Bring sustainability to the party with reusable party packs

Every year, we buy 30 billion tonnes of stuff, from pizza boxes to family homes. We throw out or demolish 13 billion tonnes of it as waste – about 2 tonnes per person. A third of what we discard was bought the same year. The extraction, use and discarding of so much stuff creates a large environmental burden, from the depletion of minerals to the destruction of rainforests. The idea of a circular economy aims to address these problems by rejecting the take-make-dispose model of production and consumption that governs our world. Instead, waste is “designed out” and materials are kept at a high value for longer through reuse, repair and recycling.

The Beyond GDP approach to development is gaining widespread support from policy makers and researchers worldwide. While not formulated specifically for tourism activity, the approach serves as a g…

We know we use far more resources per year today than the Earth manages to regenerate. And the warnings of the long-term negative consequences this will have are becoming increasingly clear—not only for the environment, but also for the economy and for social structures. One possible solution is to transition to a circular economy where resources are used over and over again instead of wasted, and where the energy used is renewable. It is estimated that this would not only be beneficial for the environment and resources, but that it could help create 700,000 new jobs in the EU area alone and save the business community 600 billion euros. This would be a win-win situation.