Κυκλική οικονομία και κοινωνική προστασία

Abstract

The natural environment has always been an excellent source of pumping pure raw materials to meet the needs of human capital in food, material goods, and then processing them into technological and other useful means, improving the quality of life and achieving social prosperity. With the Industrial Revolution, an intensive system of exploitation of natural wealth was formed, establishing the linear economic model that aims at its continued development, based on the natural resources of the earth. This model still prevails today, although many factors now contribute to reducing its efficiency, do not go in hand with its mentality and mainly indicate its polluting role. We are going through the period of digital revolution and many changes will be made both in society and at work but also in all forms of social life. As it turns out last year with the advent of Covid 19 we saw a rapid digitization of services in an extremely short time. The continuous exploitation and dependence on the natural resources of the earth proves to have serious environmental effects on the ecosystem and in the same time an uncontrolled waste of valuable secondary material from their extraction, processing and final disposal stage, making it useless. Modern economic life and everyday life create tons of economically exploitable waste by disposing it, or partially utilizing it with conventional management methods, allowing a large percentage of disuse and pollution. In Europe, six tons of waste is generated out of the sixteen tons of material used per person, losing a large percentage of valuable recyclables (metals, wood, plastic, paper). A small percentage ends up being recycled or burned, while the largest is buried, while it could be reused either as a material or as a resource. This awareness has already triggered alternative forms of waste management by strengthening the role of sustainable development policy. The cyclical economic model is one of them, which not only manages waste, but turns it into resources, optimizes their efficiency and restores their value, reducing or eliminating residual flows. It is a new way of approaching production, economy and society have a view to protect the environment through the restoration of natural capital. In the present work, the contribution of Circular Economy is studied, with the similar practical strategies and models that can optimize the management of resources and waste, to prevent pollution and environmental degradation through business, while strengthening the economy and society and bring social prosperity to the citizens. The structure of the work is as follows. Initially, the concept of the circular economy is described through its theoretical and practical dimension as well as the actions taken to achieve these both globally and in the E.U. and especially in Greece. The second chapter analyzes the concept of social protection through the theoretical dimension as well as historical background. Finally, the connection is made between the circular economy and social protection and how this model will bring about social equality and development.