Circular economy is emerged as a key approach in transition to more sustainable platform in economic perspective which poses challenges to the existing accounting system. It is gaining importance in academic, public, urbanest, investors, government, and investors; indeed it is an effective approach towards the materials and waste management in which resources are not lost from a system but they are fed back into a system to be used again.
The concept of circular economy was developed in 1966 by Boulding. It has ecological roots, the regenerative nature of circular economy is within the regenerative paradigm proposed by Braungart and McDonough of ‘cradle to cradle’ promoting the eco-efficiency to eco-effectiveness, It can be defined as; circular economy is the regenerative system in which input waste, energy leakage, emissions of the resources are minimized by closing, narrowing or slowing energy loops and it can be achieved by maintaining, long lasting designing, reusing, recycling, repairing an d re-manufacturing.
Circular economy in turn reduces the need of a new raw material by reusing the material we have and this help in understanding that how that thing will work in a closed loop, moving from conventional to sustainable supply chain. Circular economy aims for industries to generate economic, ecological and social value resulting in improving the state of environment and even going behind sustainability.
In Pakistan, 20 million tons of waste is generated annually and Karachi as the largest city generates more than 9,000 tons of waste each day. On the other side, Lahore as 2nd largest city had no proper waste disposal facilities and 27% of its waste is treated by informal sector. Lack of state-of-the-art facilities has made metropolitan cities filled with garbage and in world they are among the dirtiest cities.
It is just like a lake, reprocessing of the material and saving energy and reducing resource waste and consumption; this approach is called as technological nutrients, It isn’t a preventative approach of reducing pollution but it aims to redesign and repair the damage within the industry itself and decoupling the economic growth from environmental degradation and depletion of natural resource. It may not be a final goal, but it is a step or part of an ongoing process to achieve more resource efficiency and effectiveness.
Circular flows in the economy is like keeping the resources in use for the longer period of time and limiting the final disposal of waste. Initiatives for the circular economy is under framework of three categories; single enterprise involving firm level study of cleaner production, inter firm cluster at level of supply chain, and entire cities involved in industrial metabolism. It is advantageous for the economic state of country as it moves towards innovative, smart, with the minimum of environmental degradation.
Sustainable manufacturing is met by circular economy model also involves broader, innovation based methodology for the products over multiple cycles and this is gaining importance in regions of the world as a development strategy.
Methods for the circular economy are; planning, execution and reporting,Industrial sect or is a key to economic prosperity of any country, in the same way Pakistan’s industrial sector is major contributor to employment, trade and GDP of country, for a major portion of population; developed industrial sec tor provides employment, and services also contribute to 53% of total GDP. Solid waste management situation is a matter of grave concern for Pakistan because 5 million people each year die due to negligence in it and facing diseases due to it.
In Pakistan, 20 million tons of waste is generated annually and Karachi as the largest city generates more than 9,000 tons of waste each day, and Lahore as 2nd largest city had no proper waste disposal facilities and 27% of it s waste was treated by informal sector.
Agricultural sector contributes to 23.8% in GDP, it is facing crisis from the past few years as was reported in 2015/16 by state bank’s report that poor cotton crop will be threat to GDP growth of country at that year. By reviewing change in economic state of Pakistan, it is observed that by 1960-70s Pakistan grew faster than South Asia at a rate of 2% average and same was in 1980s and in 1990s, it fell below average and Pakistan became slowest growing country in South Asia.
Same was the situation in 2000. There are constant fluctuations in economy of our state as one of the demands of IMF in this year was to increase interest rate from 6.5% to 12.25% which will curb the outflow of money and in turn reduce import and will hurt economy. Pakistan is paying attention to economic state both short and long term and i n business to business front as software it aims to achieve the goal of $5B by 2020 through service outsourcing and software development which will help to boot up the economy.
Our current budget shows that government will incur deficit of 45% and requires borrowing 1.8 trillion externally and 1.3 domestically both of it may go up which means that government is financing 45% of its budgeted expenditure through debt. There is no accountability to control that state of economy, and not allowing the misuse and wastage of money by politicians and bureaucrats and giving it in better hands to control the expenditure. Pakistan is taking actions to act upon UN’s environmental program. Following are the six plans and activities which are being pursued to mend ways;
- Solid waste management guidelines which were prepared by support of Japan International cooperation agency.
- Conversion of waste agricultural biomass into energy or material source which was a project by UNEP, IETC Japan.
- URBAN UNIT, Urban Sector Management & Policy Unit P & D Department, Punjab which is conducting different seminars on awareness of sanitation, waste water, & solid waste management.
- Different NGOs are being involved at small scale for the collection of solid waste, and recycling.
- Lahore Compost; (only dealing with the organic waste with the cooperation of city district government). The company is registered as project CDM with UNFCCC.