What does Being Sustainable Really Mean?
3 minute read
I think it's easy to think of sustainability as something obvious. Minimize water use, electricity use, plastic use. Use materials that can be used again and again, rather than for one-time use. Commit more to renewable energy and minimize oil and gas. Easy enough, right? As pleasing as this list sounds, is it really sustainable? I'm a huge advocate (for the most part) for all of the above, especially minimization. Reducing use of material items of any sort is always more sustainable. However, methodologies like recycling, though beneficial for the most part, can also justify our increase in waste (it's okay to use a plastic water bottle because I'm going to recycle it rather than throw it away.). Similarly, when we talk about alternatives for things we currently use, such as using cloth bags rather than plastic bags, we need to consider the trade-offs first.
Though plastic bags sound more environmentally-"unfriendly" compared to resuable cloth bags, let's actually compare. One Danish study found the following:
- polypropylene bags - 37 times
- paper bags - 43 times
- cotton bags - 7,100 times
(Here's a link leading to the article and study [1].)
Oh wow. That's a lot. Though the UK study found 131 reuses adequate (different types of cottons/materials compared to different plastics, different methodologies of comparison, etc. naturally lead to different results) the point remains the same. A person needs to reuse a cotton bag many more times than a typical plastic bag in order to justify the massive amounts of water and energy required to create the bag in the first place. And if you're like me, you wash these bags in the laundry machine, which leads to a microfiber problem, another issue we won't be delving into. My point isn't to stop usage of reusable bags, including cotton. They're still useful, and they do avoid other issues associated with plastic, including increased landfill trash. With many uses, they can easily be better for the environment than plastic and paper grocery bags. But we need to be more mindful about what truly is sustainable and realize that "doing our part for the environment" is more complex than making a few substitutions in our lives and calling it good.
I'm a huge fan also of renewable energy of course. It's something I'm really passionate about and have devoted a substantial amount of my research career and early life to. It's easy to see the advantages of renwewable energy compared to their unrenewable coal and oil counterparts: they don't pollute as much (benefits for climate change, health, etc.), they allow us to stop being so reliant upon a few, large sources of coal and oil (political instability, wars for resources, etc.), and are more evenly and well-distributed across the earth. But that being said, it's important to realize some of the drawbacks of renewable energy as well.
A minor drawback currently are the rare earth metals used in the production of photovoltaics and wind turbines (though rare earths are actually not so rare. Plus, petroleum conversion to gasoline also requires rare earth metals.) [2]. A greater drawback is the inability to store energy from most renewable energy sources for long periods of time (with the exception of pumped-storage hydroelectricity), meaning that until battery technology improves, we will always be somewhat reliant upon oil and gas for when renewable energy is not available (think nights for solar or windless days). There will be waste issues with disposal of non-functioning wind turbines and solar panels, and until an efficient recycling industry is established for these technologies, we may find ourselves with more trash and even hazardous materials in the landfill. And there are unexpected consequences, such as the increased use of SF6 in wind turbines, a greenhouse gas (GHG) which has a warming potential 23,500 times that of CO2 (it's the most powerful GHG known to humanity after all) [3]. Finally, the upfront costs of installing renewable energy is often higher than that of established technologies like coal and oil, and it's important to respect that not all countries currently have the capabilities to switch.
Of course, many of these problems will be addressed as the renewable energy industry matures. But it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be conscientious about the amount of materials we consume and the impact they have on the environment. We need to consider current problems and their solutions weighed against their future potential in investing in new technologies. We need to find a balance between a variety of options to find the best solution, which often means relying on several different materials and resources. It's this balance and the understanding of benefits and trade-offs that is the definition of sustainability to me.
Link to articles:
[1] https://phys.org/news/2018-08-reuse-bags.html
[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/renewables-are-as-green-as-you-d-expect/
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49567197?fbclid=IwAR33kIfAA-WosmJvS8hHo5AGIJLK28R2lMBds-nwFX3-kFv1Ro2Zor8XHso