Circular Economy for Kids | Circular Economy: What is it? Why is it important? | Eco-Schools

Today we are going to learn five cool facts about the circular economy. Fact number one. The circular economy can help save the planet. The economy is how we spend and make money and it impacts all different parts of our lives. The current model of the economy is a linear one but if we change to a circular economy we could really help the planet. Our linear economy takes natural resources, makes them into things, uses them, then throws them away. The problem with this is that the resources are limited and throwing things away can cause chemicals and gases to leak into the environment. The circular economy is designed to reduce, reuse and recycle in every part of the economy. This means creating less unnecessary things, reusing things as much as we can and recycling things once they are no longer useful. Fact number two. The circular economy changes how we design new products. When we make new things like phones, cars, TVs and machines we use a lot of different materials. This can make the things hard to recycle as it takes a lot of time and effort to separate each material. In a circular economy we would think about how the item will be recycled while we build it so that we can make it easier from the start. Fact number three. You can rent the clothes you want in a circular economy. Clothing is a big cause of wasted materials and it takes a lot of resources to make new clothes. Eighty percent of the clothes we buy end up being thrown out after a year because they are no longer trendy or we have too many. It's the second biggest cause of pollution in the whole world. So if we need a new outfit for a special occasion maybe try renting it. Lots of companies just let you rent clothes then send them back when you don't need them so someone else can enjoy them. This is especially good for kids clothes because we grow out of them so fast. You can also buy your clothes second hand which prevents them from going to landfill and it's usually cheaper too. So you can save money and the planet at the same time. Fact number four. Lots of disposable items are made from plastic like forks packages and wrappings. These are all single-use plastics which are terrible for the environment. These plastics are only used once and stay in the oceans or landfill for around 500 years. To tackle this we are developing new technology that lets us avoid plastic when making disposable things. Lots of companies use bamboo which grows much faster than trees and is biodegradable. Bamboo is a great alternative for disposable or reusable cutlery. One company is even developing a type of plastic made from mushrooms for packaging that completely biodegrades. Fact number five. We can make our food system circular too by composting food waste. Food waste is very bad for the planet as it creates methane gas. Methane is a greenhouse gas that increases the temperature of the atmosphere. It is a major cause of global warming. We compost our food into fertilizing much less methane is made and the fertilizer is great for growing new crops. Instead of the nutrients in the food being lost they are given to the soil to grow even more food. A great example of a circular economy. I hope you enjoyed my five cool circular economy facts. See you soon!