Changing how we consume, reuse and refill products to ensure a sustainable world requires more than just consumer action. It needs systemic change: “big brands and businesses need to be held responsible for cleaning up their act! We need an end to corporates buying too much stock and then encouraging us to buy things we don’t need via sales and Black Friday. We need an end to corporates promoting more and more “seasons”, constantly trying to persuade us that things in our home are no longer in vogue, that our clothes and furnishings are out-of-fashion. It’s corporate behaviour that has created the single use system and we need to change that system – so it’s the corporates that need to change.” (1)
Reducing waste and the pressure we put on the Earth, we should also consider how many single use items we are discarding, including those that we put in the recycling bin.
Plastic yogurt pots can be recycled but that still uses oil to produce the plastic (very little food packaging is made from recycled plastic) and energy to produce it. Could there be a more sustainable way of getting yogurt? One way might be for yogurt to be sold in reusable glass jars – as per milk. Another might be to make one’s own yogurt in reusable pots.
The same is true of margerine tubs – might solid margerine (vegan butter) that comes wrapped in greaseproof paper be better?
And what about refilling and reusing wine bottles, beer bottles etc? We do it with milk and fruit juices.
And what about avoiding single use coffee cups and plastic bottles of water? Tap water is free! And coffee tastes better in a proper cup.
Four different types of refull/ reuse consumer practice
When I was growing up, households typically had a metal dustbin that that dustmen could lift into their shoulder tipping the contents into the truck. Now domestic dustbins are twice the size with wheels and are designed with handles which the dustbin truck latches onto in order to empty the bin. But not only do we have a much bigger dustbin, each house also has at least two large recycling boxes and a food recycling bin too. In 2022/3, annual waste per household varied from 450kg in the South West of England and 600kg in the North East. (1)
Whilst such waste is only a small portion of the waste we expect the Earth to absorb, domestic waste if something we can control – and curtail. Why not do a survey of what you discard each week?
Could any of it be reused?
Did you need to use in the first place? Might you not need to buy/ acquire it in the first place?
Bio capacity (the metric used to calculate Earth Overshoot Day) includes both the biological productive land and sea area that provides the resources we need and the Earth’s capacity to absorb the waste produced including pollution.
In this context waste includes sewage, greenhouse gas emissions, excess fertilisers that leak into the water system, exhausts and brake dust from vehicles etc. The limits on the capacity of the Earth to absorb waste and to keep the environment healthy, is something we often forget. Producing waste is just as much about consumption as cutting down trees or catching fish. To live within the resource constraints of the Earth, we need not just to consume less but also to produce less waste.
How we travel and use transport can feature large in our use of the Earth’s resources. We know that flying has a huge negative impact on the climate and on air quality, and that therefore the less we fly the better. As we start thinking about our summer holidays, now is a good time to explore all the amazing holidays that don’t involve air flights. And we might equally consider signing the Flight Free Pledge – https://flightfree.co.uk/
Plastic Free July is another mid year feature, but one which we might start working towards now – particularly when we recall that our use of oil in making plastic and the pollution we cause in disposing of it, unnecessarily sap the Earth’s resources.
Single use plastic seems so imbedded into daily life that it can seem an impossible challenge to live plastic free. Yet we know that the pollution from plastics – including microplastic particles which can now be found in every part of our bodies – is highly damaging.
Maybe starting small now could be a solution. Having coffee in in real cup, rather than as a take out, is an easier habit to adopt when the cafe is warm and outside is cold and wet, seems much more logical.
Equally do we need to rely on bottles of drinking water when the weather is cold? Can we train ourselves to have a glass of water when we stop for a drink or a meal, and then when the weather gets warmer, have a bottle we can refill for the in between times.
Winter fruit and vegetables are more robust and avoiding plastic packaging should be easier. If it becomes our mindset now, then we can embarking the habit before the summer comes.
Globally we know we have to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – at the latest – if we are to curb the inexorable rise in temperatures, the associated increase in extreme weather events and any of the various tipping ecological points that would accelerate this process.
Here in the UK our government has set a target of reducing emissions by 68% (compared with 1990 values) by 2030 and by 81% by 2035 and ultimately by 100% by 2050.
To achieve these targets we need to reduce sharply our use of fossil fuels to heat our buildings (including cooling in the summer), to run our transport systems (vehicles, trains, airplanes etc), to generate electricity, and in various industrial processes such as making steel.
Such changes will impact is all. For householders it will include having to add more insulation to their homes and replacing gas boilers with electrically based heating. And for tenants, hopefully such alterations will be carried out by their landlords. For commercial and institutional buildings there will equally be the need to replace gas with electric heating and cooling systems, as well as upgrading thermal insulation. Such buildings may well have the scope to install solar panels and batteries so that they can generate their own electricity. The managers of such buildings may also want to reflect on how staff, users and customers travel to and from their premises to enable these to become more sustainable in their use of energy.
For car drivers it will be switching to electric cars or, even better, switching to public transport and active travel. For delivery drivers it will be switching to cycles for small, local loads and electric vehicles for larger ones. For the railway it will be investing in further electrification of the rail network and potentially developing battery units for short, smaller capacity branch lines. For airlines it must mean reducing the number of flights as there really is no green alternative to aviation fuel, although for short flights serving outlying islands battery planes may be a developmental opportunity.
For the energy sector, it will include continuing to develop and expand renewable energy sources (solar, wind and tidal) to provide all the extra green electricity that will be needed by other sectors, and to provide the necessary infrastructure to support that and to enable individual households, businesses and communities to develop their own generation capacity.
For industrial processes it will be switching to new methods of production such as using electric arc furnaces for steel making and for cement production developing new chemical formulations that avoid releasing large amounts of CO2.
These changes will also have impacts on jobs with some people needing to retrain for new careers – for example oil rig workers retraining to build and maintain offshore wind turbines, car workers might switch to building public transport rolling stock, airline staff might switch to working in the rail industry, blast furnace workers might retrain as installers of heat pumps and thermal insulation, or switch to manufacturing double glazing units, solar panels, and wind turbines etc.
These changes will need considerable financial investment, which must mean shifting money currently invested in supporting carbon intensive industries and projects, to these low carbon sustainable alternatives. And this will mean a shift in thinking by those who work in the financial markets – bankers, financiers, investment managers, pensions and insurance fund managers, etc.
These changes will also need government support, both in terms of legislation that will deliberately shift markets in the right direction, and in terms of subsidies, switching these away from carbon intensive industries and towards the green alternatives. And this will be a key role in achieving the carbon emission targets. Our capitalistic economic system is not well equipped to create the change we need. It is not well equipped to reflect the risks and damage caused by carbon intensive industries and products. Nor is it well equipped to ensure that those responsible for the damage already caused should pay for all necessary remedial and restorative action.
Earlier this week – 5th December – Shell and Equinor announced a plan to combine their operations in the North Sea to more effectively extract the remaining oil and gas reserves for ‘decades’ to come! This would ensure their continuing profit levels and in particular share dividends. How can it be economic to extract more carbon emitting oil and gas over those very same decades when we as a nation – and globally – are struggling to reduce our carbon emissions to net zero?
And how can it be that our government will provide subsidies to these oil companies to enable them to develop these projects? It is calculated that with tax breaks and subsidies, the UK could pay upward of 90p in the pound for the cost of developing the Rosebank oil field.
And how can it be that these oil companies can talk about – and use this in their advertising – that they are maintaining the UK’s energy security, and that they are keeping homes warm – and neglecting to point out that the cost of what they provide is at an increasing to customers and the environment – as if only gas and oil could achieve energy security?
What we need for a just transition is:
proactive action taken by the government to create and safeguard a transition via legislation that is fair to the working population, that is fair to householders, and that ensures a level and consistent playing field for businesses
Proactive action taken by the government to redirect subsidies so that they support and enhance the transition to renewables and ensure that the price to the consumer is affordable in the short term. (In the long term re-newables will be cheaper)
Proactive action by the financial world to shift finances from the old carbon intensive industries to the growing low carbon, sustainable ones
Proactive action by companies and organisations to ensure their operations are shifting at pace to achieve net zero.
A key part in this transition can be found in the Climate and Nature Bill – the CAN Bill – which is a private member’s bill that is currently making its way through Parliament. We can show our support for this via the Zero Hours web page and by asking our individuals MPs to back the bill when it comes for its second reading on 24th January – https://www.zerohour.uk/climate-and-nature-bill/
This is the week of Black Friday, followed by Cyber Monday. Are these the Feast Days of the Consumerist faith? Are they not something that we should be challenging as they encourage people to spend money on things they don’t need and further deplete our limited world resources?
Here is an informative piece from the Ethical Consumer.
Any alterations made to reduce carbon emissions need to be sustainable in the long term. Simply switching all combustion engines for electric ones is not sustainable as each new electric engine will make unsustainable demands on rare minerals. Further mining such minerals where they are found in less developed countries often leads to the exploitation of people and pollution of the land.
Sustainability can be improved by the frequency with which a vehicle is used. A car that spends most of its life parked in the road, is not a sustainable use of limited resources, where as a bus or train that is in frequent use, carry larger numbers of people is a more sustainable option.
Active travel is always a good option with low emissions and significant health benefits!
Zero waste is an umbrella title that encompasses avoiding plastic and other unnecessary packaging, and other means of reducing waste – which might for example include composting the outer leaves of cabbages and onion skins, or turning apple cores into cider vinegar.
Going zero waste can revolutionise the way we live as consumers. Even if we can’t achieve a 100% target, we will be altering patterns of thinking both in ourselves and by those who supply us. This blog item reflects our household shift in this direction – https://greentau.org/2022/01/27/eco-tips-zero-waste/
The Green Tau 