Nature does not do closed loops.
Or: Why we shouldn’t put all our eggs in the recycling basket
The one time I felt both the smallest and most connected to the space around me was in the middle of the ocean, during and Atlantic crossing.
It was night, and a full dome of stars merged seamlessly with the black ocean surrounding me. No point on the horizon to focus my attention on, no other ships in sight. No one on board even to distract me from that sensation, as I was the one on watch and the first mate was inside plotting our next waypoint.
Mid ocean is one of the few places on earth where you can actually feel the magnitude of the planet. I’ve done some skydiving, but even that did not come near this profound sense of scale. It was also a wild realisation knowing that space continued far below me and, in that moment, our 65ft yacht was the only man-made object for miles around.
It was awe-inspiring. Even more so when the night after I was woken up to witness dolphins riding our bow in a silver wave of bioluminescent sparkles.
But of course, even in that vastness of the natural world, our ship wasn’t really the only man-made object. By now, human-fabricated materials have managed to infiltrate every inch of matter, land and water on earth. Even those silver dolphins likely carried traces of plastics in their system.
Synthetics are still some of the most widely used materials today. Polyester, nylon, acrylic, elastane, plastics and teflon are all made from fossil-fuel derived sources, harshly processed to become something 'useful'.
We know by now that’s not the way to go:
Pollution ranks among the 10 risks with the most severe expected impact over the next decade, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025. Plastics are one of the main pollutants, with 19 million tonnes leaking into land, rivers and coastlines every year.
Only this year, research shows microplastics are even messing with plants, cutting a plant’s ability to photosynthesise by up to 18 percent, including crucial food crops.
And how about this for leaving our trace: Researchers found evidence of microplastic particles being used as a building material by caddisfly larvae in rural freshwater streams as far back as the 1971.
But what if we manage to keep all these synthetics in use through recycling? Wouldn’t that solve the problem? Isn't closing the loop what we are aiming for? Unfortunately: no. Not like that.
There is a vital flaw in our thinking about making stuff.
There is also a vital flaw in our thinking about recycling as the ultimate answer.
Recycling is not going to cut it. And here’s why.
Going back to the dolphins for a bit: a recent study found that not only dolphin bodies contain microplastics, but so does their breath. It suggests that the marine animals are inhaling pollutants when they come up for air. Many of these plastic samples were polyester, a common polymer used to make clothes, which shed huge amounts of particles when washed.
But here's what's making it worse: recycled polyester has been shown to emit more microplastics than new polyester. And that goes for many of the other fibers and materials we produce. Keeping materials in the loop for as long as possible is not what we should be aiming for. There, I said it.
Novel entities
Everything that nature doesn’t recognise, and therefore doesn’t break down, is called a novel entity. This is also the stuff our bodies do not recognise. Nor a dolphin’s body for that matter.
Nature breaks things down in order to build them back up, and enzymes and bacteria are its main contractors. They decompose end-of-life to create nutrients for new life. But these most ancient and omnipresent engines of material flows on the planet cannot break down what they do not know.* So instead of becoming a nutrient, that unrecognised material becomes pollution.
Mind you: waste did not exist on this planet until Homo Sapiens appeared on the scene. There was no such thing as pollution for nearly 3.8 billion years. Until about a second ago.
Everything that nature does not recognise is no longer a nutrient, it becomes pollution.
The Planetary Boundaries visual shows how big our problem actually is. The Novel Entities risk assessment is off the charts. Even beating climate change:
While recycling certainly has its place, looking at it as the main solution to solve the pollution crisis is disregarding some crucial points:
All material loops inevitably leak. One of the primary goals of the circular economy is to keep materials in use as long as possible. But when it comes to synthetic materials, this aim is not solving this issue, but making it worse.
Not everything can be recycled. There aren’t (yet) effective or scaled recycling solutions for many of the material streams out there. Some materials just can’t be fully recycled, and cannot go back into the same streams they came from.
Durability does not equal biodegradability. Durability is great, but more important than the speed of degradation is a material's value to the broader system.
Waste is expensive. Collecting and sorting waste is costly, even for the most effective systems out there. And it’s still driving greenhouse gas emissions.
What it comes down to:
Sustainable material design is not truly sustainable unless it mimics nature’s regenerative processes.
Nature does not do pollution. It does not work in singular closed loops either. It operates in a beautifully balanced, complex, symbiotic network of loops that infinitely recycles its nutrients, flowing from one loop to the next, without any toxic processes that might harm the broader ecosystem.
The way we currently look at recycling is (mostly) at product level cycles. What we should do instead, is consider these challenges and solutions on an ecosystems level. Wood doesn't become wood in nature. It breaks down to become a nutrient for other living organisms.
Even if we stop adding any new particles to our growing waste problem starting today; we will keep messing up this ingenious web of life (that we too are part of!) if we aim to reuse our synthetic materials for as long as possible.
The reality is of course that much of the harm has already been done.
We've been happily mass producing away since the 1800s, with a steep rise in manufacturing of synthetics after World War II. We will have to deal with what's already there. And for that, refining and expanding our recycling streams and infrastructure is essential for the shorter term.
But my plea - and that of many others with me - is that we see recycling not as the future, but as a transition period. One that is focused on figuring out the least polluting way to break down old stuff, while dedicating most of our time and resources to finding truly life-friendly solutions. There is no one solution to our challenges. But aligning with nature's strategies, that have evolved over 3.8 billion years of life's existence on this planet, is the best guide to make it work.
In the meantime, great stuff is already happening in next generation life-friendly material innovations that we can get inspired by, and set as an example. From cellulosic fibers, to bioplastics made from fish waste, to leather alternatives made out of fungi, algae or fruit peel.
The capital invested in those Next Gen materials however, is still peanuts compared to what is put into scaling recycling solutions. It's time we turn that around.
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Nature is our playground; we need to make it our model too.