The Linear Economic Model – Take, Make, Dispose
Our traditional social and cultural institutions had continued to grow and become deeply embedded since the industrial revolution (late 1700s) into the fundamental sovereign economic and political fabric of global society affecting the way all economies operate. This Traditional Linear Model is the Industrial Age economic structure that is heavily reliant on the motion of take, make, dispose.
This Traditional Linear Model has been the central driver of the measurements and understanding of which then management systems are designed. To this extent it should be no surprise then why macroeconomic systems have been unfriendly with any notion of sustainability.
The greatest problem of this Traditional Linear Model of economies evident daily is the overproduction of products and over consumption of goods driven by mass marketing which has also produced high amounts of disposal. For example, the industrial developments undertaken within this linear economic model, for example old Coal Power Stations, were never designed and developed for reusability and at times have no way to adapt and evolve to new requirements with old purpose-built infrastructure.
Over time, especially in our modern age, most nations have recognized we have a scarcity of natural capital that needs to be utilized more efficiently opposed to the Industrial Age economies that lacked social capital and lacked intelligent and engineered systems and processes. This growing recognition had resulted in the establishment and continuously expanding implementation of circular economies.
The Circular Economy – Reused and Repurposed
In our current age of the circular economy due to our awareness of planetary limits, inputs are appearing more limited and outputs have become increasingly detrimental to ecosystems. As these limits are increasingly met, by our activities, the emphasis is shifting from gross throughput of material and energy to the internal organisation of how these materials and energy are utilized. This is the new form of economy known as the circular economy built on the idea of feedback loops and the belief that materials and energy do not simply disappear and can be reused and repurposed. The main inspiring measurements to generate circular economic models had been taken from the measurements taken from living nature. This new age of circular economies focuses emphasis on optimizing and maximizing the synergies between multiple systems and designs to achieve a higher amount of functionality and the intelligent coordination of existing resources.
A Whole Lifecycle Economy
A truly sustainable economy, a whole lifecycle economy, is an economy that manages the whole lifecycle and one where industrial systems and designs are not only optimized for efficiency for its current time, much like those in the circular economy currently, but also are designed and implemented in such a way as to adapt and evolve over time. The inspiration for a whole lifecycle economy comes from our continuously growing and more advanced measurements and observations of nature which recognizes that nature adapts and evolves not only to significant changes but irreversible changes. This emphasis shift away from systems optimized for efficiency within stable and predictable environment to systems that have a much greater adaptive capacity with resilience and have capability to meet new requirements. However, as these sustainable nonlinear solutions can be uncontrollable it is continuously met with resistance by organisations that dominantly adopt traditional linear models. Organisations with these linear models attempt to externalize any nonlinear models as they are inherently uncontrollable and achieve short term efficiency but sacrifice any diversity and mechanisms that produce sustainable outcomes.
Overall, modern economies continue to take significant steps to acquiring and seeking deeper understanding of our ecosystems which has required a shift in the paradigm of economic modelling and intellectualism. The still existing Industrial Age economic structures need to evolve into more complex multi-dimensional forms and transition to circular economic structures which then ultimately work towards a more truly sustainable and non-linear economy that not only can recycle or manage the end-outputs but also envisages and opens pathways for the ability to evolve and adapt over time. This transition to a whole lifecycle economy will foster innovation in all sectors and hopefully, with leadership from key industry players and developers such as JPEG, further develop and drive policies, economic models and industrial opportunities that encourage further advancement of technologies and continual intelligent management of these disruptions.