Financing the EU's Circular Transition
The transition to a Circular Economy is under way. It is just over 8 years now since the European Commission published its Circular Economy Action Plan. In that time, we have had a second Action Pla...
Renewable Matter's sponsored articles
Transparency is one of the core values of Renewable Matter, which is why I want to clarify to our readers how we engage with advertising companies, while fully respecting our authority. The co...
Welcome to Post-Capitalism
Chico Mendes, a Brazilian trade unionist and environmentalist, is often credited with the phrase that “environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening.” In a world where the ri...
Less is more? Degrowth, green growth and the future of our economy
Imagine a world where overwhelming narratives on climate change are a thing of the past, with healthy air, clean water and fertile soil. And no one’s had to suffer for it: people around the wo...
European farmers’ protests show the need for a just transition to Net Zero
As many countries prepare to go to the polls in 2024, the need for a transition to Net Zero emissions has become a key political battleground. In Europe, the sustainability of farming practices is t...
Two Intelligences
“We are seeing growing evidence that artificial intelligence can prove to be an invaluable tool in the fight against climate change. We need to harness its potential and empower innovator...
Circular Economy: A Concept at a Crossroad
Despite the initial enthusiasm and efforts to transition towards circular models, recent data reveal a concerning decline in the global circularity rate. From 9.1% in 2018, the circularity rate...
Renewable Matter goes bimonthly
We begin the year 2024 with great news: Renewable Matter becomes bimonthly. Six issues a year for more comprehensive and even more articulate reporting. From the circular economy of territorie...
Ten words for 2024
Another year has come to an end. There are those who reflect on these past twelve months while others prefer to look to the year ahead. We of Renewable Matter, who by nature are always looking ...
A circular food system can reverse the overshoot of planetary boundaries
* Álvaro Conde and Alex Colloricchio contributed to this article A global transition towards a sustainable food system is long overdue, scientists agree: and although farming has lon...
If a Tree Falls
Over the course of my life, I have encountered exceptional trees: the giant sequoias and the secular General Sherman (2200 - 2700 years old) in California, the Lebanese cedars in the Beqaa valley, t...
The Importance of Responsibility
In economics, “negative environmental externalities” occur when someone is responsible for something negative (e.g. a farmer using toxic chemicals that spread into the environment) and d...
Water scarcity may become our everyday reality, but a circular economy can help
Humans are about 60% water. Water covers about 71% of the Earth's surface. It feels like water is all around us, forever available. But approximately 1.1 billion people lack access to it, and 2...
Ecuador, a referendum for the future
Leaving oil in the ground by popular demand. This is what Ecuadorians approved yesterday in a historic referendum to stop the development of all new oil wells in Yasuní National Park in the A...
The Ocean Inside
On the island of Inhaca, Mozambique, lies one of the most extraordinary observatories of ocean life I have visited as a journalist. Since 1951, the Estação de Biologia Marinha Eduardo ...
The Sea and Humankind: an Interdependent Relationship
The sea is a natural resource with which we have increasingly lost contact over time.Yet, 50% of what we breathe comes from the sea and is produced by the marine organisms that inhabit it. The ocean...
The Circular Economy as a Pillar of the EU’s Development
Our world population consumes 110 billion tonnes of materials a year and wastes over 90 percent of them. Only 7.2 percent of those materials make it back into our economy and, according to the Circu...
Towards a Global Green Deal
The Ventotene Manifesto, penned by Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi, two of modern Europe’s founding fathers, and the Paneuropa document, written by Richard Nikolaus of Coudenhove-Kalergi, defin...
Critical Moment
In the world of robotics and informatics, as well as in the world of the energy transition, the material factor is often ignored. We have imagined android armies, hypercomplex machinery, infinite so...
The greatest economist you've probably never heard of
Thus someone defined Herman Daly, who passed away on October 28 at the age of 84. Whether or not he was the father of ecological economics matters little. What Herman Daly's work represented can al...