“You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want”, so said Former US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld

We won’t always have all the natural resources we need, most countries don’t, but we will still need to produce and meet the demand of the masses, the poor. For many, many year, we have demonstrated a petulant stance towards global warming, the use of resources than increase toxic emissions and the effects of global warming. Despite the lack of effective action, driven by a ‘hot air’ approach to developing emission taxes and effective industrial policy, nature has forced the hand of man to cultivate for himself, a way that will help him survive – this is the round economy.

The fact that the global economy is round, interprets that at some moment each person on the planet should meet some positive form of the economy. Not so? If not, why not? If the original resource cannot benefit the lower middle, lower and poor segments of the population, are we saying that even wasted and conversion of recyclables are either being wasted or that we are deliberately killing people by starving them.

Starving them may not be direct, but by depriving them of alternative products that are cheaper is only prolonging their appointment with starvation. Well, it has to be. The closest statistics we have on hand is that one in every eight people goes to bed hungry each night and every six seconds a child dies of hunger and everyday 25000 children die from starvation related causes. Yet, our global economy is round! Is this not close enough?

I read an article in a global business and economics publication last week, and the author wrote that the Federal Reserve and the US government did not know the recession was coming. I then commented that a few economists did send out the warning. The response I received was – “emphasis on few”. How many economists are needed before a global recession costing millions of jobs, suicides, loss of income, small businesses closing down and trillions of capital lost to the global economy? How many statistics are needed first?

But you may be thinking now, how is the economy round, let’s explain….

But before I do so, here are some more facts first.

• Solid waste generation will likely reach and exceed 11 million tonnes per day by 2100, says urban specialist Dan Hoornweg.
• Such growth eventually will peak and decline in different regions. This is because over 6 billion people are expected to live in cities by then.
• Until such time, the vastly rising amount of waste and the cost of this impact – means escalating costs for governments and environmental pressures. These costs ultimately will be spread to consumers as tax payers.
• Half of all food produced annually ends up as waste. This is about 2 billion tonnes that through efficient and innovation repackaging and distribution, can be delivered safely to the needy.
• This in turn means that half of all water, manpower, energy, capital and costs of distribution have been wasted. What is amazing about this particular statistic that ranges between 30 – 50 percent is that this food never reaches the plate.
• In the UK up to 30 percent of vegetable crops are not harvested due to their failure to meet retailers’ exacting standards on physical appearance. Half of all food that is bought in Europe and the US is thrown away by consumers.
• If we are to average this statistic across the world, (which may not be far off) – then up to 75 percent of all global food production is wasted.
• Up to 550bn cubic metres of water globally is wasted on growing crops that never reach the consumer.
• A carnivorous diet exerts additional pressure as it takes 20-50 times the amount of water to produce 1 kilogramme of meat than 1kg of vegetables.
• Demand for water in food production is likely to reach 10–13 trillion cubic metres a year by 2050.

There is a certain chink is the armour of the global economic circumference of business activity. The bottleneck is choking the rest of the world and making the poor, poorer. If we are to consider that the IMF handles so much of the capital injections into economies underserving, we can understand the plight of the starving.

The round economy is to work as such, the first segment of the economy are those that have access to the primary resources that create the most wealth, employ the most people and serve as the anchor depletory of global resources as well as environmental toxicity and curse on those who have never even experienced their own greater country due to poverty.

The knock on effect is that waste is created that the second or sub-economy from the first economy now kicks into action. This meaning that all wastage and renewable resources need to be supplied to the “real” second economy, the poor.

At the moment, there is limited value being created from waste in almost every part of the world. It just simply is not enough. For example, in 2011 there was 3,410,000 tons of E-Waste created. From this 2,560,000 tons was trashed and only 850,000 waste recycled or only 24 percent.

Considering the exorbitant amounts of waste that have economic value for another level of economy, we have considerably overlooked the levels of job creation in emerging markets.  For the African continent, many countries are considering FDI. The third phase of economic cycle that completes the circle of economic activity in the new global economy will allow the bottleneck to be removed.

The third economy of value creation in waste literally means innovation, job creations and the ‘new look’ industrialisation for Africa. This means that consumerism will now offer a more affordable option for the many low income people in Africa.

Large companies now have the opportunity to look at Africa in a different light. Plastics offer the opportunity for renewed innovation at cheaper rates for markets such as the automotive industry in South Africa that is showing signs of stress due to labour and currency shocks.

Food waste that can be repackaged or feed old age homes or may be converted to frozen produce for lower groups of income earners. The science of food will also change and more capital can be injected into this segment to find alternative technology to sustain produce, to actually land on someone’s plate.

Man has been challenged before. This time he is challenged of his own accord and actions. The possibility to find solutions still exist.