Post-Consumerism a Bridge Between Capitalism, Circular Economy

World history has had great moments that have drastically changed the way societies function. One was the Industrial Revolution, a phenomenon that occurred from 1760 and that marked a before and after in the functioning of economies and the way of life of nations.

This fact marked the emergence of economic models that would also revolutionize world economies as supply and demand became the indicators that set trends for the emergence of products and services. Innovation led to  increasingly better products as well as technological developments that made the life of people and industries more efficient, including the reduction of costs and labor, while also resulting in a sedentary lifestyle, immediacy and ,above all, excessive consumption of products and services that often  we do not need but we buy just  to participate in  a social or food trend.

But it is well known that every action has a corresponding reaction. The evolution and development that we have been building for the last 150 years without control and with an  ignorance that prevented a timely understanding that natural resources are not infinite has created  a serious subsistence problem for the flora, fauna and humanity of our only common home: planet Earth.

The capitalist economic models under which humanity functions today are not going to change, nor are they intended to do so, taking into account that world GDP has increased more than five times in recent years. Every day, more products and services emerge that increase the laziness of human beings and highlights  that the issue of caring for our common home is less important than continuing to produce and consume.

It is true that today there are many advances in terms of caring for our planet and that governments are gradually beginning to consider climate change a serious problem. Some governments have legislated guarantees of care and the implementation of circular economy models to be able to neutralize, somewhat,  the CO2 emissions that are being generated, as is typical of the development and consumption that is important for maintaining local, national and world economies. Among these are Mexico and Spain,  which have developed reforms to their respective constitutions, implementing laws that allow setting the rules for the use of natural resources as well as the importance of implementing post-consumer models that allow the reuse of packaging, containers, and the implementation of the sale of products in bulk between points. These laws are the General Law of Circular Economy (Mexico) and the Royal Decree on Packaging and Packaging Waste (Spain).

That is why, and as I have been saying in recent years, one of the management models that can help us reduce our environmental impact and contribute to reducing waste without affecting economic development are post-consumer models.

The current economic models teach us to consume. We are programmed to do so — just look at the number of advertisements that we see every day, creating the need to consume products that we often do not need or simply to make us fill the gaps that the same capitalist model has created for us. But the problem is not consumption., The problem is how we harmonize what to do with what we purchase when we are done with it.  The circular economy model based on post-consumption allows us to create that bridge of harmonization between what we buy and, later, how we reincorporate it into production value chains. 

But what is a post-consumer model?

An economic post-consumption model is the reuse of the packaging and containers of the products that we buy daily. To give you an example: when we buy a bottle of water, we program our minds to the fact that the only value is that what we have bought holds what we need. In this case, it is the water that provides  100 percent of the value. In reality, when we buy a bottle of water, we buy two products: bottle + water.

In turn, the bottle has three products: plastic bottle + screw cap + label.

So, in reality, we are buying four products and each has a value, but we only attribute value to the water. What happens with the rest?

We throw it in the trash. This action is like throwing the coins you have in your bag down the street, which is why post-consumer models allow us to return and recover the value that has already been paid for in the portability of the products that we consume. I call a post-consumption model the alchemy of waste, adding to the fact that these actions bring us great savings in the generation of greenhouse gases that cause great problems for our atmosphere and are a cause of the effects of climate change. 

The path to  creating models that allow economic development and the care of our common home (planet Earth) is becoming clearer and with great hopes of establishing a harmonious life. That is why I invite you to continue creating these bridges and say "yes" to responsible post-consumption.Remember that doing so brings great benefits for the care of our environment and benefits for our wallets as well.