Two figures representing a linear and circular economy approach with a plastic bottle as an example but is applicable to any recycable waste product and especially single-use plastic packaging.
In the linear economy model the product is manufactured using principally new resources, largely petroleum based. Most of the product’s value is lost during its life cycle because of leakage along the entire value chain (red arrows), including pellet loss, littering, combined sewage overflow, loss during transport and improper storage of waste, and poorly designed products that are easily lost to the environment and difficult to recover (microbeads, small wrappers, torn corners of packaging). This leads to a contamination of the environment, affecting wildlife and human well-being. A small proportion is recycled (green arrow) for remanufacture, with the remainder utilized for energy recovery.
In the circular economy model a high percentage of recycled content is used as feedstock for new products, and the remainder from sustainable sources (potentially biopolymers). Poor practices (red arrows) throughout the life cycle are mitigated, for example, by proper legislative policy, public awareness that leads to proper consumer waste handling, and incentivized recovery systems (e.g., returnable bottles). Recovery is further improved by regulating end-of-life design in products and packaging. This leads to reduced leakage of plastic to the environment from all sectors of society, and significant improvements are social justice concerns for communities that manage waste. The small amount of residual plastic is then disposed of responsibly.
Figure and figure captions originally published in:
Eriksen M, Thiel M, Prindiville M, Kiessling T 2018. Microplastic: what are the solutions? in Freshwater Microplastics - Emerging Environmental Contaminants (Eds Wagner M, Lambert S), The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry 58. Springer.
Licence: Creative Commons 4.0 BY. Feel free to reuse, to change, and to adapt - just refer to the above-mentioned publication. The .svg file allows you to change parts of the figures easily with Inkscape (a free vector graphic program)
