The holidays are here and with them comes a scene we know all too well. Picture it – you’re filled with spirit as you sift through the back of a closet to unpack old decoration and adorn your house. You grab a strand of lights, ready to make your front windows glimmer, plug them in, and nothing happens. What’s the problem? One single light in the strand is broken, and now the whole thing has failed.

This is the flaw in our global materials management system.

When we harvest natural resources and turn them into our everyday products, we put pressure on our environment. When we use these products and materials only once before throwing them away, we waste our natural resources. We could reuse far more of what we extract from the Earth, but there needs to be a market, verification measures, and willingness from all actors – from the companies that manufacture the products to local governments who manage waste systems – in order to do so. Like a string of lights, every part needs to work together for the entire system to succeed, but we don’t yet have every component of the value chain on board.

If we join together industry, NGOs and local governments, we can create a collaborative system that extends the life of our natural resources. But we all must work together. We need to leverage all our strengths to have a meaningful impact

Read the full article by Erin Simon about natural resources from TriplePundit