Tim Grant, Life Cycle Strategies - Presentation UNAA Sustainable Consumption and Production Seminar 27.6.13

Sustainable Consumption and Production:Eco-efficiency & eco-certification

to behavioural change.

The consumption dilemma!

Tim Grant, Director, Life Cycle Strategies Pty Ltd

Three key points

• There is no magic cure for the impacts of consumption – the brown paper version is no better than the pink plastic version.

• We need sustainability strategies which work for most of the people – for too long we have focused on niche products for a committed few

• Money is at the heart of consumption – we need to deal with consumption and how new wealth is distributed.

LCA and functional unit

• LCA evaluates the environmental impacts of different ways of providing products and services.

• This includes assessment from cradle to grave and all direct and indirect effects of the product system.

• LCA provide a highly generalised connection between sustainability of the supply chain to the product or service we use.

Life Cycle Assessment

What have we learnt from 30 years of life cycle assessment

Only incremental improvements from alternative materials/products

• For many products and services “alternative materials” have only marginal benefits if any.

• Flow on effects, direct and indirect

• limits to co-products,

• un-scalability of solutions.

Systemic change is more powerful than personal action.

• Home composting versus centralised anaerobic digestion.

• Inner urban living versus tree change to the country.

Good environmental products come in all shapes and sizes.

• High tech – synthetic materials can be amazingly efficient, electronic control and save energy.

• Low tech – plasterboard, timber

• New – LED lighting, smart phone apps.

• Old – Hills hoist, polystyrene packaging in refrigerated transport.

Sustainability for the masses

Sustainability for the masses

• Think global, Act Local – Why?

• Because we can.

• Makes us feel like that we are doing something.

• Keeps us occupied, while the rest of the machine gets on with production and consumption.

• We make this problem globally with global systems – we need to solve it with global systems.

20 years of waste policy has failed us dramatically

Sustainability for the masses

• Urban air quality has been solved by:– Legislation for minimum emission performance of vehicles

(largely lead by Europe).– Better designed cars with catalytic converters and particle

traps.

• Ozone depletion solved by– Banning specific substances which effected the ozone layer

Sustainability for the masses

• We set up a powerful set of factors to drive consumption.

• We then ask everyone to do the right thing – against this drive.

• We then judge people for not doing what they should.

Consumption

Drivers of consumption

• Money drives consumption.

• Not all expenditure has the same impact per $

GHG emission per $US

-

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.10

0.12

kg C

O2e

per

US$

Drivers for consumption

• Need to shift expenditure to less impactful spending.

• Need to reclaim some of the wealth generated by efficiencies for the environment instead of expanding consumption.

• This requires increases in taxes and charges – not popular at an individual level, but responsible at the community level.

Concluding points

• There is no magic cure for the impacts of consumption – the brown paper version is no better than the pink plastic version.

• We need sustainability strategies which work for most of the people – for too long we have focused on niche products for a committed few

• Money is at the heart of consumption – we need to deal with consumption and how new wealth is distributed.