Trash revolution: No life to waste

One of the most important elements of a circular economy is sustainable waste management. While the world produces approximately 2.2 billion tons of waste per year in 2020, this amount is expected to increase to approximately 3.9 billion tons in 2050 due to the increasing urban population and consumption behaviors. This requires us to reconsider the steps in the global waste management hierarchy and the importance of these steps. We have to break the correlation between economic development and the amount of waste produced. Only in this way we can minimize waste disposal and protect our lands, seas and oceans from being polluted by waste. It's therefore essential that we need to look further in a way that waste management is not only an urban issue, rather, it should be tackled as an ecosystem issue by predicting its effects.