Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

by Kate Raworth

On the biological wing, all nutrients are eventually consumed and regenerated through the living earth. The key to using them endlessly is to: ensure that they are harvested no faster than nature regenerates them, harness their many sources of value as they cascade through the cycles of life, and design production in ways that gift back to nature. Take coffee beans as a simple example: less than 1 percent of every bean ends up in a cup of coffee, and the leftover coffee grounds are rich in cellulose, lignin, nitrogen, and sugars. It would be foolish to throw such organic treasure straight on to a compost heap or, far worse, into a rubbish bin, but this happens in homes, offices and coffee shops worldwide. Coffee grounds, it turns out, make an ideal medium for growing mushrooms, and then can be used as feed for cattle, chickens and pigs, and so are returned to the soil as manure. From the humble coffee bean, imagine scaling that principle up to all food, crops and timber, and scaling it out to every home, farm, firm and institution: it would start to transform our last-century forestry and food industries into regenerative ones that reap value from and then regenerate the living systems on which they depend. On the butterfly’s other wing, in contrast, products made using technical nutrients, such as metals and synthetic fibres, do not naturally decompose so they must be designed to be restored—through repair, reuse, refurbishment, and (as a last resort) recycling. Take mobi...