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Elizabeth Wade

Professor Hellmers

English 1201 Online

23 October 2018

The Linear and Circular Economy

While some topics in school bore me, I have always been interested in many

environmental concerns. Seeing that it was an option, I decided to take an environmental science

class this year. Since then my mind has been opened up to so many issues that I was naive

towards. I can specifically remember one day when I was sitting in a lecture about municipal

waste. I have always known that there are issues regarding waste in the ocean and littering, but I

never really thought about the sheer amount of waste, just how we mishandled it. That is until

my teacher told us a statistic that forever changed my mind. She stated that the average person

produces about 2,000 pounds of trash per year! That seemed like an astonishing amount to me. I

became obsessed with looking at how much I consumed each day and looking around, I saw how

much others were throwing away too.

Looking at the amount of waste made me feel uneasy. Especially when I looked at more

shocking facts. Did you know that in the ocean there is an island made of floating trash twice the

size of Texas? That was so blatantly concerning to me, but yet no seems to talk about all the

ways our trash is being dumped and the amount of it in general. I knew most of my friends did

not share my deep concerns and I was at a loss for who to discuss this with. So I turned towards

my brother who also shares this passion and studies environmental issues. After a long

conversation I learned that the process that we use for our waste is called the Linear economy.
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“The Linear economy is simple,” he said, “it’s buy, consume, dispose.” This is how we treat our

waste and this is potentially one of the reasons that we have so many issues with handling and

disposing of it by putting it in landfills, unsafe incineration and more. I believe that if we do not

change our current strategies we will further destroy the environment and ultimately ourselves. I

think that we should rewire our system into what is called a Circular economy. That is to think of

waste as resources. Instead of disposing we reuse, repurpose, and lastly recycle. It functions just

as the natural ecosystem does. As something dies it decomposes and its nutrients replenishes

other life. We as humans, could repurpose our resources for not only sustainability, but to

minimize costs in myriad ways. Now you may think that we already recycle, how much more

can we do? However, the recycling industry is in disarray and many recycling plants send

resources straight to landfills. I also learned that about 75% of our waste that goes to a landfill is

recyclable, reusable, or compostable. These are all unrealized, potential sources of revenue. I

believe the Circular economy would not only be sustainable, but that it would generate millions

of jobs, and billions of dollars in cost savings. Regardless of whether we want to move to a

Circular economy, the fact that the Linear economy is not sustainable for a population of almost

8 billion has become clear.

I am curious to discover all the issues that are not so obvious with the Linear economy

and discover more unnerving facts to share. I am also intrigued to see all the ways that the

Circular economy would benefit the environment and the economy. Is the Circular economy

feasible? And if so why haven't we already moved in that direction?