For Earth Day Innovation, Businesses are Thinking About Circles | Inc.com
The “circular economy” is a big, structural change requiring a shift in mindset and investments. Instead of mining and harvesting, manufacturing materials into products, using the products and discarding them, in a linear way, we can keep using the same materials over and over in a more circular way. The first advantage is cost savings: used materials are almost certainly cheaper than virgin materials. The second is availability: waste materials are as available as the products we are finished using. We don’t have to import them from a war zone or a politically uncomfortable trading partner. The third is innovation: waste materials can solve problems in new ways.
Here’s an example of applying the circular economy concept to tires: scrap tire material can be used in asphalt. The improved, rubberized asphalt has been found to respond better to temperature changes, producing less potholes, and to drain rainwater better than other asphalt. Both potholes and rain accumulation can be unsafe for drivers. So old tires not only can find a new use, avoiding landfill, but they can help make driving safer.
With gas prices up and supply chains in turmoil, the decarbonization transition represents an economic opportunity reminiscent of a war effort: such a spike in demand can supercharge the economy. In fact, President Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act to jumpstart domestic mining of materials needed in batteries: lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and manganese. America needs EV charging stations, grid upgrades, recycling facilities, organic materials, meat substitutes: an endless list of new products and services for a decarbonized world.
A week on a small island driving a plug-in electric car past gas stations advertising $4.32 a gallon brings a pause for reflection. If energy were free, people could spend more money on food. The poverty rate would immediately decline. The island could invest in solar powered desalination plants to shore up scarce water supply. More fresh water would be good for agriculture.
The sun and wind are free and infinite. Investing in the innovation needed to deploy these sources of energy, and hydrogen and nuclear energy, makes enormous business sense. It also makes a lot of sense from the national security perspective of energy independence. What is difficult is shifting investments and government support from the entrenched fossil fuel industry into renewable energy infrastructure. Change doesn’t come easily, even when it makes this much sense.
Earth Day is in its 52nd year. It started at a time of rising consciousness about the evils of pollution, and after a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara in 1969. But this year, the buzz words are “invest,” “business” and “innovation.” Just as waste can be transformed from problem to resource, business can change from polluter to innovator.