"Each Spaniard consumes the equivalent of a credit card a week"

Since he was little, Manuel Maqueda connected with nature and suffered from “eco-anxiety”, but it was in 2009 when he found his turning point, the act of looking in the mirror and seeing the reflection of our society.. It happened in the Midway Islands, the small atoll located in the Pacific Ocean, when seabirds regurgitate plastic to their chicks instead of food. «Plastic is a very new technology, a versatile, cheap, very useful material, but it has a lot of problems that we are beginning to discover.. The main one is that it is a material that the planet cannot digest”, he recalls in Buscando Vocations.

In fact, although plastic does not degrade, it does fragment down to the molecular level, contaminating all of our planet's ecosystems and even human beings themselves: it is estimated that a person ingests, inhales and drinks between three and five grams of plastic a week. Or what is the same: the equivalent of a credit card.

«You have to change the mentality of thinking quickly to think systemically, in systems that, if you touch one thing, damage everything. And have a long-term mentality, without easy and immediate solutions”, suggests Maqueda. And it responds to this problem: the circular and regenerative economy. The economy that maintains things, that repairs them, that ceases to be resource-intensive to be so in job creation.

Magnification of microplastics found on a beach.

Currently, around 93% of everything that is produced in the world in a year is thrown away, only 7% is still in use. Our economy, to get value, extracts finite resources, makes things and turns them into waste.. «The circular economy is to turn that around, it is to keep everything in use, as it has always been done, for as long as possible at the maximum possible value.. Things that last, things that can be repaired,” he insists.. With materials that are healthy. No asbestos, no plastics, no toxicity. And focusing “on effectiveness, not efficiency”: on how we can return to living systems, to nature-based solutions.

“80% of the environmental benefits are determined in the design phase and if something is not designed for a circular end of life, we are wasting time,” warns Maqueda, professor of Circular Economy and Regenerative Economy at Harvard University.. And he adds: «We cannot corner nature, we need to regenerate it. Our economic activity, our existence, our health depends on essential biological cycles.

And it also depends on people who, paraphrasing Cervantes, want to see the world as it should be and not as it is: «The world is changing rapidly, we are transforming the planet. If we don't let the planet transform us, we will become extinct,” he says.

In Buscando Vocaciones, the project with which the European University inspires young students who are walking towards their university stage and all people who are looking for a greater professional specialization, great leaders of our society, such as Manuel Maqueda, have outlined from the present what our future will be like. And they do it through personal stories full of successes, failures and, above all, the ability to overcome and adapt.

Precisely, the circular economy, sustainability and climate change have played a leading role in Buscando Vocations. “Architecture is essential to stop climate change,” warned the architect Belén Moneo. Meanwhile, Laura Sánchez, sustainability consultant and Sustainable Finance Manager at Deloitte, completed: “The entire economy is going to revolve around sustainability.”