Zero Waste and Sustainable Consumption

John CrossEnvironmental Partnership Summit

May 21, 2008

Sustainable Consumption: What Does It Mean

– Equivalent goods and services with a smaller environmental footprint?

– Are Green Products Enough, in light of Rising Populations and Standards of Living

– Sustainable consumption might mean consuming less stuff, not having plenty of environmentally preferable stuff

Zero Waste: Part of the Answer?

• Consumption and Happiness:– What’s the Connection?

• Waste and Consumption- Policy Interventions and Big Ideas

• Zero Waste:– A useful tool for promoting sustainable

consumption?

Consumption and Happiness

• People who don’t think that money can buy happiness are just not shopping in the right places.

• Interesting if true! But the evidence suggests that it is not…

Some Drivers of Consumption- Adaptation

“Everyone needs nice things to get sick of”

We adjust quickly to new stuff and higher levels of consumption

Some Drivers of Consumption (2)

• Status: where does rational decision making become conspicuous consumption?

• Profusion of Options: a proliferation of options may create more dissatisfaction

• Difficulties in Prediction: people face great difficulties in predicting what will make them happy

Some Drivers of Consumption: Self Replicating Beliefs

In short, the production of wealth does not necessarily make individuals happy, but it does serve the needs of an economy, which serves the needs of a stable society, which serves as a network for the propagation of delusional beliefs about happiness and wealth.Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

Advice from Unilever

We all need to think about our environmental impact, but the lifestyle changes required can seem rather drastic. Instead of doing nothing at all, start small…. Next time you're about to throw something away, stop and think. Could you reuse or repair it? Could you swap it or sell it? Could you recycle it? Habits like darning socks and making compost from kitchen scraps may seem quaint, but they're coming back into fashion as people adopt greener lifestyles http://www.unilever.com/ourbrands/aroundthehouse/Startsmall.asp

Pay As You Throw paying for garbage services based on volume generated

Tracking and Sorting to route debris to its proper destination

Disposal Bans are they effective in keeping materials out of landfills?

Product Bans under discussion for some types of packaging

Disposal Fees

Interventions (1)

FreeCycling and Dumpster Dives: What kind of markets exist for used consumer goods?

Getting the price right: would consumers follow the signals?

Advertising campaigns: can waste reduction messages compete?

Source Reduction: how glamorous is 4.4 pounds/ person/day?

Interventions (2)

Will they encourage thinking about wasteful consumption?

Producer Responsibility

Waste to Energy

Offsets/Credits

Waste As Food

Troublesome Ideas

Traditional Message: As the nation moves towards creating sustainable communities and raising environmental awareness, we know that we must rethink our view of organic materials – not as waste items but as valuable resources, put to the highest and best uses possible.

Updated Message: We gotta stop wasting all this food!

Waste As Food/Food As

Waste

Distancing: reducing the distance between resource and consumption decisions

Commoditization: things that can be bought and sold as the answer to every human want

Individualization: consumption issues are associated with free standing consumer choice and not external social forces

Promising Ideas

Zero Waste

Zero Waste: Can It Help for Consumers?

“If companies can do it, why

can’t individuals? Companies, of course, have an incentive to save money. But Subaru officials say some of their techniques would work for consumers.

“They know. They’ve tried them.

‘You should have seen my wife’s face when I asked if we could tip over the trash can’…

USA Today-Money 2-19-08 “It’s waste not, want not at super green Subaru plant”

For further discussion contact John Cross at Cross.JohnF@epa.gov