Ron Gonen on 'waste profiteers,' transforming the recycling industry and getting serious about ESG

The Closed Loop Partners CEO and author of new book "The Waste-Free World" shares his views on how CPG companies, service providers, local governments and consumers must adapt to build a more circular economy.

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The Closed Loop Partners CEO and author of new book "The Waste-Free World" discusses how CPG companies, services providers, local governments and consumers must adapt to build a circular economy.

Ron Gonen is well known for his ambitious and outspoken views on accelerating toward a more circular economy in the U.S. Now, he's written a book to lay out the economic and environmental case for these goals and why he feels the shift is long overdue.

"The Waste-Free World" opens with the story of New York's infamous Fresh Kills Landfill – once the largest in the world, but now a growing park – as an example of disposal culture's consequences as well as the possibilities of ecological regeneration. Gonen calls out companies and industries central to consumer culture as "waste profiteers," because they benefit from manufacturing and selling products but have little financial stake in managing them. Over the course of the book, he highlights consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies that have taken steps to profitably change their models and how "we can repudiate the gospel of waste and instead champion the ethic of circular consumption" in a new shift akin to the Industrial Revolution.

This news brief is based on reporting published by Waste Dive on 2021-04-08. The original report is linked below.