ABSTRACT
The frugal closed-loop process enables Sweden to generate a substantial amount of the energy and material it needs to support its advanced economy while also lowering its ecological footprint. To Nordic people, that choice is informed by a holistic philosophy of education, which endows citizens with a capacity for systems thinking: an understanding that the health of a community, business or nation depends on the health of the whole system. Working with diverse global cohorts, it seeks to “reduce inequality via sustainable economic growth” by promoting circular economy methods, open innovation, lean methodologies, biodesign and social enterprise by matchmaking startups, non-profits and impact funds. The “commons” in Hardin’s analysis describes a shared-resource system – such as a fishery – where individual entrepreneurs acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all stakeholders by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action.
