The world is changing and so are business models. As the planet faces major challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, as well as rising energy costs, the number of entrepreneurs adopting the circular economy as a business model is increasing. The transition from a linear, take-make-waste model towards a regenerative, circular one is taking place as today’s global production and consumption model is becoming more and more unsustainable.

Every year, more than 100-billion tons of raw materials are extracted and transformed into manufactured products. This constant process results in pollution of the atmosphere, threatens biodiversity, degrades land, and brings us close to the depletion of irreplaceable natural resources. The extraction and transformation of natural resources is also responsible for more than half of global greenhouse gas emissions, a primary driver of global warming.

Only 8.6 percent of these resources re-enter the economic cycle, resulting each year in the dumping of more than 2-billion tons of waste. With the continuous growth of the global population, pollution and waste are expected to keep increasing.

Report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development