Material with a history
The waste problem and our overconsumption is a huge, and growing problem, in the world. Not only from a climate perspective but also by causing a leakage of harmful substances into the environment. We consume so much more than the planet can give us. We have all seen the depressing pictures of devastated landscapes that used to be lush rainforests and most of us have thought “horrible yes, but what difference could I possibly do?”. Plenty, as it turns out!
After reading the new report “The environmental benefits of recycling” from the Imperial Collage in London/BIR, it is apparent that if we all started to recycle more, enormous amounts of energy could be saved. The report identifies the savings that can be made by using recyclables as opposed to virgin material and considers seven metals – aluminium, copper, ferrous metals, lead, nickel, tin and zinc – and paper. The results are astonishing. For lead , tin and aluminium, for instance, the energy savings of using recycled material are between 95-99% (and these processes are energy consuming, believe me). They find that the potential of savings in annual CO2-emissions on a global level to be 501 million tonnes CO2, just for these seven metals. And they haven’t even taken the energy consumption of mining or transportation to the production plant into consideration.
To take it to a more understandable level, if everybody in Sweden ( about 9 million people) just sent a few more metal containers to recycling, increasing recycling by just 5-10%, we could avoid 685 000 tonnes of CO2-emissions. That equals the annual emissions of 274 000 cars – just by enabling the materials to be used more than once.
As a global environmental and usability label for ICT equipment, the TCO label tries to use the influence we have on the IT-industry to affect the design and production towards more sustainable products. Waste and recycling are one of the areas we are focusing on and the numbers above clearly shows why.
Fortunately, there are so many creative and innovative people among us with amazing ideas.
I attended a seminar organized by the recycling industries in Sweden yesterday, and got the opportunity to listen to a few of them. One example is Petra and Jenny at Apocalypse (www.apocalypselab.net) developing new, sustainable products from recycled material “material with a history”. For instance their main product “The Soap”, a soap made out of used and recycled deep frying oil from falafel kitchens in the south of Sweden. Sounds strange but apparently it doesn’t even need perfume. Such a great idea! Or Houdini Sportswear (www.houdinisportswear.com/en), producing cool sports garments out of recycled (and recyclable!) polyester.
So let us remain positive that we will be able to save the world. As Karl Marx once said; “Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve”.