gepubliceerd op 2010-05-04 00:00:00.0
“I am starting to feel tired of all the attention for the financial and economic crisis. We should instead be talking about the ‘(eco) system crisis’. We should bend our linear economy into a circular economy, in which materials are being reused”. A lively start of the TED speech of the Wageningen ecologist Louise Vet. TED is a world famous platform where people can share important ideas with the audience in the room and with the rest of the world through internet. Read more about Louise’s speech and have a look at the video yourself!
Almost everyone knows the figures: at this moment we are using 1.3 planet to fulfill our needs. We can only do this by exhausting essential ecosystems such as oceans and rainforests. As soon as in 2050, when we will be living with 9 billion people on earth, we will need at least one extra planet. So it becomes clear that we have to deal with land and water in a clever way. What is often forgotten is the using up of essential elements such as copper and phosphor. That is where the great challenges of this age lie. Of the element tantalum, for example, which is used to make the batteries of mobile phones, we only have enough left to sustain the current use for around 20 years. Phosphor is the most important element for artificial fertilizer, and copper is also being used for numerous applications. But elements such as phosphor can be found closer to home than one might imagine. You can extract it from human excrements. In the new building that the Netherlands Institute of Ecology is going to build in Wageningen, these elements will be taken out of human faeces and be reused. The building will get a lot more clever gadgets to use energy, water and sunlight as efficiently as possible. So the first steps towards a circular economy have been taken.
