Chapter 1
Rejecting Waste, Rethinking Materials, and Redesigning the World
IN THIS CHAPTER
Rejecting waste as a necessary output of a global economy
Rethinking material lifecycles as tool to eliminate waste
Redesigning everything to be circular
We humans are all now finding ourselves in a troubling-yet-exciting time of human existence. We’re more capable and smarter than ever, yet we still maintain and perpetuate an issue unique to the human race: waste. Waste doesn’t exist within the natural world; there, every output of a system acts as an input for another. Leaf litter isn’t litter at all, but a source of food for insects and eventually a food source for the tree to grow leaves again next year. The carbon dioxide emitted through animal respiration is harvested by vegetation and replaced with the oxygen required to future support animal respiration. Material lifecycles within nature are circular, not linear. Every output of one systems serves as an input for another.
Though waste doesn’t exist within the natural world, it most certainly — at an extremely accelerated rate — exists within the human world. Though populations and demand for resources continue to surge and the rate ...
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