At a family gathering in August, I gave a brief tribute to my mother on the occasion of her 90th birthday. As the guests sipped their coffee in the warm summer air, I ticked off a dozen or so pieces of wisdom that she has imparted to her family over the decades. One insight that I credited to her was an aversion to waste. In our household, items such as clothes and toys would have multiple lives before being thrown out, and leftover food would be transformed into tomorrow’s lunch.
The finiteness of this supply distinguishes materials from energy. There’s little doubt that in the future we will be able to capture more solar power and even build nuclear fusion reactors to abolish energy scarcity forever. But for material resources, no such technology is in view. That’s what makes the research reported in this Outlook so important. As the world sets out to put its economies on a sustainable footing, this Outlook looks at the progress and barriers to the
The only way to conserve the planets abundant resources if circularity begins from extraction otherwise again you scientists are making matters worse & bastadising the words circular & sustainability its incredible that the most abundant circ polymer on planet is hardly utalised