24 JUN,2019 | MEDC
NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant hit the nail on the head when he said recently that the circular economy has the potential to generate 14 million jobs in the next 5-7 years and create lakhs of new entrepreneurs in the country. India’s focus on the development of the circular economy needs to get topmost priority from policymakers. The cost-effective recycling of waste is a huge business all over the world, and it has the potential to change the system for the better. It is ultimately the socioeconomically marginalized who will benefit most from this approach, since the ecological footprint of poor people is low, and they should not be made to suffer for systemic shortcomings. Resource efficiency needs to gain ground and industrial systems have to be created that are not only efficient, but essentially waste-free. Just as in the living world, the economy also needs to operate in a circular mode wherein the by-product of one process provides an input to another. That is a key factor in the shift to a paradigm of sustainable development.
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