Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Resource scarcity in the green economy

 Consider these scenarios

1. by the year 2025, only 45% of the expected rPET (recycled poly ethylene terephthalate) output will be available in the world

2. By 2030, the world will just have one third of the resources of Nickel, Cadmium, manganese, Lithium etc needed for the battery market

3. Green hydrogen which can be used as an unlimited resource for energy for heavy industries in the future, the requirement for which will multiply by 100x to 300x over the next thirty years

4. Major global fashion brands have promised the world that they will move to 100% sustainable cotton by 2025, but have attained only 20% of that target now.

By our wholehearted embrace of the green economy and sustainability initiatives are we staring at a resource constrained world soon ?

 Click here for the article Green economy resource scarcity problems article in HBR (click here) by Dave Young, Hutchinson and Reeves July '21. 

What can we do to ensure that our march to green freedom goes unhindered ?

The industry can undertake these positive steps that can avoid such a crisis situation

1. have contracts of these resources into the future

2. getting the source of the resources

3. nurturing innovation in the process or eliminating the function 

4. extracting value by producing other products that rely on sustainable products

5. playing around with the scarcity and availability dynamics across different geographies

6. investing in technologies and organisations to help overcome resource scarcities

7. advocating public policy and statements for technologies and incentives

8. promoting industry and cross sector collaboration

These steps can help solve the resource bottlenecks and avoid any hiccups to the sustainability movement.

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