Organizational and Material Choices to Accelerate a Circular Economy

• Draft book: Relinking Eden: The Best Organizational and Material Choices to Accelerate a Circular Economy. By Mark Whitaker.

Excerpt

Mark Whitaker:

"This book shows how we can solve environmental problems and get durably representative, sustainable, and wealthy nations. We can do this by adding to our nations a particular kind of ICT-enhanced global yet multi-regional circular economy for the world. Plus, this better optimistic image of the future is possible now, instead of delayed by a lack of material or technical innovations.

Though a circular economy has many definitions and many different disagreements on tactics or leadership to achieve it, in terms of the final agreed goals it means an economic system with both environmental ethics and human ethics that can clean up the air, water, and soil while creating improved public health, ecological biodiversity, and profitable production and wealth for a better quality of life for all, while doing this for the long term in material loops of waste back into the same or different production cycles or for secondary uses once more.

However, many other existing versions or rather visions of the circular economy come up short. Few integrate all these factors above in one developmental plan, unlike what is described here. Others come up short on having very few or weak enablers, unlike what is described here. Few plans are equal to this one in being literally a circular economy for the world, meaning, it is a better multi-national and multi-regional developmental plan in general.

Thus, this book hopes to be the apotheosis of circular economic plans by fulfilling all previously identified core goals of a circular economy, simultaneously in the same model (a rarity), and by having many more enablers that make it come true: including you. All this can be done with this circular economic plan described in this book, and all this can be done while even achieving two more goals like the reduction of social and ecological inequality, and a fuller regional representation by self-generated leaderships. Both points are argued to be two important added goals of a circular economy that are simultaneously previously missing long-term enablers that will make it possible, flexible, durable, and innovative for the long term. In contrast, other modern developmental plans regularly block almost all the goals or enablers above, and thus, destroy their own potential of success in the long-term by being less flexible, durable or innovative as development policies.

When we have more regionally nuanced and more fully representative contexts, this as a process enables better material choices over time, and slowly, those better material choices are arranged in those regions for their better material links between each other over time. Both better material choices and better material links make better material virtuous cycles for the long term. Like a jigsaw puzzle’s pieces make their own material links by pieces alone coming together to make a larger picture, the wisdom of local crowds is known to make better commons property management decisions and better material choices than distant administrators on combining livelihood and environment for the long term. Those better material choices are defined as making better material links with each other, the wider environment, and with human livelihood. In turn, better material links in plural start to create those better material virtuous cycles of a circular economy.

Thanks to research funding from the Korean National Research Foundation on a grant for “ICT and Sustainability” (2020-2023), this book describes respectively the research output and policy recommendations of our research team on just what are those better material choices that we have already, and furthermore, which ones are innately more materially linkable to each other that can make those better material virtuous cycles of a circular economy.

Additionally, the principal investigator built an ICT platform prototype for two interactive purposes. First, it was built for sharing with the world our team’s better material choices that we found that already exist within multiple categories of uses, for the inspiration that it brings that it is possible to achieve a circular economy now, and so the world can clearly see how blocking social forces and path dependence are to blame for the lack of transition to sustainability, instead of really any material lack. Second, by that sharing, the platform is for catalyzing future conversations by the world itself, by having an open-ended and participation-driven virtual space like no other in which to share and to debate better tactics of social action, material choices, and material links that can get around blocking social forces and path dependence worldwide either in global issues or for many specific geographic spaces worldwide. Thus, this ICT platform begins with our research team’s sharing, yet the final goal is catalyzing many others’ participation and sharing in turn in the world. It helps everyone to be inspired to see better material choices with better material links that already exist coming together, and to see the social links of global and regional allies that already exist coming together—to know each other and to interact as well. This enervating combination of ICT platform, better material choices, and open-ended conversation about better profit value and ecological value can maximize material links by lateral learning across different regions, and thus can accelerate a ‘circular economy for the world.’

Thus, ICT networks in a circular economic plan is a third previously missing long-term enabler. The main rationale why a well-organized circular economy requires ICT-enhanced platforms that can fix degradation, inequality, and representation gaps all at once, is because by the early 21st century, ICT is encouraging us to live similarly worldwide in ‘smart regions’. Smart regions are saturated regions of ICT users in which supermajorities utilize peer-to-peer digital communications in their daily life decisions, eroding old information flows and institutions based on other media regimes of the past. This reorganizes politics, education, markets, and financial currencies into a platform economy. As we now live greatly in networks of such virtual communities in a platform economy, instead of being only individually escapist, users equally use and expect ICT networks to be a place for engaging the circular economy—to find friends and better ideas of materials and organization, to trade, and to exchange waste.

In short, we become future-inspired, mobilized, geographic communities finding our voices and our leaders when the wisdom of crowds is given a place online to debate with others better images of the future, better material choices, and better material links. The whole world shares this disconnect or plight now of being ‘so far from eden’ while knowing it is possible to improve our lives and the environment with only the material changes already available. Those better material choices that already exist can be placed into systems of profitable economic interaction of material links with each other only when people know about the wealth of pieces in play and can start to make choices in their image of the future. Thus, being aware it is possible can start to inspire more brainstorming about more material links and the more material virtuous cycles of a circular economy. In short, sustainabilty is waiting on popularization of and population on digital platforms that let circular economies of people, businesses, and materials start to find each other and sort themselves, smart region by smart region. We have built such a prototype digital platform for a circular economy, and we are always looking for partners to expand its allies, ideas, reach, and scope.

Regardless of our many different countries of origin, many different cultures, and many different development levels, we have to start thinking more seriously about different regional versions of the circular economy and our common digital future as two solutions made for each other. This is because our past nations’ non-digital economics and cultures now burn brightly behind us in a digital firestorm. We are going through a digital bottleneck or being reduced in a digital crucible that is reformatting our very differently-organized nations into the same kind of smart regions worldwide that now already deliberate for themselves on their own priorities. This self-organization by smart regions takes place with less influence or domination by past authorities’ agenda setting or information control—which was possible in past media regimes just a few decades ago. So, with no where else to live except in smart regions in the future, learning how to employ smart regions effectively in a circular economy is paramount for retaining environmental ethics, human ethics, national development, and even national survival since nations remain in digital competition with other nations and are now in growing competition with consolidated global economic digital forces without long-term ethical concerns at all, undermining all past nations. Since such global forces and some nations will try to utilize digital technologies to accelerate themselves and their control at other nations’ expense, a better future is for us all is this more multi-polar world where digitally-enhanced circular economies are for everyone instead of only for a few countries.

In conclusion, since the problems of our world are so expansive, the goals of this book are equally expansive. We anticipate that the book’s audience is diverse since many different groups and many different scales of leadership now attempt to accelerate different tactics of a circular economy for the goal of sustainability. First, the book will interest academic and professional audiences like social scientists, industry players, engineers, material scientists, economists, supply-chain managers, political scientists, ethicists, or national or global policymakers on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal #12 (SDG#12: Encourage Sustainable Production and Consumption). Equally, second, this book should interest people in general like commons activists, permaculturalists, regional development organizations, and national and local political, economic, or moral leaderships skeptical of the ethics of or the durability of relying on either oligarchic national or technocratic global plans for sustainability, and who seek more allied, representative and modular plans for their region’s sustainability, development, and long-term durability and innovation like this one.

Since sustainability and leading a good life is beyond a particular specialization, we hope everyone in the world is the audience of this book. It concerns everyone how to build a circular economy that is more representative, durable, flexible, and innovative for the long term. Everyone desires a plan of reformation to achieve a better quality of life from transformed sustainable, representative, and wealthy nations. Plus, since all of us worldwide start to live similarly in smart regions that can make our own more fully representative decisions with wider deliberation, the art of creating long-term circular economies for ourselves in all our regions worldwide with all their rich variety will only get more plausible to an ever larger audience over time.

ICT has been linked to sustainability and development plans before. However, this is the first time ICT and its smart regions are linked as a crucial catalyst and enabler for starting and maintaining against backsliding all those good material choices and good material links for a circular economy for the long term future. ICT and the circular economy are both like a jigsaw puzzle: we can put things together faster when we are together, as we learn laterally from each other about which pieces go where and what is to be done first. Plus, we can put things together more durably when we have a more fully representative debate in the first place about the choices of a circular economy. Your innovative suggestions may be the missing puzzle piece that brings a mere picture to life."

(via the author, January 2025)