Materials Blindness

A materials revolution has been quietly underway for some time now, but you wouldn't know it.

You could put this down to what I'm calling 'materials blindness'.

Much like in our media narrative, our policies, regulations, and investment, much of the focus of fixing the quandary we find ourselves in is on carbon, reducing emissions, green energy and getting to Net Zero.

All super important when you see the effects that global warming is already having on our weather systems.

But when our materials economy grows at close to parity with GDP, we have a problem when many of those materials are used once, discarded only to remain in our ecosystems for hundreds of years.

The overlooked role of materials in sustainability

Our planet is after all a closed-loop system.

For a closed-loop system such as our planet to remain in balance, all waste must be a food source for something else and metabolised without accumulation or resource depletion. Ecosystems fall out of balance when the waste being created grows exponentially or the ability to process that waste is diminished.

We are now well beyond our planetary limits on both fronts and need to rapidly re-design our materials and waste systems based on how they work in nature.

This is the fundamental misunderstanding of end-of-life.

End-of-life must move beyond just at the end point it reaches in the supply chain, but also consider the impact that material has on our ecosystems. Most material lifecycle analysis doesn't include this.

Moving beyond recycling to nature-based solutions

As much as we hear about recycling in the media and the plastics crisis discourse, our economy throws 90% of the materials we use into landfills. Even the term ‘end-of-life’ frames this part of the process as the end of that material’s useful life when it could be captured, reprocessed, reused again, recaptured… and so on.

The switch to a more circular materials economy will include growing use of nature-based alternatives to many of today’s plastics and other synthetics.

Materials that can not only be recycled and re-used but, importantly, bio-assimilate back into our ecosystems and the end of their life in our supply chains.

Where we develop from organic food and agricultural waste and well-managed natural landscapes – such as renewable timber replacing steel and concrete in buildings, wood-based cellulose being transformed into everything from clothing fibres to car bodywork, and seaweed-based coatings for use as oil and water barriers on our packaging instead of toxic forever PFAs chemicals.

The future is already here - it just hasn't been scaled yet

This isn't just solar-punk-inspired wishful thinking; the technology and innovation for this future is at a technical readiness level that is ready to scale.

The shift to sustainable materials is an untapped opportunity waiting for bold action that is often discussed at conventions and conferences and by sustainability leaders in the media.

Investors, particularly those in the finance and impact sectors, have yet to fully recognise the immense potential of this market. While the focus has often been on green energy, and net zero, the critical role of materials and supply chains continues to be largely been overlooked.

A circular economy isn't something magical, it's an economy

The future is already here, poised for rapid expansion. What’s needed now is to tackle our material blindness and usher in a seismic shift in our mindsets.

We need greater awareness in the financial world that a materials revolution is underway—one that could gain serious momentum with the right investment.

The time has come to convert all the talk around the circular economy into some walk. Every step of the value chain needs fair reward and funding.

What is missing is the investment combined with a regulatory environment that prices in the external harm that plastic and other synthetics are having on our environment.

A circular economy is still an economy, after all.