Often we think when we go round and round the same circle that it is a bad thing. Like we are stuck and in the normal way we think about this, then it is true.
Doing the same thing again, and again, gives us the same outcome which does not enable improvement.
However, on day 2 of the OuiShare Fest 16, I listened to a talk about the circular economy given by Luisa of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Over the last few hundred years during the industrialised age, we have become increasingly conditioned to the linear process of taking raw materials from the planet and industrially processing them into stuff for us to consume and then throw away into an incinerator or landfill.
This process has lead to the complete depletion of resources, destruction and poisoning of the planet in which the 7 billion of us live.
The circular economy is a process of regenerating and restoring by re-using and by cutting out waste. Essentially don’t take new resources when you can use what is already there.
This is a challenge to our culture of throwing everything away and this is a threat to the industrial economy that has created the throwaway culture. For example, ‘use by’ date codes on food that has made many throw away perfectly good food due to believing the myth that we are all going to die from deadly bacteria lurking.
We have been sold this myth of throwing away rather than properly recycling or reusing or repairing something. Why because it makes money and that is what has driven us throughout the industrial age.
Thankfully the industrial age is dying and this means that we now have to look at what will replace it and how will we live, work and govern ourselves beyond this age.
Going round and round the same circle with our resources is a truly essential process for the future of the human race.
Sustainability, openness, collaboration, sharing, self-governance, cooperation, and many more themes are coming out from this OuiShare Fest.
This is hope and this is the circle to be going round.
Philip Dodson 