Materials

Practice the "5 Rs" -- refuse, reduce, reuse, repurpose, and recycle -- toward a circular economy.

The linear and wasteful ways in which humans partner with the materials that make up the economy result in significant greenhouse gas emissions throughout the life cycle of the products that meet our daily needs. Project Drawdown has measured, mapped, and modeled a set of solutions that, collectively, show a pathway forward to a more circular economy where material already extracted, produced, and used is recovered and efficiently reprocessed into reincarnate forms or, in some cases, more thoughtfully disposed of or transformed so as not to release potent gases with significant global warming potential into the atmosphere.