natural reaction. All we're doing is capturing that reaction, harnessing it, and supercharging it. This plant operates at 75 degrees centigrade, which is a temperature that pasteurizes the food waste material, eliminating all risks of disease and pathogens. It does that by using the naturally occurring bacteria, which we harness in these digestive vessels, and process the waste very efficiently under its own steam. So, there's no artificial heat used in this process, unlike a lot of other technologies, to comply with the regulations which we operate under. We made a conscious decision to locate inside the greater London area. London has a huge food waste problem. There is over a million tons per year. Most of the food waste isn't collected. It goes to landfill. What is collected is transported 60 miles out to Kent and Bedford for treatment. The road miles into our plant are typically eight miles. Waste is delivered into the site, tipped into the silo. The silo moves it to the shredder. The shredder grinds up into little bits. Metals and plastics are extracted. We end up with a thick porridge. These vessels are aerated. And we establish a colony of naturally occurring bacteria, which break down and digest the food waste. At the end of the process, it's stabilized and fully treated. We put it through a de-watering plant and turn it into a solid fertilizer that looks like compost. Our process here is carbon positive in operation. And that stands alone in all technologies that are currently deployed in the UK today. And we achieved that in the main from our end product. Our process in itself is very efficient and has a high throughput, occupies a small footprint and low land use. That's all good. An existing building is also carbon beneficial. But the key element of our carbon positivity is in our end product. Fertilizer that Vertal produces contains all the essential nutrients that are required to grow a commercial crop, be that wheat, be that barley, be that oilseed rape. Displacing the use of petrochemical and derived inputs, which are reliant on oil and gas for their production, and as a result are intensely carbon negative, has huge environmental benefits. Most of the food that is consumed in the world is produced because of the advances made in agriculture since the Second World War. We're now in the post-development phase, where the consequences of the success and the profligacy of the last 50 years are coming home to roost. The world is at a carbon crossroads. Major strategic decisions have got to be made right across the world. What we can do is to start to address the carbon imbalance. We're diverting waste from landfill, reducing carbon emissions in transport. And we're making fertilizer. Waste is a dirty business. People don't want to know, generally. Before recycling, it was all in landfill. It was all causing an environmental hazard. It was causing a smell. It was something that didn't want to be discussed. That's now starting to change. People are much more interested in what happens to the waste. Much more interested in the environmental impacts of waste treatment. And people are becoming more informed. And that's only a good thing. This is part of the sustainable loop. Our process completes the recycling circle. What you scrape off the plate is helping to grow your next meal, your next loaf of bread. It's as simple as that.

PRESENTER: --decisions. What computer should we buy? And probably even more challenging-- what should we do with the old ones? When it comes to disposal, a lot is at stake. Despite recent improvements, electronics are still made with toxic materials. For example, monitor glass and circuit boards contain large quantities of lead, which cause birth defects, nervous system disorders, and brain dysfunction, especially in children. Other very-toxic metals, such as mercury, beryllium, and cadmium, are found in the equipment as well. The plastics also are a problem, as they contain highly-polluting flame retardants. Apart from the environmental and health impacts, there are other risks. Unless we take great care to totally erase our very-confidential data stored in our computers, digital assistants, and cell phones, our privacy is at risk. Businesses become vulnerable to the loss of intellectual property or confidential customer data, which can lead to criminal and civil liabilities that can cost millions. Most individuals and companies want to dispose of their e-waste responsibly, so they seek out an electronics recycler or asset recovery company. Unfortunately, all too often these e-waste recyclers are not recyclers at all. SARAH WESTERVELT: We've all seen these claims of electronics recyclers and asset recovery companies who will tell you they are diverting this equipment from landfills, they're in compliance with all regulations, and they are using environmentally sound recycling. But the fact is that US and Canadian regulations do not adequately cover this toxic waste stream. So we have plenty of companies who are simply loading up seagoing containers and sell it to the highest bidder, frequently to countries in Africa and Asia. So they're getting rich at the expense of your goodwill, and your data security, and ultimately human health and the environment. PRESENTER: Few had witnessed the cyber age nightmare in China until the Basel Action Network-- BAN-- had set an investigative team to Guangdong Province in 2001. Since it began receiving its first load of imported e-waste about 12 years ago, the Chinese township area of Guiyu has been transformed from a small rice-growing village into a bustling, sprawling junkyard for much of the world's electronic waste. BAN revisited the scene again in 2008, only to find that things had gotten far worse. In the Guiyu area, one can find whole villages of migrant workers from China's rural regions living among the piles of e-waste. They sort computer components and openly burn them in fields or large indoor fireplaces, releasing toxic smoke and ash. Toner powder is inhaled as it's swept by hand from cracked, discarded printer cartridges. Thousands of people are employed cooking circuit boards over coal-fired burners, breathing in the lead tin solder vapors for hours on end as they pluck the chips off the boards. The chips are then taken in buckets to primitive acid stripping operations along the riverways where hot acid baths are used to extract tiny fractions of gold while workers breathe the toxic fumes and flush residues right into the river. Computer monitors are cracked open, and leaded glass is dumped into old irrigation ditches. All of the well water in Guiyu is now contaminated. Samples taken by BAN in the local river revealed levels of lead 2,400 times the World Health Organization's threshold level for drinking water. And since BAN's first visit, scientists have conducted further analyses of human hair, water, sediments, and rice, and have recorded some of the highest levels of dioxins, brominated flame retardants, heavy metals, and other pollutants ever discovered anywhere on earth. BAN's next investigative assignment took them to Lagos, Nigeria, a sprawling metropolis and port for much of West Africa. Computers and other IT equipment increasingly arrive on African shores from Europe and America, ostensibly to be sold in the marketplace to be re-used. Exporters can claim that this practice extends the lives of computers, helps the poor, and allows them to bridge the digital divide. Unfortunately, the vast majority of computers, televisions, monitors, and printers that arrive in Lagos each month were found to be nonfunctional and non-repairable. They end up stacked in cavernous warehouses, or more often dumped near residential areas and burned, releasing persistent highly-toxic pollutants into the air and water. JOHN OBORO: I would tell you that we have greater percentage of those that cannot be used than those that can be used. Honestly speaking, I would say 75% of these items are not usable. OLADELE OSIBANJO: The gases are very hazardous. There are no shields. They contain toxic components. They are quite carcinogenic substances. And the incidence of such terrible diseases like cancer is very high now in Nigeria. Hazardous waste should not go from developed to developing. So the exporting country must put in strict controls and follow their own regulatory regime. If we are talking of a global village, a common future, a common destiny for all the peoples of the world, it is only fair-- morally right-- to be sure that all sides are safe at the end of the day. PRESENTER: It's not difficult to learn the identities of those that are careless about the eventual impact of their techno trash. Brand names and institutional asset tags sometimes remain on the equipment. But even when tags have been peeled off, it can be shocking to find what is hidden below the surface. As part of its investigation into the origins of e-waste found in Nigeria, BAN purchased secondhand hard drives in the market and sent them to a cyber investigative service located in Zurich, Switzerland. GUIDO RUDOLPHI: It's child's play to recover them. And so after only a little bit of time that you have to invest, you can find a lot-- a tremendous lot of data on those files from the former users. For the companies it's very risky. They cannot track back what they are distributing all over the world. You find confidential material on those hard drives, calculations, CVs from employees, private mail-- so, a lot of stuff that really, really shouldn't get out of their hands. PRESENTER: The trade in toxic wastes leaves the poor people of the world with an untenable choice between poverty and poison, a choice that nobody should have to make. In 1989, the global community came together in Basel, Switzerland to sign an international treaty designed to stop the international dumping of toxic waste. And in 1995, the Basel Convention passed a full ban on the export of hazardous wastes, including electronic waste from developed countries to developing countries. All 27 European countries have already made it illegal to ship toxic waste to developing countries for any reason. But to date, the US is the only developed country in the world that has not ratified the Basel Convention. And in fact, the United States and Canada continue to actively work to undermine the waste export ban. Meanwhile, unscrupulous recyclers have taken advantage of the uneven playing field and freely export massive volumes of electronic waste each year while their governments look the other way. It was for this reason that BAN together with the Electronics TakeBack Coalition created the e-Stewards initiative. SARAH WESTERVELT: The federal government has been horribly negligent by failing to control toxic waste exports to developing countries. So we've had to turn to the best players in the industry who are willing to go well beyond compliance. e-Stewards are North American recyclers and asset recovery companies who have agreed to the highest level of responsible recycling and reuse. PRESENTER: One of these companies is Redemtech, based in Columbus, Ohio. ROBERT HOUGHTON: We've built our business around doing the right thing socially and environmentally. Since we need to operate safe and secure facilities, pay our associates a living wage, we've invested in technology to ensure that every bit of customer data is reliably eradicated and that every pound of e-waste is properly recycled. I'm encouraged that when people learn about the toxic trade in scrap electronics they want to work with responsible recyclers. But it's not easy telling the good from the bad. e-Stewards are willing and able to prove that they're operating responsibly. And people that care must insist on that accounting. PRESENTER: Now, thanks to the e-Stewards Initiative, finding a globally-responsible electronics recycling or asset recovery company is easy. The next task is to enlist all consumers, large and small, to do the right thing and agree to make exclusive use of these leaders and avoid the laggards in the industry. The real answer surely lies not in passing our electronic waste to those least able to deal with it, but in responsibly refurbishing or recycling it here at home.

PRESENTER: --decisions. What computer should we buy? And probably even more challenging-- what should we do with the old ones?

When it comes to disposal, a lot is at stake. Despite recent improvements, electronics are still made with toxic materials. For example, monitor glass and circuit boards contain large quantities of lead, which cause birth defects, nervous system disorders, and brain dysfunction, especially in children. Other very-toxic metals, such as mercury, beryllium, and cadmium, are found in the equipment as well. The plastics also are a problem, as they contain highly-polluting flame retardants.

Apart from the environmental and health impacts, there are other risks. Unless we take great care to totally erase our very-confidential data stored in our computers, digital assistants, and cell phones, our privacy is at risk. Businesses become vulnerable to the loss of intellectual property or confidential customer data, which can lead to criminal and civil liabilities that can cost millions.

Most individuals and companies want to dispose of their e-waste responsibly, so they seek out an electronics recycler or asset recovery company. Unfortunately, all too often these e-waste recyclers are not recyclers at all.

SARAH WESTERVELT: We've all seen these claims of electronics recyclers and asset recovery companies who will tell you they are diverting this equipment from landfills, they're in compliance with all regulations, and they are using environmentally sound recycling. But the fact is that US and Canadian regulations do not adequately cover this toxic waste stream. So we have plenty of companies who are simply loading up seagoing containers and sell it to the highest bidder, frequently to countries in Africa and Asia. So they're getting rich at the expense of your goodwill, and your data security, and ultimately human health and the environment.

PRESENTER: Few had witnessed the cyber age nightmare in China until the Basel Action Network-- BAN-- had set an investigative team to Guangdong Province in 2001. Since it began receiving its first load of imported e-waste about 12 years ago, the Chinese township area of Guiyu has been transformed from a small rice-growing village into a bustling, sprawling junkyard for much of the world's electronic waste. BAN revisited the scene again in 2008, only to find that things had gotten far worse.

In the Guiyu area, one can find whole villages of migrant workers from China's rural regions living among the piles of e-waste. They sort computer components and openly burn them in fields or large indoor fireplaces, releasing toxic smoke and ash. Toner powder is inhaled as it's swept by hand from cracked, discarded printer cartridges. Thousands of people are employed cooking circuit boards over coal-fired burners, breathing in the lead tin solder vapors for hours on end as they pluck the chips off the boards.

The chips are then taken in buckets to primitive acid stripping operations along the riverways where hot acid baths are used to extract tiny fractions of gold while workers breathe the toxic fumes and flush residues right into the river. Computer monitors are cracked open, and leaded glass is dumped into old irrigation ditches.

All of the well water in Guiyu is now contaminated. Samples taken by BAN in the local river revealed levels of lead 2,400 times the World Health Organization's threshold level for drinking water. And since BAN's first visit, scientists have conducted further analyses of human hair, water, sediments, and rice, and have recorded some of the highest levels of dioxins, brominated flame retardants, heavy metals, and other pollutants ever discovered anywhere on earth.

BAN's next investigative assignment took them to Lagos, Nigeria, a sprawling metropolis and port for much of West Africa. Computers and other IT equipment increasingly arrive on African shores from Europe and America, ostensibly to be sold in the marketplace to be re-used. Exporters can claim that this practice extends the lives of computers, helps the poor, and allows them to bridge the digital divide.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of computers, televisions, monitors, and printers that arrive in Lagos each month were found to be nonfunctional and non-repairable. They end up stacked in cavernous warehouses, or more often dumped near residential areas and burned, releasing persistent highly-toxic pollutants into the air and water.

JOHN OBORO: I would tell you that we have greater percentage of those that cannot be used than those that can be used. Honestly speaking, I would say 75% of these items are not usable.

OLADELE OSIBANJO: The gases are very hazardous. There are no shields. They contain toxic components. They are quite carcinogenic substances. And the incidence of such terrible diseases like cancer is very high now in Nigeria. Hazardous waste should not go from developed to developing. So the exporting country must put in strict controls and follow their own regulatory regime. If we are talking of a global village, a common future, a common destiny for all the peoples of the world, it is only fair-- morally right-- to be sure that all sides are safe at the end of the day.

PRESENTER: It's not difficult to learn the identities of those that are careless about the eventual impact of their techno trash. Brand names and institutional asset tags sometimes remain on the equipment. But even when tags have been peeled off, it can be shocking to find what is hidden below the surface. As part of its investigation into the origins of e-waste found in Nigeria, BAN purchased secondhand hard drives in the market and sent them to a cyber investigative service located in Zurich, Switzerland.

GUIDO RUDOLPHI: It's child's play to recover them. And so after only a little bit of time that you have to invest, you can find a lot-- a tremendous lot of data on those files from the former users. For the companies it's very risky. They cannot track back what they are distributing all over the world. You find confidential material on those hard drives, calculations, CVs from employees, private mail-- so, a lot of stuff that really, really shouldn't get out of their hands.

PRESENTER: The trade in toxic wastes leaves the poor people of the world with an untenable choice between poverty and poison, a choice that nobody should have to make. In 1989, the global community came together in Basel, Switzerland to sign an international treaty designed to stop the international dumping of toxic waste. And in 1995, the Basel Convention passed a full ban on the export of hazardous wastes, including electronic waste from developed countries to developing countries. All 27 European countries have already made it illegal to ship toxic waste to developing countries for any reason. But to date, the US is the only developed country in the world that has not ratified the Basel Convention. And in fact, the United States and Canada continue to actively work to undermine the waste export ban. Meanwhile, unscrupulous recyclers have taken advantage of the uneven playing field and freely export massive volumes of electronic waste each year while their governments look the other way. It was for this reason that BAN together with the Electronics TakeBack Coalition created the e-Stewards initiative.

SARAH WESTERVELT: The federal government has been horribly negligent by failing to control toxic waste exports to developing countries. So we've had to turn to the best players in the industry who are willing to go well beyond compliance. e-Stewards are North American recyclers and asset recovery companies who have agreed to the highest level of responsible recycling and reuse.

PRESENTER: One of these companies is Redemtech, based in Columbus, Ohio.

ROBERT HOUGHTON: We've built our business around doing the right thing socially and environmentally. Since we need to operate safe and secure facilities, pay our associates a living wage, we've invested in technology to ensure that every bit of customer data is reliably eradicated and that every pound of e-waste is properly recycled. I'm encouraged that when people learn about the toxic trade in scrap electronics they want to work with responsible recyclers. But it's not easy telling the good from the bad. e-Stewards are willing and able to prove that they're operating responsibly. And people that care must insist on that accounting.

PRESENTER: Now, thanks to the e-Stewards Initiative, finding a globally-responsible electronics recycling or asset recovery company is easy. The next task is to enlist all consumers, large and small, to do the right thing and agree to make exclusive use of these leaders and avoid the laggards in the industry. The real answer surely lies not in passing our electronic waste to those least able to deal with it, but in responsibly refurbishing or recycling it here at home. /p>

Welcome to solar basics. I'm Kelsey miss Brenner, senior editor of solar power World. I'm Haley Pickerel, editor-in-chief.

In about 30 years, a wave of thirty-five point three million panels may reach the end of their lifespans. Not counting the hundreds of millions of panels that flooded the US market in the last decade that may need to be disposed of sooner. With no dedicated national program or requirements to safely dispose of solar panels, some unfortunately find their way to landfills. If the system owner is green minded and has the money, panels may get shipped to a recycling facility.

Other industry players are warehousing damaged or old panels until a practical recycling program is established and a few colleagues from consulting company, Solar Cowboys, have started a new recycling program in the U.S. called recycle PV. Modeled after a successful European program called, PV Cycle. The Electric Power Research Institute found system owners recycle their panels in Europe because they are required to. Panel recycling in an unregulated market like the United States, will only work if there is value in the product.

Though there's nothing yet mandated at a national level in the u.s., there are a few states trying to get the required recycling ball moving. In July 2017, Washington became the first state to pass a solar stewardship bill requiring manufacturers, selling solar products into the state, to have end-of-life recycling programs for their own products.

New York passed a similar Senate bill last year that has since been passed to the state assembly. The bill would require solar panel manufacturers to collect end-of-life panels for recycling. In addition to those states, one panel manufacturing company has prioritized recycling. Cad-tel thin-film module manufacturer first solar established a recycling program at the beginning of production to responsibly recycle a manufacturing scrap, warranty returns, and end-of-life panels. This environmental decision also had a financial motivation. But tellurium used in the product is a finite resource.

In any case, First Solar's recycling facilities, attached to its manufacturing plants, have the capacity to recycle two million panels globally on an annual basis. For crystalline silicon modules needing recycling now in the United States, there are a few scattered options. Various glass and electronics recyclers have taken on solar panel recycling but usually not on dedicated lines are on a grand scale.

Industry advocacy groups SIA has begun organizing recycling efforts through its PV recycling working group. The organization will choose preferred recycling partners that offer benefits to SIA members. Time is ticking for panel recycling, the United States has about 15 years before solar panel recycling becomes a major issue. That's plenty of time to figure out the best course of action, but also plenty of time to procrastinate. Here's hoping we set early deadlines.

For more on solar panel recycling, read our story online and stay tuned for the next Solar basics videos.

Transcript will be uploaded soon

Talk of sustainability is everywhere today, and along with it a growing awareness of the linear model of our existing economy. This linear economic model is captured in the popular description of the economy as a process of take, make, and dispose.

We take natural resources from our environment, produce a product, and push it out to end-users who then dispose of it. This used to not be such a problem. However, as the economy has grown in reached planetary limits, inputs are appearing more limited, and outputs have become increasingly detrimental to ecosystems.

To give us some appreciation for just how inefficient this overall linear model is, the Rocky Mountain Institute estimated in the year 2000, that the flow of natural materials globally is 500 billion tons per year. But only 1% is put into durable products and, still there, six months later, the other 99% is waste. As limits are increasingly met, the emphasis is now shifting from an economic model that is organized around gross throughput of material and energy in a linear fashion, to a new kind of circular economy, which shifts the focus to the internal organization of processes within which resources are used. It aims to optimize for the overall service delivered rather than the gross throughput of products. The circular economy is all about identifying and closing loops, so as to create self-sustaining systems, where producers and consumers are closely coupled to enable constant feedback. For example, food production, consumption, and disposal might be organized to be part of the same closed cycle. To do this, industries are studied as industrial ecologies so as to identify where and how resources and energy flow through them. Where they are lost and where processes could be interconnected to reduce those losses. In a circular system, resource input and waste emission and energy leakage are minimized by slowing closing and narrowing energy and material loops. This can be achieved through long-lasting design maintenance repair, reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing, or recycling. This is a regenerative approach where things are being constantly repurposed to serve new functions.

The challenge of achieving a sustainable form of development, is shifting the emphasis from discrete one-off products to looking increasingly at how they can evolve through their full lifecycle. This is a fundamental switch in paradigm from designing systems that are inherently degenerative to systems that are inherently regenerative. Over time, developing a truly circular economy requires diversity and the interconnecting of different systems. Systems and processes that are all the same consume the same resources and produce the same outputs without the capacity to recycle them. It is only by connecting different systems in the right way that we can harness their diversity to create synergies between them.

The circular economy shifts the locusts from things to the synergies between them. Our existing linear economy is a product of analytical thinking, where we divide everything up and separate everything out so as to focus on specific activities and achieve economies of scale. We put housing all in the residential area, factories in the industrial zone, food production and farms etc.

In contrast, the circular economy is about integration so as to enable feedback loops and synergies. As Gunter Pauli notes, it is about using the resources available in cascading systems. The waste of one product becomes the input to create a new cash flow. Things in this circular model become Multifunctional. Instead of a building just serving a housing function, it becomes also an energy producer and consumer. A food producer and consumer. It may function as entertainment and recreation. This multi functionality works to not just close loops but also create more resilient systems because they are more self-sufficient and less dependent.

As the circular economy is not about any individual product or thing, it is rather about changing the organization of whole systems. It requires systems thinking. As the Ellen MacArthur Foundation notes, the circular economy isn't about one manufacturer changing one product, it is about all of the interconnected companies that form our infrastructure and economy coming together. It's about rethinking the operating system itself.