The Waste-Free World: How the Circular Economy Will Take Less, Make More, and Save the Planet (Unabridged)
-
-
2.3 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
The next revolution in business will provide for a sustainable future, from founder, CEO and circular economy expert Ron Gonen
Our take-make-waste economy has cost consumers and taxpayers billions while cheating us out of a habitable planet. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The Waste-Free World makes a persuasive, forward-looking case for a circular economic model, a “closed-loop” system that wastes no natural resources. Entrepreneur, CEO and sustainability expert Ron Gonen argues that circularity is not only crucial for the planet but holds immense business opportunity.
As the founder of an investment firm focused on the circular economy, Gonen reveals brilliant innovations emerging worldwide— “smart” packaging, robotics that optimize recycling, nutrient rich fabrics, technologies that convert food waste into energy for your home, and many more. Drawing on his experience in technology, business, and city government and interviews with leading entrepreneurs and top companies, he introduces a vital and growing movement.
The Waste-Free World invites us all to take part in a sustainable and prosperous future where companies foster innovation, investors recognize long term value creation, and consumers can align their values with the products they buy.
Customer Reviews
Too business-focused.
On one hand, I appreciated getting to see the point of view of how businesses CAN do better - because they’re the biggest polluters of this world. It’s a little refreshing to see the actions already being taken, when the internet is entirely doom-focused about the environment.
But on the other hand, the bigger, more realistic hand - this book worships corporations and future tech. Our world will absolutely not be saved by pineapple leather, or tech startups. I love the idea of this incentivized method of creating less waste and environmental destruction, but it’s not enough to actually create change, as he talks about in the finale of the book when it comes to businesses that greenwash.
I desperately wanted the book to criticize some aspect of this tech-pro-capitalist approach to climate change. But it kept going, and going, and going, about how CEOs will be our saviors. (It was even pro-Elon Musk, one of the worst of the illusion of positive forward momentum.)
If you want to learn more about closed loop systems (which is what I was actually looking for, but I think my Google search got me here because the writer runs a tech start-up investment firm with the words “closed loop” in the title), do not read this book - it gave me none of that. If you want a basic primer on where some businesses are choosing to head (not for the sake of helping people, but for saving money/making profit) with zero criticisms of that system, this is a good book to start with. I did learn a fair bit and I did like the reframing of certain concepts in the book. But generally, it needed to be more than a love letter to the CEO of Seventh Generation.