Why Waste-Free Production is a Myth
Discussion
John Thackara:
"When you add everything up, closed loop production models are often not really better than the old kind. The problem, as the environmental scientist Jessie Henshaw explains it, is that although circular economy metrics cover resource flows in day-to-day production, they omit a wide variety of other costs that all businessses incur: staff commuting to work; services such as roads, water or trash collection, provided to the business, but paid for by taxes; or the myriad sub-sub-contractors in a modern, hyper-connected business. In his search for a more accurate picture of the economy’s aggregate environmental impacts, Henshaw divided global GDP by global resource us. The results were sobering. In round numbers, one dollar of GDP corresponds to a pound of C02 put in the atmosphere."