We as
humankind are already now overutilizing the resources earth can offer, and our
current level of consumption of natural resources cannot be sustained for a
long time.  Sustainable development
necessitates that we cut down usage of fresh natural resources, and start
circulating used recourses.

Key
components of this new world attached with the keyword “circular economy” are
energy saving and reusage of materials. 
High-level goals are stop of global warming and end to pollution –
actually even cleaning up the pollution incidents we have so far done.

Energy
consumption in total must be reduced. 
Especially harmful is usage of energy sources that are not
renewable.  Oil, gas and coal are in a
central position, but even items such as uranium are not increasing any
more.   Burning wood and other bioenergy
might be some kind of solution to local energy needs in some places, but
burning of anything, often sadly especially bioenergy - burdens our atmosphere
a lot.

In
principle we might have enough of metals and minerals in the world, but
finding, mining and purifying them is a hard energy-consuming and environment
burdening task. Utilizing current available reservoirs more efficiently would
be beneficial for anyone.  Wasting of
precious resources such as plastics made out of oil is a major sin.

Pollution
takes many forms.  Atmosphere, soil and
waters are all risked.   When they are
polluted, the whole living ecosystem runs into trouble, not least human
beings.  Losing the richness of
ecosystems and scarifying species can have radical consequences that we might
not even understand yet.

But
circular economy is not just about technology or natural sciences.  It is as well about human and group behavior,
about sociology and economics. From the very beginning, we must educate
children to the values of circular economy, and formulate our economic systems
and incentives so that circulre economy can be realized.  The global challenge in this is huge, and
might take generations to accomplish

Information
systems play a key role even in the circular economy. Increased knowledge about
circular economy can be spread through global information channels such as the
Internet and social media.  Thousands of
different operational applications can assist in the daily activities of
circular economy.

The
presentation based on this abstract will dig deeper to the topic area of
circular economy.   More detailed mapping
of the area will be done, and the taxonomies and frameworks presented will be
supported by practical examples.