Reconomy launches ‘Close the Gap’ campaign to highlight urgent need for greater circularity

Reconomy, the leading international circular economy specialist, has today launched a ‘Close the Gap’ campaign to highlight the urgent need to transition away from linear economic models and embrace more circular solutions.

Increasing material consumption with decreasing recycling

Despite a growing focus in recent years on sustainability, the global economy remains overwhelmingly dependent on the extraction of virgin materials to satisfy demands for consumption. Since 1970, global material extraction has tripled, now reaching over 100 billion tonnes per year.1 As global material use has reached new heights, the Circularity Metric has declined from 9.1% to 7.2% within only six years and just 7.2% of materials make their way back into the economy.

Effects of the ‘circularity gap’

This leaves a circularity gap of 92.8% which is placing unsustainable pressure on the earth’s ecosystems. Additionally, the extraction and processing of materials are responsible for approximately half of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and over 90% of biodiversity loss and water stress.

#CloseTheGap: Goals of the campaign

Reconomy’s campaign seeks to address this by making the circular economy more accessible for businesses and help them decouple growth from resource use. It aims to show that by keeping their materials in use for longer and making small operational or design changes, this can significantly reduce consumption. This will not only lower their carbon footprint, but also unlock material cost savings, improve efficiency, boost profitability and cash flows.

Running over the coming weeks, the campaign will include:

• Educational content and sector showcases for businesses across key sectors

• A spotlight on Reconomy customer success stories demonstrating real-world impact
• A launch video – https://youtu.be/jY4Xx4NDcVw and campaign page – https://www.reconomy.com/close-the-gap/