By Ahmad Ibrahim
For centuries, the linear economic model – you know, ‘take, make, waste’ – reigned supreme.
Businesses extracted raw materials, transformed them into products, sold them to consumers, and discarded the waste, acting as if resources were infinite and landfills bottomless.
This model fuelled unprecedented industrial growth and consumer abundance.
Yet, today, a profound and urgent shift is underway, compelling businesses to abandon linearity and embrace the circular economy.
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The reason is stark: the linear model is fundamentally broken, bad for the planet and increasingly bad for the economy.
So, what’s so wrong with the old way?
The model’s catastrophic flaws are now reaching critical mass. It assumes an endless supply of cheap virgin resources, but reality tells a different story.
Critical minerals, fossil fuels, fertile topsoil, fresh water, and even sand are being depleted at alarming rates. Shortages drive price volatility, supply chain disruptions and geopolitical instability. Businesses built on cheap, abundant inputs face real trouble as those inputs become scarce and expensive.
Then there’s the environmental cost. Extraction and processing ravages ecosystems, causes deforestation, biodiversity loss and pollution. Manufacturing consumes vast energy and emits greenhouse gases. Landfills leach toxins. Incineration pollutes the air. Plastic chokes oceans, breaking down into microplastics entering the food chain.
The linear model externalises these environmental costs, treating the planet as a free dumping ground – a cost to society.
The linear model is inefficient and even wasteful. Over 90% of manufacturing raw materials becomes waste before the product even leaves the factory. Designing products to become obsolete accelerates this waste stream.
This represents trillions of dollars of embedded energy, labour and materials literally thrown away. It’s a colossal economic loss.
The linear model breeds systemic fragility. Businesses that rely on virgin resources are often held hostage to volatile global commodity markets and fragile supply chains, often global concentrated. Geopolitical conflicts, trade disputes or environmental disasters can cripple production overnight.
The linear model’s assumption of infinite resources has been proven false. We live on a finite planet. The UN estimates global material use has tripled since 1970 and could double again by 2060.
This trajectory is impossible to sustain. We are approaching, or have passed, peak extraction rates for numerous critical resources.
Securing reliable, affordable supplies is becoming a primary competitive battleground. Businesses that decouple growth from virgin resource consumption gain crucial strategic resilience.
It’s no longer just about environmental ethics; it’s about resource security and economic stability.
And let’s not forget about the need to go green. Circular strategies help to keep materials in use through reuse, repair, remanufacturing and recycling. They create closed-loop systems that reduce dependence on volatile virgin markets.
The circular economy reframes “waste” as a design flaw and a valuable feedstock. Landfills become the mines of the future. Businesses that learn to recapture and regenerate these materials can unlock new value streams and reduce extraction pressures.
While resource depletion is critical, the pressure to decarbonise acts as a powerful accelerant. A huge portion of a product’s total carbon footprint comes from the extraction and processing of raw materials – the ‘take’ and ‘make’ phases.
Circular strategies dramatically reduce the need for carbon-intensive virgin material extraction and processing. Remanufacturing a product typically uses 50-80% less energy than making a new one from scratch.
Landfills are major emitters of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Incineration releases CO2 and other pollutants. So reducing waste generation through a circular design directly reduces these emissions.
Governments are adding to the pressure with carbon taxes and extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws, forcing companies to manage end-of-life products. Some have imposed outright bans on single-use plastics.
Investors and consumers are demanding low-carbon products and sustainable practices.
The linear model, with its high virgin material use and waste generation, carries a heavy carbon burden, along with financial and reputational risks.
The shift to renewable energy and electrification requires vast amounts of critical minerals. Recovering these minerals from end-of-life products (eg electrical batteries and solar panels) is essential to meet this demand sustainably and reduce the carbon footprint of the energy transition itself.
So what would a transition look like?
It requires a fundamental rethink.
- Design for circularity: Products must be designed from inception for durability, repairability, disassembly and recyclability. Use modular components, non-toxic materials and standardised parts.
- Create new business models: Shift from selling products to selling services (leasing, “product-as-a-service”). This incentivises durability, maintenance and end-of-life recovery.
- Recycle everything: Build robust systems to collect used products (take-back schemes) and efficiently disassemble, refurbish, remanufacture, or recycle them. Invest in advanced sorting and recycling technologies.
- Work together: Create collaborative ecosystems. No company is an island. Collaborate across the value chain – suppliers, distributors, competitors, recyclers – to create closed-loop systems. Share infrastructure and knowledge. Use tech like sensors, AI and blockchain for tracking and sorting materials and products.
The linear “take, make, waste” model is not merely inefficient; it is an ecological and economic dead end. Its flaws – resource depletion, ecological devastation, economic waste and systemic vulnerability – are colliding with the hard limits of a finite world.
Creating resource sustainability demands that we break the link between economic growth and resource consumption. With the onset of climate change the pressure to decarbonise is growing. Going circular is no longer an option, but an imperative.
Prof Dato Ahmad Ibrahim is affiliated with the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies at UCSI University. He is also an associate fellow at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies, University of Malaya.
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