What you buy, how you use it and reuse it, and if you repair or recycle, all have huge effects on our planet’s climate.
The unrestricted growth in consumerism has been a major factor in the increase in the generation of greenhouse gases (GHG) and the growing impact of climate change.
When you consider the wide range of carbon and methane emissions generated by consumption, from extraction and harvesting through processing and manufacturing and transportation to market, and finally the disposal of no-longer-wanted, unusable and often-unneeded products and packaging, it becomes obvious that the impacts of our consumer-driven society are a major cause of global warming.
The Environmental Protection Agency and other environmental organizations have estimated the GHG impacts of consumption exceed 40% of all human activity. The zero-waste mantra, “reduce, reuse, recycle,” provides us with one way of addressing the issue locally.
The manufacture, distribution and use of the goods and food we rely on in our daily lives, as well as management of the resulting waste, all require energy. Since the middle of the 1900s, our addiction to consumption perfectly tracks the steep rise in carbon emissions.
Traditional “waste”-management practices generate as much as 5% of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, primarily methane from organics. Methane is now understood to be a 70 times more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 over a 20-year period.
Most importantly, we need to move away from the old concept of managing “waste” and adopt instead a strategy of sustainable materials management, a strategy that considers impacts and solutions from “cradle to grave.”
Zero-waste management is not simply maximizing diversion through programs like recycling and composting. As Annie Leonard, author of “The Story of Stuff” aptly states, “Recycling is what we do when we’re out of options to avoid, to repair or to reuse the product first.”
Sustainable materials management is a focus on aggressively maximizing waste reduction by minimizing waste generation. Controlling consumption then becomes the centerpiece of the new paradigm.
It is an approach to using and reusing resources most efficiently and sustainably throughout their lifecycles. It seeks to minimize materials used and all the associated environmental impacts, including most-often toxic, destructive, extractive practices.
By 2030, zero-waste strategies could reduce GHG emissions by more than 400 million metric tons of CO2 per year, the equivalent of taking more than 20% of U.S. coal-fired powered plants off the grid!
Zero-waste strategies focusing on reducing consumption and maximizing recycling and composting can be among the most cost-effective actions local governments can take to reduce their community’s GHG emissions.
Using recycled materials to make new products requires much less energy than making products from virgin material. This means we burn fewer fossil fuels and produce fewer GHG emissions.
Instead of using trees, oil, natural gas and raw minerals to make new products, when manufacturers use recycled products they can save 30% to 90% of the energy they would use to manufacture from new feedstock.
Another key element in sustainable-materials management is dealing with organics, primarily the growing volumes of food waste that end up in our landfills each day. Recycled or composted, our green waste and food waste can enrich the soil, reduce dependency on polluting, petroleum-based fertilizers and sequester carbon from the air.
For holiday gift-giving this year, consider zero-waste alternatives: certificates for services (massages, manicures, hair cuts, etc.), consumables (a food basket filled with locally grown fruits and produce) or durable necessities. Check out the Zero Waste Kaua‘i website, zerowastekauai.net, for more gift ideas and how you can support local actions to become more sustainable.
John Harder, aka the Dump Doctor, was Kaua‘i’s original county solid-waste coordinator, and is a member of Kaua‘i Climate Action Coalition and co-founder of Zero Waste Kaua‘i.
Don’t miss our next Kaua’i Climate Action Coalition virtual forum on Wednesday, Dec. 8 at 6 p.m., on ocean acidification, with special guest speaker Christopher Sabine, oceanography professor at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.
To attend, register and RSVP at the link below or at http://bit.ly/kauaioceanacidification. Or you can watch on the Zero Waste Kaua‘i Facebook Live page.
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Laurel Brier is involved with the Kaua‘i Climate Action Coalition. The KCAC meets via Zoom the third Monday of the month. Email kauaiclimate@gmail.com to join or for more information. Education forums are held the second Wednesday of the month at 6 p.m. For more information, go to the Zero Waste Kaua‘i Facebook page or register at http://bit.ly/eprkauai.
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November 28, 2021 at 05:05PM
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VOICES: Consumption and climate change - The Garden Island
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