The Roadblocks Standing In The Way Of The Circular Economy Dream
As per the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a circular economy “aims to redefine growth” from business and human perspectives by turning the current pattern of resource consumption, referred by many as take-make-consume-discard, on its head, literally and metaphorically. In other words, a perfectly circular economy will contain no resource wastage and pollution. This ideal scenario can be achieved through endless regeneration of resources and limitless recyclability of consumables. The foundation, one of the leading proponents of the circular economy concept, has frequently pointed out the relationship between wastage of any kind of resources and the growing threat of climate change. So, circularity will not only reduce resource wastage but also slow down the inevitable threat of climate change and global warming.
As you will see later, technologies such as AI and computer vision in smart cities can play a significant role in overcoming most circular economy challenges and implementation barriers.
Before exploring technologies such as AI, robotics and computer vision in smart cities for transforming them into perfectly circular ones, businesses and governments need to take a look at the barriers that stand in the way of the transition. Understanding the main circular economy challenges is essential before any strategies can be made to overcome them. The circular economy challenges, or barriers, are present at various places. Here are some such barriers that can be considered major circular economy challenges or roadblocks:
Building a circular economy necessitates a major transformation of infrastructure and operations in organizations in various sectors. Needless to say, major technological and workforce investments will have to be made for such a transition. Organizations will need to put into place the technology that can create circular products. Such circular models will need rare circular raw materials for goods production. As there is no precedent, businesses will not even know how much money and resources need to be invested in accomplishing reasonable circularity targets. Such costs can drive businesses away from pursuing circularity.
Apart from the high costs of secondary products and raw materials, businesses with a rigid and dated corporate culture may dismiss circularity as a high-cost-low-results exercise due to the novelty of the concept. Additionally, business executives unwilling to accept change may point to the supposed lack of consumer demand for circular goods due to their higher cost as compared to non-circular goods. The lack of demand is untrue, however, with customers willing to invest in circular products if they’re not much of a hassle to own and use.
Newly-started businesses need to break even before they can diversify their operations and attempt to overcome circular economy challenges. At least for now, the high cost of developing and producing highly recyclable products acts as a major barrier to achieving circularity.
One of the main drivers of the high cost of circular goods is the existing taxation systems, which may involve higher value-added taxes for recycled products. This may cause customers to possibly pay twice for the same product. In this way, occasionally, government laws and regulations can seemingly promote the purchase of “linear” goods and resource wastage for businesses and individual users. For example, governments and public bodies have stringent laws in place regarding food expiration dates. However, one of the lesser-known facts is that several kinds of food items are still consumable up to many days, even after their respective expiration dates. The expiry date on food items has more to do with the quality of the products. So, while the quality is optimal before the date of expiry, it can still be consumed after the date for several types of food. As a result, strict laws regarding food expiration usage result in large-scale wastage.
