國家地理:沒有垃圾的世界可能存在嗎(1)

In Amsterdam I met a man who revealed to me the hidden currents of our lives -- the massive flows of raw materials and products deployed, to such wonderful and damaging effect, by 7.7 billion humans. Our shared metabolism, you might say. It was a crisp fall morning, and I was sitting in a magnificent old brick pile on the Oosterpark, a palace of curved corridors and grand staircases and useless turrets. A century ago, when the Dutch were still extracting coffee, oil, and rubber from their colony in Indonesia, this building had been erected as a colonial research institute. Now it houses assorted do-gooder organizations. The one Marc de Wit works for is called Circle Economy, and it's part of a buzzing international movement that aims to reform how we've done just about everything for the past two centuries -- since the rise of the steam engine, "if you need to pinpoint a time," de Wit said.

在阿姆斯特丹，一位受訪者向我揭示了生活背后的潮流暗涌--供養(yǎng)77億人口的原材料和產(chǎn)品的洪流，造成兼具建設(shè)奇跡與慘烈破壞的效果。這可以說是我們共享的新陳代謝。在清爽的秋季早晨，我坐在東部公園一座雄壯的古老磚塊建筑里。這座宮殿擁有弧形走廊、宏偉的階梯和閑置的塔樓。一個世紀(jì)前，當(dāng)荷蘭人從印度尼西亞的殖民地攫取咖啡、原油和橡膠時，它為開展殖民地研究而建。現(xiàn)在，這里成了各種公益組織之家。馬克·德威特供職的那家叫做“環(huán)形經(jīng)濟(jì)”，歸屬于一場欣欣向榮的全球運動，致力于改革我們在過去兩個世紀(jì)間幾乎一切建設(shè)方式--從蒸汽機(jī)的崛起算起，“要是你需要一個具體起點的話?！钡峦卣f。

De Wit is 39, genial, bespectacled, a little disheveled, a chemist by training. He opened a pamphlet and spread out a diagram he called "an x-ray of our global economy." Unlike natural ecosystems, which operate in cycles -- plants grow in soil, animals eat plants, dung replenishes soil -- the industrial economy is largely linear. On the diagram, fat, colored currents of the four types of raw material -- minerals, ores, fossil fuels, and biomass -- surged from left to right, splitting and braiding as they became products that met seven human needs. Sand went into concrete apartment towers on six continents. Metal ore became ships, cars, and also combine harvesters -- in a single year we harvested 22.2 billion tons of biomass, just to feed us all. Fossil fuels powered those vehicles, kept us warm, became plastic, became all kinds of things. The total flow into the economy in 2015 was 102.3 billion tons.

39歲的德威特為人和藹，戴著眼鏡，有點不拘小節(jié)，化學(xué)家出身。他打開一本小冊子，鋪陳圖表，稱之為“全球經(jīng)濟(jì)透視圖”。相比于循環(huán)運轉(zhuǎn)的自然生態(tài)系統(tǒng)--土地生長植物、植物喂養(yǎng)動物、畜糞給土地施肥--工業(yè)經(jīng)濟(jì)軌道主要是線性的。在圖表上，四種原材料由寬幅彩帶表示：礦物、金屬、化石燃料和生物量，從左端鋪向右端，在化為產(chǎn)品滿足人類七大需求的過程中分叉、交織。沙子流入六大洲的混凝土大廈之林；金屬礦石化為輪船、汽車，還有聯(lián)合收割機(jī)--在一年里我們僅為吃飯就收割了222億噸生物量；化石燃料驅(qū)動交通工具，為我們保暖，還被制成塑料，應(yīng)用無限。2015年輸入經(jīng)濟(jì)的資源總量是1023億噸。