来源：《新科学家》
原文刊登日期：2022年2月9日
No one looking at the state of Earth now can be in any doubt that we are facing three grave environmental crises. The climate emergency is well-established; an appreciation of the disastrous scale of biodiversity loss is growing; and our pollution of air, soil and water is becoming recognised as an existential risk.
看一看地球的现状，没有人会怀疑我们正面临三大严重的环境危机。气候危机已被证实；人们越来越认识到生物多样性丧失的灾难性规模；土壤和水的污染正被视为一种关乎生死的风险。
What is perhaps lacking is an awareness of how interlinked these crises are. As a result, solutions tend to be piecemeal: targets to increase renewable energy or electric vehicle uptake; campaigns to encourage greener eating; bans on plastic straws. Sometimes, they can even be counterproductive, as with creating space for biofuel crops, which can displace food production and increase deforestation.
或许人们缺乏的是对这些危机之间相互关联的认识。因此，解决方案往往是零零碎碎的：以增加可再生能源或电动汽车使用为目标；鼓励绿色饮食的运动；禁止使用塑料吸管。但有时，这些做法会适得其反，比如扩大生物燃料作物种植，但这会减少粮食生产，增加森林砍伐。
A key theme links all three crises: waste. The carbon dioxide at the root of global warming is a waste gas. The seas are poisoned by plastic and other waste materials. We clear forests to grow more food – a third of which goes to waste.
一个关键的主题将这三个危机联系起来：废物。全球变暖的根源二氧化碳是一种废气。海洋受到塑料和其他废料的污染。为了获得更多的粮食，我们砍伐森林，但三分之一的粮食被废弃。
One statistic is shocking. Of the 100-odd billion tonnes of stuff that humans use each year, barely 10 per cent is recycled. That makes plain how far a comprehensive war on waste can go to tackling all three environmental crises simultaneously.
一项统计数字令人震惊。在人类每年使用的1000多亿吨物资中，只有10%被回收利用。这就清楚地表明，一场全面的废物治理战争能够在多大程度上同时解决这三种环境危机。
This means far more than just better recycling. It requires moving away from a “take, make, dispose” mindset, towards a more circular one. It means redesigning the material world so that when goods reach the end of their useful lives, they can be reused or recycled, or even restore the environment from which they were taken.
这不仅仅意味着更好的回收利用。它要求我们摆脱“获取原材料、制造、丢弃”的思维模式，转向一种更循环的思维模式。这意味着重新设计物质世界，这样当商品的使用寿命结束时，它们可以被重新利用或回收，甚至可以恢复它们原来所在的环境。
This implies huge changes to the way economies operate. A rare few countries, notably France, should be commended for ushering in bold laws to limit waste. Companies are increasingly on board too, seeing an uplift for their bottom line if they can reduce the amount of virgin material they use.
这意味着经济运行方式将发生巨大变化。只有少数几个国家，尤其是法国，出台了大胆的限制废物的法律，值得称赞。企业也越来越多地加入进来，因为它们看到，如果能够减少使用原始材料的数量，它们的利润就会上升。
But the ideas at the heart of a circular economy aren’t as widely discussed as they should be. That must change. This opportunity to tackle our environmental problems in a holistic way is one we shouldn’t allow to go to waste.
但是，循环经济的核心思想并没有得到应有的广泛讨论。这必须改变。我们不应该浪费这个从整体上解决环境问题的机会。