In 2022, the global economy was only able to reuse 7.2% of the materials that were extracted, according to the Circularity gap report 2023, a report prepared by the Circle Economy organization and the Deloitte consultancy. This means that the remaining 92.8% is wasted, lost, or will not be available for reuse for years. The world is a great waste of resources and it is becoming more so every year: the circularity rate of materials was 9.1% in 2018, it fell to 8.6% in 2020 and in 2022 it stood at the 7.2% (the data for 2021 is missing).
“The linear economy –based on throwaway use– is still the prevailing one, and the global transition towards a circular economy –based on the use of resources already in circulation– has not yet begun, so these percentages have not yet hit bottom”, warns Jordi Oliver i Solà, executive director of the consulting firm Inèdit. “This does not mean that steps are not being taken towards this new economic model; the problem is that the advances are outpaced by the increasing consumption of resources”, says Oliver.
How can it be that in the midst of the crisis of raw materials, with skyrocketing prices, the world continues to waste resources? The first explanation is found in the growing world population, according to Berta Mota, director of circular economy at the consultancy Anthesis Lavola.
Mota also points to a necessary change in mentality that has not yet occurred. “Until we have the waste, we do not stop to think about what we are going to do with it, when the approach should be prior to its manufacture: how through design I can extend the useful life of a product and, ultimately, facilitate its reuse, or recycling when there is no other choice”, explains Mota.
For Oliver, the big underlying problem is that the circular economy clashes with the current business model of most companies and with the interests of governments. The former, because they earn more the more products they sell, and the latter because the more they sell, the more VAT they collect. "It will be difficult to advance in circularity until the business model of the companies is touched and the taxation of the states is changed," adds the executive director of Inèdit.
Although there are no data on the circularity of the Catalan economy, the Agència de Residus de Catalunya estimates that the percentage could be as high as 15%. Currently, the Generalitat is finalizing a Full circular economy route to Catalonia. The document seeks to accelerate the transition towards a circular economy. In this sense, Oliver states that, “in Catalonia, there are many isolated circularity initiatives with disparate transformative capacity, which need a vision of the country and a joint strategy that brings them together and promotes them. Something that until now has not happened due to the lack of a strong political and business leadership”.
Jordi Oliver does have hopes for the recently created Clúster Residus, a joint initiative of the Waste Agency of Catalonia and Action, the company's competitiveness agency. "It's a good environment to incubate and promote collaborative circularity projects," he says. In this same line, Isaac Peraire i Soler, director of the Waste Agency of Catalonia, affirms that the cluster responds to "an environmental need and an economic opportunity, especially in the current context of raw materials crisis".
