A circular economy is one in which products do not end up as waste but are instead repaired, reused, or transformed into new materials. This stands in contrast to the linear economy currently dominant worldwide—one built on extraction, production, use, and disposal. Despite the growing recognition of circularity as a sustainability necessity and the implementation of many circular economy initiatives worldwide, very few systems are truly circular in practice. Space debris—nonfunctional human-made objects orbiting Earth—starkly illustrate this contradiction, exposing the same structural failures that limit circularity on Earth.
This article was written by Jessica Coria and originally published by The Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists.
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