A new concept or a new name?
Although the term ‘circular economy’ is relatively new (it began to be used in the late 70s, though it has been during the last decade when it has become a commonly used term), the concept has nothing new.
The idea that encompasses the concept of ‘circular economy’ is actually very simple, reusing and recycling those things that do not serve any more for the purpose they were originally made (because they are broken, degraded, etc.) to make more products, aiming to consume, this way, the minimum natural resources as possible.
Today this concept is bounded to environmental care, the fight against climate change, the reduction of the environmental footprint, etc., and that is why it sounds like something new because it is one big solution to very actual problems.
However, human beings have been practicing ‘circular economy’ their whole existence, except the last centuries, basically since the Industrial Revolution.
Before this moment, everything was reused and recycled a lot of times, in a much simpler way than today, and without even naming the process as it was something natural to do, but it was done. Acquiring raw materials was much more complicated and most of the time this was the only way to get what was needed.
With the Industrial Revolution, the production processes were industrialized, which permitted manufacturing much more products and selling them at much lower prices than before. This ended up in losing the mentality of reusing everything until it was no way of reusing it again, as it began to be easier to buy completely new products, when necessary, as they were much more accessible and affordable than before.
This way, for decades and centuries linear economy has prevailed, and we have forgotten that we used to recycle and reuse. But with the increasing environmental problems, we are facing we have recovered the necessity of recycling and reusing. The introduction of these concepts to our complicated current production processes has received the name of ‘circular economy’.
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