Earth at its limit: Quickly permit new technologies

One week. In our often-hectic daily lives, that's not much. But for the state of our Earth, seven days make a huge difference. Because it's exactly by this span that a critical indicator has moved forward this year: The global Earth Overshoot Day now falls on July 24th. Earlier than ever before. And the jump has never been so large either.

In 2024, August 1st still marked that date when the natural resources that our Earth's ecosystem can produce within a year are statistically exhausted. In other words: Humanity now requires 1.8 Earths for its lifestyle. Yet even the one beautiful Earth available to us is already bleeding out. And another number concerns me. The extraction and processing of material resources are responsible for over 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention the impacts on biodiversity and the environment.

Sustainability looks different. We conduct business, produce, and consume as if the Paris Climate Agreement – adopted with great fervor ten years ago – and other agreements to preserve our life foundations didn't exist. Instead of fewer coal power plants, more and more are being built around the globe. Global oil consumption continues to increase. And strategic raw materials like the rare earths coveted for electric mobility, energy transition, or electronic devices are facing a veritable demand boom.

Unchecked Resource Consumption

Overall, the UN Environment Program expects that by 2050, global consumption of natural resources will surge by another 60 percent compared to 2020. This goes hand in hand with an enormous increase in waste volume. Plastic waste alone is likely to nearly triple within four decades by 2060.

For me, this means: We must urgently steer consumption, production, and value creation toward more sustainable paths. A major lever is humanity's enormous energy consumption, which is expected to rise by another half by mid-century. Through efficiency gains and the transition to renewable sources, this development must be brought somewhat into alignment with environmental consequences.

The other lever is the circular economy. Reusing and recycling goods as much as possible is the royal road to resource conservation. But at the moment, the world has shifted into reverse gear here: The global circularity rate has dropped to just 6.9 percent – a decline of over two points compared to 2015. Yet good new technologies like chemical recycling and mass balance procedures are ready and available.

Chemical recycling – breaking down waste into its molecules and reassembling them – is absolutely needed as a complement to conventional mechanical recycling. Here, old products like plastics are shredded and melted, creating new material. However, this process is not suitable for many types of plastic.

Mass balancing, in turn, comes into play with mixtures of fossil and alternative raw materials such as recyclates or biomass. This method allows the proportion of sustainable raw materials to be allocated mathematically. The chemical and plastics industry in particular has high expectations for this approach as well.

What has been missing so far is primarily political momentum. We finally need solid legal foundations. So that industry can apply chemical recycling and mass balancing with legal certainty. So that clear standards are developed and certification systems come to market. And so that these forward-looking approaches reach consumers' minds.

First Steps in Brussels

At least the EU Commission seems to have recognized the signs of the times. In its recently presented action plan for chemistry, it at least acknowledges that chemical recycling can make an important contribution to reducing the EU's dependence on fossil raw materials for plastic production and upgrading old products.

And a first concrete step is already following: In the directive on single-use plastic products, which is currently being revised, Brussels wants to allow chemical recycling and mass balancing. A corresponding proposal for calculating the recycling content in single-use plastic beverage bottles is currently on the table.

But unfortunately, progress is only happening in baby steps: Act by act is being laboriously addressed individually. At least there is the prospect that the important Ecodesign Regulation for Sustainable Products – which applies to almost all physical goods – will also be expanded to include chemical recycling and mass balancing.

In any case, all levers should now be pulled quickly to boost recycling and move the circular economy forward again. So that Earth Overshoot Day will hopefully soon shift backward again.