The remarkable economic and population growth of the 20th century was closely coupled to substantial increases in the extraction and consumption of natural resources, leading to increasingly-damaging negative environmental ...

We are using unsustainable amounts of the Earth’s natural resources. We need to improve the rate of resource productivity (“doing more with less”) faster than the economic growth rate. This is the notion behind “decoupling”.

Recycling rates of metals are far lower than potential for reuse. Less than one-third of 60 studied have a recycling rate above 50 per cent, though many are crucial to clean technologies such as batteries for hybrid cars ...