Welcome to the seventh of our weekly areas of focus on climate action, providing encouragement and seeking to inspire action within all the 22 Methodist Churches in the Ipswich area.
By the time the COP26 summit begins on 1st November, we will have covered 9 distinct areas of concern.
This week’s focus
This week the subject is Eliminate Waste and Reduce Demand. High levels of demand for new products leads to large volumes of waste, contributing significantly to the climate crisis.
T he environmental impact is much wider than the climate agenda alone, as reflected in the UN Sustainable Development Goals which explicitly single the issue out in goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production.
Why is excess consumption a problem?
One of the tenets of global economics is that growth is the primary indicator of economic success. Such growth is characterised by increased consumption, and the demand for more goods and services creates more jobs. Higher levels of meaningful employment generates wealth which is then available to sustain consumption.
Until recently, the “solution” to waste management, has been to ship much of the waste to poorer countries to be processed by cheap labour operating to minimal safety standards. Few countries now accept unlimited trade in waste materials, forcing originators to take greater responsibility for managing their own waste.
n wealthier nations, ownership of goods has increasingly become a symbol of personal status, fuelling demand for newer and better products to own, with “out-of-date” goods being discarded.
This shift to a disposable economy has adversely impacted on the environment: simultaneously creating high demand for raw materials for new products and large volumes of waste from the unwanted, older products.
Consumption of raw materials continues to rise – considerably outstripping population growth, as shown in the data published by the UN to support the relevant SDG. Wealthy nations consume a disproportionate amount of the world’s raw materials. Although the gap between richer and poorer nations is reducing, in 2017 the richer nations consumed on average 13 times more of the world’s resources than the poorest, down from a multiple of 18 in 2000. The impact of overconsumption is much broader than the climate crisis alone as it continues to reinforce global inequity. At the current rate of growth in population and per capita demand, raw materials will be being depleted at a rate three times that which is sustainable.
Why is waste a problem?
Globally, there has been no effective or safe strategy for managing the growing volumes of waste. Given its strong link to economic activity, the largest volumes of waste are created by the richest nations.
Globally, much of the waste ends up in landfill sites, with over 2.1 billion toones dumped each year. Until recently, the “solution” to waste management, has been to ship much of the waste to poorer countries to be processed by cheap labour operating to minimal safety standards. Few countries now accept unlimited trade in waste materials, forcing originators to take greater responsibility for managing their own waste.
In recent years, most attention has been given to plastic waste as we discover new ways in which it causes damage, primarily because it can remain in the environment for thousands of years once discarded, often with casual abandon. It is only loosely connected to the climate crisis, but it does impact on other topics raised in previous weeks – biodiversity, ocean streams, food sustainability.
Less than 10% of plastic waste is recycled, with the majority discarded, much of it reaching the oceans where it poses a real threat to marine ecosystems. There are thought to be 51 trillion pieces of plastic in the oceans alone, varying from fishing nets, plastic bottles, single-use plastic bags. This is an astronomical number – roughly 500 pieces of plastic for every star in the Milky Way. By 2050, there are projected to be more pieces of plastic in the oceans than fish.
As it is carried by ocean currents, much of this plastic aggregates into gigantic “plastic soup”. The Pacific Ocean has five of these, the largest, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch being 2.2m square kilometers or slightly more than the area of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and UK combined.
Other types of waste impact directly on the climate. Biodegradable waste in landfill decays producing large quantities of methane, a severe greenhouse gas, as well as a fire hazard in the massive, often unregulated and uncontrolled tips. Other waste mixed with this rotting mass can create toxic gases adding to the wider environmental impact.
Twenty of the 50 largest waste sites in the world have uncontrolled hazardous waste mixed with municipal waste. Brasilia has one of the largest waste sites which has been operating for over 50 years. It now receives 2 m tonnes per day of waste, and covers over half a square mile.
According to DEFRA, the UK generated 222 million tonnes of waste in 2018, 12% of which is household waste, and nearly – that is 3.3 tonnes for every person, with only 46% of this being recycled.
Nearly 2/3 of the waste is produced by the construction industry (CD&E) and nearly 1/5 is commercial and industrial waste, largely from manufacturing.
How does overconsumption and excees waste relate to climate change?
The combination of increased consumption and discarding “out-of-date” products uses more energy, requires more raw materials, and creates more waste for disposal. All of these stages contribute significantly to the climate crisis through their release of greenhouse gases.
- energy used to extract and refine raw materials suitable for production
- energy used to transport materials from production to processing centres
- energy used to transport and/or process/ recycle waste products created in the refinement and manufacturing processes
- energy used to transport goods to market
- energy used to transport discarded goods, extract reusable materials;
- emission of greenhouse gases during any of the processing stages.
Of particular concern is the scarcity of rare earth and precious metals used extensively in the technology solutions required to shift to a net zero economy. Processes for recovering these materials for reuse in future products can themselves be energy intensive, and many of these important raw materials are discarded without effective recovery.
What is being done globally?
There are two challenges for action in reducing overconsumption and waste.
The first challenge is to stop the volume of waste becoming worse, and to reduce the rate at which raw materials are consumed. This is one of the easiest areas in which we can have impact on climate change and in reducing damage to the environment from pollution. Individual actions are important, as they will also signify changes in attitude and willingenss to address these important issues. However, nearly 90% of the waste is commercial or industrial, so it is essential that policy changes are enacted to drive change commercially. Realistically, this will only happen with punitive sanctions reflecting the true lifetime costs of products and processes.
Government intervention through policy legislation and taxation is vital. Inititatives like the WEEE legislation which forces companies to collect and recycle electical products have gone some way to highlighting the importance of accepting responsibility for the lifteime impact. Similar legislation is required in other areas open to recycling. A prime candidate is for supermarkets to reintroduce bottle return and reuse, in preference to glass recycling.
The second challenge is to recognise the huge volumes of waste that are already polluting and damaging the environment, and introduce steps to recover that waste to be managed in less damaging ways. Technologies are now being deployed with some hope of being able to reduce the threat. Inevitably, some of these technologies focused on reducing the pollution damage, are likely to have an impact on climate change, which will also need to be offset. A number of these approaches to capturing waste operate in similar manner to the booms used to confine oil spillages for clean-up.
What Can We Do?
Reducing consumption and eliminating waste is one of the areas in which we can observe the immediate impact of our actions on climate change. As well as being the easiest to action, it is potentially the easiest in which to become complacent, without recognising how much further we need to go beyond the simple steps.
The unspoken message of UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 is that we must confront the reality that our current levels of consumption and production are irresponsible and urgently need to be addressed. We need to take personal ownership of this irresponsibility in the way we exercise our purchasing power and engage with corporate and political decision makers to demand adoption of environmentally sensitive policies in all aspects of economic activity. This must include penalties for continuing to follow damaging practices, and incentivisation of sustainable solutions.
As consumers, there is a very simple guide to follow to address the problems of overconsumption and waste. There are many vaersions of this guide, always drawing on the alliteration of “R” – words. The most complete guide has 9 R-steps:
- refuse – do you really need something, or can you refuse to buy it and live without it?
- reduce – maybe you need something and can’t refuse totally, but can your need by met with fewer of them, or something simpler?
- reuse – is something reusable in its current form, either by you or someone else?
- repair – can something be repaired to restore its function, instead of replacing it?
- repurpose – can it be adapted and use for a different purpose to avoid discarding it and buying something else?
- recycle – even if it has reached the end of its useful life, can it be recycled to extract useful materials or parts from it?
- replace – this should be your final choice if you still need
- rot – is it compostable, so that its nutrients and minerals can be recycled naturally?
- rubbish – only when you have asked every other question, should you throw it away to be treated as rubbish.
As well as following this guide, use your purchasing power to influence stores and manufacturers to accelerate their adoption of best practices. Don’t accept goods with unnecessary packaging, and make your opinion known to the supermarkets and other stores. When you have the choice, use those stores who have taken the biggest steps in fair trading, eliminating packaging
Make sure you separate batteries and other electronic equipment where their precious (and potentially toxic when processed badly) materials can be recovered for reuse and for greater safety.
Take your own reusable cup to the coffee shop.
Don’t use bottled water.
Collect your tablet blister packs for recycling. Methodist churches in the Ipswich circuit are organising recycling for these, as part of a national campaign. We would rather all pahrmacies saw this as part of their responsibility and commitment to their community, so please do lobby your pharmacy to become part of this scheme.
Learn more
- Read about the twelfth Sustainable Development Goal: Responsible Consumption and Production
- See the World Bank report predicting the trends in global waste leading up to 2050
- Read the Earth Day Organisation‘s report on the challenges created by waste
- Read the WWF resources on waste disposal
- National Geographic explanation of plastic pollution
- Explore the data about global waste from The World Counts
- Reintroducing bottle return and reuse – learn from the Victorians
- Technologies to recapture waste to clean-up the oceans.
- Read a commentary on the DEFRA report of UK data on waste
- Read the Government’s waste management plan for England published in January 2021
- See what Suffolk’s waste management strategy is according to the Suffolk Waste Partnership
World Environment Day Exemplar
On 5th June 1974, the first World Environment Day was marked. Every year since then, a host city has brought focus to an environmental topic that was particularly pertinent to them.
In 2018, New Delhi was chosen as the host, with a theme Beat Plastic Pollution. With its population of 16m, the city produces some 17000 tonnes of waste each day, which is creating an unmanageable problem with huge rubbish heaps.#
Find out more about their focus on Plastic Pollution.
This Week’s Prayer
Pray for understanding and respect that the earth’s resources are precious, should be used sparingly and wisely, but give rise to lasting damage when used wastefully.
Key messages
- to achieve net zero targets, we need to reduce total consumption, and avoid waste wherever possible
- use your purchasing power to influence
- follow the cycle set out here as you think about new purchases
- reduce reliance on disposable products;
- refuse to accept unnecessary packaging;
- avoid single-use plastics which will only go to landfill;
- avoid products not made with sustainably sourced materials, or difficult to repair;
- if possible, reuse or repair items instead of disposing;
- donate unused/ unwanted items for others to use, instead of discarding;
- when not suitable for reuse, recycle waste in an environmentally sustainable way;