Imagine a world without waste. Imagine what it would be like if all of our everyday products were designed to be fully resumed back into the system and we could move from a linear economy to a circular one?
A linear economy, what we currently live in, extracts resources from the ground, turns them into products, and then throws them away. A circular economy, which mimics nature, extracts resources from the ground, turns them into products, and then finds a way to fully resume them back into the system. Don’t you think it’s weird that humans are the only creatures on earth that make garbage?
Every other creature on earth has found a way to live harmoniously with their surroundings and yet we live this way, and have slowly devolved into rather trashy animals. The average American generates 4.4lbs of trash a day and most don’t even think twice about it. I find that crazy when I think about it.
I always say, “We don’t have waste problems, we have creative thinking problems.” And one of my favorite creative waste solutions came from my boss Jeremy. Let me give you the background…
Canada grows the most oil seed flax in the world. ‘Flax straw’ is a byproduct of the industry and is usually burned. As a boy Jeremy used to wonder if there was a way to use the flax straw. Fast-forward a whole bunch of years and Jeremy was on vacation with his family. When they went to the beach, he noticed something – plastic, lots of plastic. He was building a sand castle with his son and with every dig into sand more plastic surfaced. That’s when it all clicked for him – plastic is a problem.
Jeremy went back home to figure out if he could use flax straw to make a plastic alternative. This plastic alternative is what we like to call – flaxstic. The idea behind the product is that it wouldn’t stay around and litter beaches for years to come. Instead, flaxstic, would turn back into soil at the end of its life.
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