“Climate change is a waste issue”
“If we don’t address the underlying problem, we’re going to move from one huge crisis to another,” says Don Addu, Southeast Director of Citizen’s Climate Lobby.
On Friday, July 17, Circular Triangle hosted guest speaker Don Addu to talk about the connections between climate change and circular economy. In this engaging conversation, Don described climate change as fundamentally a waste issue. In the linear (take-make-dispose) economy, we create pollution in the form of greenhouse gas emissions, and carbon is the biggest contributor. We often think about climate change as a separate issue from waste; for example, many company’s Sustainability Plans have climate change goals measured in renewable energy and waste goals measured in landfill waste. But Don points out that these are not separate issues, but the same issue: a waste problem. Greenhouse gases are a waste product of our linear system, and if we eliminate greenhouse gases but don’t address the underlying problem of a system designed to create waste, we will replace one huge crisis with another.
Think about it: pretend it’s 2040, and the entire energy economy has transitioned to renewable energy. But our drinking water is polluted with chemicals, our oceans still have microplastics, agriculture still polluted with pesticides, and land is growing scarce due to increased consumption, landfills, and biodiversity loss. Does that feel like a “win” for the planet? Not really. If we transfer our waste from greenhouse gas to something else, we still have a problem.
Circular economy takes this into account by proposing that these are not all separate issues, but one issue: a waste problem. And we can solve that problem by designing waste out of the system, keeping products and resources in use as long as possible, and regenerating nature. In this way, landfills are obsolete, pollution is non-existent, and people thrive.
After Don’s talk, the Brown Bag participants had a robust conversation about how consumption contributes to climate change directly. Increasing consumption of goods contributes to climate change because the creation of products and buildings uses enormous amounts of energy. Often we only think about the sustainability of a product in terms of how it’s disposed of at end of life - reused, composted, recycled, or landfilled. But much of the waste is created in the manufacturing process.
Let’s use the example of cars to illustrate.
A regular car contributes to climate change through the combustion of gas to make energy. In order to be more sustainable, one might use an electric vehicle; the energy used to power that vehicle, unless it was created by a renewable energy source, still contributes to climate change. But perhaps there’s an electric vehicle that is fully solar-powered. That car still contributes to climate change because of the enormous amount of energy used in the manufacturing of the vehicle itself. And that doesn’t even take into account the water, land, and other pollution created in the process (because this is a waste issue, not just an energy issue).
We need to look beyond energy efficiency to reduce our global carbon footprint. Seeing these as separate issues means we are creating separate solutions. Circular economy is a systemic solution to this problem.
