Cement, the binding agent in concrete, is the world’s most widely utilized construction material and may soon be used as cement energy storage. However, emerging research reveals its overlooked potential to serve as a cement energy storage medium in two completely different ways: solid thermal batteries and supercapacitors (when combined with carbon).
Cement Blocks as Thermal Batteries
According to an article in the Journal of Composites Science, scientists have developed a method to produce cement-based blocks that effectively function as thermal batteries. Their technique infuses cement blocks with the ability to soak up renewable electricity when manufactured and then discharge it later on demand as usable heat.
The researchers use chemical alterations during the concrete mixing process to integrate phase change materials into the cement binder matrix. These phase-change materials have the ability to store and release thermal energy.
The resulting cement energy storage blocks contain phase change materials that can absorb electricity when it is most abundant and inexpensive from the grid or renewable sources. The charged blocks can then act as solid thermal batteries, releasing their stored energy as heat when needed for space and water heating systems.
In initial tests, the team achieved energy densities comparable to lithium-ion batteries in their cement energy storage-based blocks. This stored energy is emitted as gentle heat when water is added, with adjustable discharge rates. The blocks can offer long-duration energy storage across daily cycles or entire seasons.
By incorporating waste materials like plastic ash during production, the researchers achieved lower costs than conventional concrete blocks or batteries. Additional waste heat captured during block fabrication can provide self-generated power.
The creators say that scale adoption of such cement energy storage thermal batteries could provide renewable energy storage for buildings while lowering grid demand peaks. The cement blocks offer an alternative to mining metals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel, which are finite and environmentally destructive to extract.
This novel approach redirects one of cement’s existing useful properties – its high thermal mass – towards storing renewable energy rather than fossil fuels traditionally used for heat in cement kilns. It points to one-way cement could aid sustainable energy transitions through material innovation.
Conductive Cement-Carbon Composites
Researchers at MIT have also demonstrated cement energy storage’s potential as an energy storage medium by transforming it into a highly efficient supercapacitor. Their method infuses cement with carbon-based additives to create cement-derived composites with enhanced conductive properties.
The MIT team found that the resulting material attained supercapacitor-like behaviors by mixing cement with inexpensive carbon black additives. This was due to carbon black creating a conductive surface area network throughout the composite.
With just 3% carbon black content by volume, cement’s conductivity spiked to levels comparable to powerful supercapacitors. The team states that a cement block around 45 cubic meters in size could potentially store up to 10 kilowatt-hours of energy – equal to an average home’s daily usage.
While still experimental, the researchers say these carbon-infused cement energy storage composites could enable integrated energy storage in concrete structures. Walls, foundations, or roadways made with such cement mixtures might capture solar, wind, or waste energy onsite for later usage.
The carbon provides the charge-storing capacity, while ubiquitous cement allows for scalable, inexpensive production since these composites do not rely on scarce materials like lithium or cobalt. Combined, they offer unique advantages as sustainable energy storage solutions.
Conclusion
Together, these two emerging techniques demonstrate that one of the planet’s most abundant building materials – cement – can potentially provide flexible, large-scale energy storage as demands grow.
While still in the early stages, both research trajectories showcase cement’s latent abilities to store energy through novel manufacturing processes and composite ingredients. With further advancement, cement energy storaget-based batteries and supercapacitors may offer new tools for enabling greater renewable energy integration across infrastructure. The present global ubiquity of concrete construction means cement-derived energy storage could be rapidly deployable once perfected. Unlocking the hidden attributes of cement through materials science and engineering may yield key innovations to support grids in an electrified, renewable future.
Since 2019, Lebennon has been facing an economic crisis. Following decades of corrupt government financial mismanagement, banks started to impose restrictions on withdrawals. They stopped giving short-term loans to businesses and no longer provided them with US dollars for imports. As a result, this reduced the country’s ability to pay for imports, including essentials such as wheat and oil.
Moreover, many of Lebannon’s bakeries rely on expensive diesel generators for electricity because the ongoing economic crisis has devastated its power grid. In 2021, the country’s two main power plants ran out of fuel and shut down. Most households only receive about one hour of electricity per day, and the cost of food increased by 350 percent in April 2023. Many people in the country cannot even afford basic foods like bread. In some cases, the cost of a loaf has increased seven times in the space of a month.
To help feed the country’s population, an inventor, Toufic Hamdan, created a commercial bakery to bake bread in solar ovens. The startup “Partners With Sun” has installed a solar convection oven on the bakery’s roof. The Solar Oven uses large silver mirrors to capture and magnify the sun’s rays to build heat.
The heat is transported by a transfer fluid which is then used to help operate a convection oven, allowing it to reach a baking temperature of between 300 and 400 Celsius. The heat is used directly in food and beverage production. They have successfully made milk loaf, French bread and anything that can be cooked at this temperature. The Solar Oven is designed for industrial use in the baking industry.
The Solar Oven is able to cut up to 80% of the bakery’s fuel bill and improve its production efficiency. As a result, it also reduces the amount of diesel the country would have to import. As a result, it will reduce the price of the bread bundle that reaches the customer. Moreover, each bakery would save at least around 10 tonnes of diesel a month. By 2030, Toufic hopes to completely eliminate the use of diesel ovens in bakeries and rely only on solar ovens.
Lebanon is also increasing the use of solar energy for individuals and businesses. The country went from generating zero solar power in 2010 to having 90 megawatts of solar capacity in 2020. An additional 100 megawatts were added in 2021 and 500 megawatts in 2022. This is a sustainable way for people to move away from diesel and has become a stand-in for both grid-supplied electricity and private diesel generators.
Although the switch towards relying on solar power in Lebanon is now a response to the economic crisis than a reaction to climate change and air pollution, it is an inspiring way to show how we can use the earth’s resources to help our societies in times of crisis. The country now has a target to source 30% of its electricity from renewables by 2030. This switch will help provide electricity and food at reduced costs to the people of Lebanon during this economic crisis.
The Vortex Bladeless Turbine is a pole-shaped structure that functions without rotating blades, but instead of rotating blades, it works off vibrations generated in the structure by vortices created when the wind passes around it. When the frequency of the vortices matches the resonance frequency of the structure, into which an alternator is integrated, the vibration energy can be transformed into electricity. In simpler terms, as the wind flows past the turbine, it creates a series of spinning whirlwinds, or vortices, that cause the rod-shaped turbine to vibrate. This vibration then converts the mechanical energy into electrical energy that can be used as a source of power.
One of the main differences between bladeless or motionless turbines and traditional wind turbines is that they can generate power at low wind speeds, which is significant because wind speeds in urban areas are typically lower than in rural areas. Traditional turbines require higher wind speeds, making them less effective in built-up areas.
Advantages of the Vortex Bladeless Turbine
One of the significant benefits of the Vortex Bladeless Turbine is that it’s more cost-effective than traditional turbines. It has fewer moving parts, which results in reduced manufacturing and maintenance costs. Also, it doesn’t require any oil or lubricants, making it a more environmentally friendly option.
The design of the Vortex Bladeless Turbine is more eco-friendly than traditional turbines because its pole-shaped structure does not pose any harm to birds and other animals that can come into contact with rotating blades. Furthermore, the device’s sleek design takes up less space than traditional wind turbines, making it adaptable to a wide range of environments.
Another benefit of the Vortex Bladeless Turbine is its flexibility. Its small size makes it the perfect choice for urban areas, where space is limited. They can be placed on the roofs of buildings or integrated into street furniture, providing an unobtrusive source of renewable energy. It can also be used to power individual homes or small communities that are off-grid, where running costs are a concern.
Applications of the Vortex Bladeless Turbine
One application of the Vortex Turbine is in urban environments. As mentioned earlier, these turbines can generate electricity at low wind speeds, making them a viable option for powering cities and towns. By placing them in strategic locations, they can capture the wind currents that flow through narrow streets, parks, and plazas.
Another application of the Vortex Bladeless Turbine is its potential to replace traditional turbines in remote locations. Traditional turbines are often used to provide power in areas where a connection to the electrical grid is not possible. However, their high manufacturing and maintenance costs make them less feasible in such instances. The Vortex Bladeless Turbine, being cost-effective and low maintenance, provides an alternative that can meet the power needs of those living in isolated areas.
The Vortex Bladeless Turbine is a revolutionary wind power generator that has the potential to transform the way we generate renewable energy. Its low manufacturing and maintenance costs, eco-friendly design, and flexibility make it an attractive option for powering urban areas and remote places alike. While there are some limitations, such as the amount of power generated compared to traditional turbines, and the need for further development to increase efficiency, the Vortex Bladeless Turbine is a step in the right direction towards a cleaner, more sustainable future. The device’s minimal environmental impact also makes it an excellent choice for environmentally conscious consumers and energy companies alike.
With renewable energy becoming more important in the fight against climate change, the development of innovative technologies like the Vortex Bladeless Turbine is crucial. As we continue to explore cleaner, more sustainable sources of energy, devices like these will become increasingly critical. And while there are still challenges to overcome and further research to be done, the potential benefits of the Vortex Bladeless Turbine make it a promising addition to our renewable energy toolkit.
Overall, the Vortex Bladeless Turbine is a fascinating innovation that could play a significant role in the future of wind power generation. Its eco-friendly design, low cost, and flexibility make it an exciting alternative to traditional wind turbines. It’s clear that as we move towards a more sustainable future, technologies like this will continue to be developed, offering us new and exciting ways to generate renewable energy and help protect our planet.
Developed in 1958, the revolutionary LYCRA fiber invented by Dr. Joseph Shivers – DuPont Chemist – was designed to replace natural rubber in girdles and foundation garments. Driven by the outbreak of World War II those in Europe and the US began to seek alternatives for natural resources that we expected to be either cut off or redirected for military use.
This new elasticated fiber could be spun into fine filaments and stretch up to 500% of its original length while being able to return to its original shape. Being both stronger and more durable, the fiber could be used to create softer, lighter and sheerer foundation garments that are easy to care for an highly resistant to perspiration, oils and lotions.
Flash forward 60 years, and LYCRA has had many landmark moments in the world of fashion, notable moments include the use of LYCRA for the Apollo astronauts’ spacesuits in 1969; achieving recording-breaking athletic performance in the 1972 summer games; jumping onboard the fitness craze in the 1980s; and becoming a household name in 1995.
Today, LYCRA has more than 200 unique fibers to optimize the way clothes look, feel, and perform. As an industry leader in fibre innovation, LYCRA is driven to meet the ever-changing needs of consumers.
How LYCRA is furthering sustainable fashion with the use of corn
Partnering with Qore, The LYCRA Company has developed the world’s first large-scale commercial production of bio-derived spandex using QIRA as one of its main ingredients. As a result, 70% of LYCRA fiber content will derive from annually renewable feedstock.
“As part of our sustainability goals, we are committed to delivering products that support a more circular economy while helping our apparel and personal care customers reduce their footprint,” said Julien Born, CEO of The LYCRA Company.
He added: “We are especially pleased to collaborate with Qore, a company that shares our vision for innovative, sustainable solutions. Their expertise in operating fermentation processes and understanding of the chemical value chains makes them the ideal partner to help develop a bio-derived LYCRA® fibre at commercial scale.”
Production of QIRA will be at Cargill’s biotechnology campus and corn refining operations in Eddyville, Iowa, operations will commence in 2024 following the completion of the facility’s construction. The first Renewable LYCRA fiber made with QIRA will be produced at The LYCRA Company’s Tuas, Singapore manufacturing site in 2024.
“We are proud to partner with The LYCRA Company on bringing this sustainable material solution to the market. This collaboration demonstrates that QIRA® directly replaces conventional BDO and thus significantly improves the fibre’s sustainability profile. QIRA® is an innovative platform chemical that can be used in various applications across industries,” said Jon Veldhouse, CEO of Qore.
By using field corm grown by Iowa farmers, both LYCRA and QIRA will enable a significant reduction in CO2, and replace a finite resource with one that is annually renewable, while maintaining the fiber’s performance.
Apple has unveiled plans to increase the use of recycled materials in its products, with a new target of using 100% recycled cobalt in all Apple-designed batteries by 2025.
The tech giant will also aim to use entirely recycled rare earth elements in magnets for its devices and 100% recycled tin soldering and gold plating in all Apple-designed printed circuit boards by the same year.
“Every day, Apple is innovating to make technology that enriches people’s lives, while protecting the planet we all share,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “From the recycled materials in our products, to the clean energy that powers our operations, our environmental work is integral to everything we make and to who we are. So we’ll keep pressing forward in the belief that great technology should be great for our users, and for the environment.”
Reducing Apple’s carbon footprint
The announcement is part of Apple’s broader efforts to reduce its carbon footprint and become more environmentally friendly.
In 2022, the company significantly expanded its use of recycled metals, with over two-thirds of all aluminium, nearly three-quarters of all rare earth materials, and more than 95% of all tungsten in Apple products sourced from 100% recycled material.
Apple’s rapid progress in this area brings the company closer to its ultimate goal of making all products with only recycled and renewable materials and advances its aim to achieve carbon neutrality for every product by 2030.
“Our ambition to one day use 100% recycled and renewable materials in our products works hand in hand with Apple 2030: our goal to achieve carbon neutral products by 2030,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives. “We’re working toward both goals with urgency and advancing innovation across our entire industry in the process.”
If Apple is able to achieve this goal, it will show major steps towards achieving a more sustainable future for the company.
In 2019 the global economy consumed over 100 billion tonnes of materials.
The Circularity Gap Report highlights how moving to circular economy can reduce consumption levels and help mitigate climate change.
These 21 changes to how we make, keep and discard things can build more sustainable systems and a circular economy.
Never before has humankind made and consumed so much stuff. In 2019, for the first time, the global economy consumed over 100 billion tonnes of materials.
Already five of the nine planetary boundaries have been transgressed during humanity’s short presence on Earth, driven by a throwaway culture that too often exploits nature. Our economy has become inherently linear, and it may be difficult to reimagine how we make, use and discard things unless we shift toward a more regenerative and inherently natural system.
How can we build a circular economy?
The latest edition of theCircularity Gap Reportexplores the concept of a circular economy and investigates its role in climate mitigation and in cultivating more equitable societies around the world. Ultimately, the model will require a systems shift: radically rethinking how we use resources to fulfil our needs and wants. The report presents a range of circular solutions, based on four key principles of the circular economy: using fewer resources, using resources for longer, recycling resources and regenerating resources.
The report applies these strategies to “key societal needs and wants” – such as housing, nutrition and transport – to transform how resources are fed into the economy. If applied globally, this could result in a 28% reduction of resource use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 39% – keeping the world on track to reach its goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. Here we outline 21 strategies that can be applied in daily life, to businesses and at local and national government level. Importantly, these are not only grounded in energy policies – they go far beyond and span economic policy, industry, business and individual consumer behaviour.
Feeding the world and the circular economy
Providing nutrition to the world is an extremely resource and emissions intensive task: accounting for 10 billion tonnes of GHG emissions and 21.3 billion tonnes of resources a year. It’s also extremely inefficient as more than 30% of all food produced is thought to be wasted. While a massive proportion of the global population are malnourished, many others are overweight. Nutrition for all can be delivered with a fraction of the resources currently pumped into the linear food systems. The current model is ripe for change to a circular economy.
Build a circular economy through food sufficiency and cutting excess consumption.
1. Enough really can be enough
It’s extremely impactful to first slash excessive consumption before increasing production to tackle food shortages and scarcity. The words “no” and “refuse” are important in the circular economy.
2. Put healthier, satiating foods first
Let’s make cutting excess consumption tangible through food sufficiency: bringing the per capita caloric and protein intakes of high-income, high-emitter countries (such as the US or many in the EU, see the Shift profile on the right) down to match healthy levels – 2,000 calories a day for a typical woman. This can be done by reducing the material and emissions footprint per calorie of foods by prioritising healthier and more satiating foods over foods with low nutritional value. Think here of sugary beverages and refined, heavily processed items that require resources and energy to be produced, but their “empty calorie” effect on our stomachs means they are a wildly inefficient diet choice.
3. Embrace a plant-based diet
Animal-based proteins are yet another inefficient way to reach our daily calorie quota: 25kg of grain and about 15,000 litres of water is needed to produce only 1kg of beef – inputs that could instead be used to nourish humans. In some parts of the world, where a variety of other high protein, nutritious options are available, ditching animal proteinscan be one of the most impactful individual actions for the climate. Eating a primarily plant-based diet could slash global emissions by 1.32 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents.
The role different countries play in reducing waste and building a systems approach for the circular economy.
4. Shop your fridge and cook creatively
Circular shifts will also deliver secondary benefits such as less packaging needed for food – a massive win in terms of reducing single-use plastic – reduced obesity and healthier overall communities. It could also help to reduce food waste, also a strategy in itself needed to make our food systems more circular. Try doing this at home by not only cutting excess consumption, but planning your meals ahead, looking up innovative recipes to make use of your broccoli stems or fruit peels, shopping your refrigerator before heading to the market and skipping impulse buys if possible. Food service can employ the use of AI apps, such as Winnow, which has been found to cut kitchen waste by 50% or more.
5. Check for certifications
Choosing food that is sustainably sourced – meaning it comes from ecosystems that are managed according to environmental standards that enable regeneration – is a strong circular choice. A range of sustainable and carbon-neutral certification schemes aim to provide this ethical stamp to consumers. Nowadays, even cheese can come with a PAS2060 certification, the international mark of carbon neutrality.
Eating a primarily plant-based diet could slash global emissions by 1.32 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents.
—@circleeconomy
6. Support local
Sometimes we need to look to the past to learn lessons for the future. Practising the habits of our grandparents by going local and regionalwhen picking our ingredients can have substantial environmental plus points. This often reduces the need for hot-housing vegetables, which equates to a reduction in fuel inputs, plus fewer food miles and lower transportation impacts. Supporting or practising urban, organic and precision farming modelscan also eliminate harmful synthetic fertiliser use, a huge source of emissions on its own.
In the UK, interest in allotments soared during the COVID-19 pandemic as home-grown food caught on. Lastly, backed by carbon-neutral biomass certification, using food waste and losses as animal feed – instead of the usual soy-based feeds – is an age-old tradition that will support the growth of secondary markets, take a chunk out of livestock emissions and help to avoid deforestation. While it’s not legal in the EU, it’s a successful practice in Japan and South Korea, where about 40% of food waste is used as feed.
7. Cook clean
Finally, cooking with polluting fuels is a silent killer: nearly 4 million people die a year from illness related to the associated pollution. Food preparation resources can also be made more circular, and safe, by replacing polluting traditional biomass and black carbon producing stoves with clean cooking apparatuses, including advanced solar-electric stoves. Increasing access to clean and sustainable energy around the world will be key to making this circular act available to those who most need it.
Homes and buildings and the circular economy
Providing shelter for the world is the most intensive “need” in terms of resources and emissions. Buildings are often developed without regard for the ecosystems of which they are a part. And in our civilisation’s history, we have built a lot: the mass of human-made things, from pavements to apartments to phones, now outweighs all natural biomass, such as trees and animals. Using circular economy strategies to lessen the load of our housing needs on the environment, and building with (rather than over) nature is imperative. Fulfilling the global economy’s need for housing is currently responsible for nearly 40 billion tonnes of resources and 13.5 billion tonnes of GHG emissions a year.
Multi-purpose buildings reduce the overall floor space needed and optimise resource efficiency, and also deliver proportional savings on heating and cooling.
—@circleeconomy
8. Design flexible, multi-purpose homes
To make our need for housing circular, we must ultimately call for fewer, but better, new houses to be built and make using them for multiple purposes the norm, especially in higher-income countries where we have masses of stock already built up. To make the most of the buildings we already have, they should be used flexibly and be able to adapt as time and needs evolve. Imagine a hybrid building that is used as a flex-work office space, a community centre and an evening school. Such spaces can be payment-per-use, such as the cross-industry collaborative building Dutch Mountains in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Multi-purpose buildings reduce the overall floor space needed and optimise resource efficiency, and also deliver proportional savings on heating and cooling. These savings will be further boosted by cuts in energy consumption that can be practised by anyone: lower room temperatures, smart metering and improved thermal insulation.
9. Use existing homes for longer
To continue making the most of the buildings already gracing the Earth, we must prioritise extending the lifetime of existing stock. Up until the 1960s there were strong traditions of reusing and sorting building materials, but this began to change as the construction industry in Europe moved from lime mortar to cement mortar, building materials became cheaper, and there were fewer requirements regarding the service life of buildings. Supporting and urging government interventions that ban building with virgin materials and policies to cap new construction in line with available volumes of secondary materials for building can reduce the need to extract finite materials from the Earth. Ultimately, waste from demolished buildings can be processed into new building materials, such as concrete mix or building sand. These options massively boost resource efficiency in production and performance.
10. No building left behind – or empty
Core circular methods must be practised at all levels, from the consumer to the national government. These include renovation, refurbishment, retrofitting and modular design. Modular design allows us to easily adapt buildings over time to suit changing needs and carries the potential for deconstruction, relocation and reuse of elements (or even whole buildings). Underused and disused buildings should also be occupied – in a time of resource scarcity buildings should not be sitting empty. Only with these methods can we try tomeet the global housing demand within our global stock limits.
11. Nature-based solutions and renewable technologies
Nature-based solutions (NBS) can also lower material and energy demand for housing. We can be inspired by low-energy approachessuch as Passivhaus design (this minimises the requirements for mechanical space heating, cooling and ventilation), while also applying renewable technologies such as solar photovoltaic or thermal, air-source and geothermal heat pumps to shrink the carbon footprint of a property. The Mahali Hub in South Africa are modular homes built with upcycled and locally available materials and a range of sustainable additions such as rainwater harvesting and passive cooling, resulting in net-zero homes.
We need to see the widespread use of low-carbon construction materials, material lightweighting and local sourcing to help to cut embodied energy in the housing system. And to add some regenerative power, the use of natural or renewable building materials, such as wood, straw and hemp, can boost biodiversity and regenerate ecosystems, while also generally slashing material footprints due to their lightweight character. Green roofs and living walls are all examples of NBS interventions with regenerative benefits, at least in terms of thermal performance, water management, biodiversity and air quality.
To dive into these 21 circular solutions that can bring us back on a 1.5 degree pathway, and understand the key role local and national governments and businesses play in driving the circular transition, download the Circularity Gap Report 2022.
Consuming and producing goods and the circular economy
Fulfilling the societal need for consumables – a diverse group of items ranging from refrigerators and furniture to clothing and cleaning agents – is not hugely resource-intensive compared to housing, for example, at 6.9 billion tonnes of resources and 5.6 billion tonnes of GHG a year. However, it’s incredibly wasteful, toxic and it is a huge drain on a different set of resources: cotton, synthetic, fossil fuel-based materials such as polyester and all the dye pigments and chemicals that go with it.
The production of low-cost, synthetic materials, which form the backbone of cheap, fast fashion, has increased nine-fold in the past 50 years, using around 350 million barrels of oil each year and shedding microplastics in the process. Meanwhile, the fashion industry is responsible for a fifth of waste water globally. That’s why we must move towards a circular economy.
Shifting consumption choices and mainstreaming circular design, both usage and acquisition rates can decline.
—@circleeconomy
12. Make careful consumer choices
As we know by now, we need to begin by using less. Aside from conscious choices and utilising the all-important r-word – refuse – we need to start with the efficient design and use of consumer products. By shifting consumption choices and mainstreaming circular design, both usage and acquisition rates can decline. Tangible actions include: increasing digitisation to reduce paper use; not making textiles from animals; aiming to eradicate single-use plastic; optimising the usage of electronics to minimise e-waste; choosing only eco-labelled responsibly-sourced timber furniture, and prioritising local purchasing and sourcing.
13. Get repairing and sharing
We must also learn to make the most of the stuff we have. Here, encouraging repair, maintenance, sharing, re-manufacturing and take-back programmes for textiles, appliances, furniture and machineryare powerful and should form the base of circular systems. Durable denim meets circular business models in the case of Kuyichi: the company’s resale business model offers a take-back scheme for customers to easily give their denim a new lease of life to their denim, as well as a resale service for preloved goods.
14. Support ‘right to repair’
The backwards practice of designing products to break relatively quickly, planned or built-in obsolescence, must be eliminated, or we should choose not to invest in the companies that fail to do so. A phone with an old battery should not have to be tossed out and replaced, but should instead be repaired, the battery replaced easily with available and value-for-money replacement parts. Design for disassembly, customisation and replacement parts are all practical and marketable options that should become mainstream. The EU has no dedicated policy in place to stop the absurd practice of planned obsolescence, yet, Biden in the US has taken a bold and necessary step in formally backing “right to repair” legislation that calls on companies to release the knowledge and tools required to repair many common devices.
15. Consider chemicals
To reduce the level of toxins and pollutants in the environment, we should prioritise the use of sustainable materials for chemical-free consumables. This is imperative in light of recent research that posits that the fifth planetary boundary to be surpassed is chemical pollution – spurred by plastics and chemicals from farmland fertilisers, for example, leaching into the environment. We use products and dispose of them, but they don’t just go away. To avoid further environmental degradation, businesses and consumers alike can prioritise bio-based alternatives, chemicals leasing and natural fertilisers, and organic compost in gardens.
16. Recycle and help build secondary markets
We can also look to recycle our consumables when refusing, repairing or refurbishing are not possible avenues. Closing loops and boosting value in secondary markets will allow a circular market for consumables to thrive. To get there, governments must promote the recycling of plastics, synthetic fibres, paper, wood and wood by-products; as well as specifying recycled content obligations, and substituting them where possible for virgin or raw material. On the plastics front, a range of legislation in this arena has been rolled out: by 2030, all plastic bottles in the EU must contain 30% recycled content, while this stands at 50% in California; and in Maharashtra in India, industrial packaging produced in the state must include 20% recycled content. All steps in the right direction, but this has got to move faster, while concurrently turning off the plastics tap by reducing unnecessary plastics production. If applied globally, this could cut 1.23 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and save 2.18 billion tonnes of materials, according to the Circularity Gap Report 2022.
Mobility, travel and the circular economy
Mobility systems in their current form are responsible for 8.7 billion tonnes of resources and 17.1 billion tonnes of GHG emissions a year – coming in second only to housing. With its mammoth footprint and contribution to air pollution worldwide, mobility is commonly associated with GHG emissions reduction in the minds of both policymakers and the public.
Current mobility habits leave much to be desired. Privately owned vehicles in Europe sit unused for 90% of the time, while the phenomenon of “ghost flights” recently shocked the world: airlines flying empty planes just to retain flight slots, all the while spewing GHG emissions. From driving to flying, opportunities for change are plentiful as we look towards a circular economy.
We can learn a lot from the behaviours practiced during the COVID-19 lockdowns – namely a cut in long-distance travel and telecommuting for work.
—@circleeconomy
17. Travel less often
When it comes to cutting the resource and emissions intensity of mobility, the simplest way is to reduce travel. We can learn a lot from the behaviours practiced during the COVID-19 lockdowns – namely a cut in long-distance travel and telecommuting for work. Post-pandemic, these environmentally friendly behaviours can continue to be encouraged through a range of interventions.
The provision of regional and local hubs – the so-called 15-minute city being piloted in both Paris, the US and China, for example – allows residents to reach amenities within 15 minutes, either by foot, bike or public transport. Shared and virtual offices, telecommuting and working from home when possible can continue to be promoted by employers, especially as many companies acknowledge that staff productivity was maintained.
18. Go for lightweight designs
Vehicle design improvements are another more incremental way to reduce the level of materials used in mobility. Lightweight and smaller vehicles, such as cars and scooters, result in less steel and aluminium used for production, as well as lower fuel consumption and embodied energy.
19. Keep your car for longer
When it comes to prioritising durable design and material selection, plus optimising repairability and maximising maintenance, we can also use materials for longer – extending the lifetime of vehicles.
20. Share when you can
As well as better designed vehicles, better utilisation of all vehicles will further reduce the intensity of this societal need. With personal vehicle ownership no longer the dream it once was, interventions include shared mobility, via car clubs and pools, ride-sharing, and public transport, with park-and-ride provision to cut fuel consumption.
21. Design for reuse
Finally, optimising end-of-life vehicle management is critical to cycle flows, with the recycling of metal and plastic components, and the use of recycled materials, on the rise.
To dive into these 21 circular solutions that can bring us back on a 1.5 degree pathway, and understand the key role local and national governments and businesses play in driving the circular transition, download the Circularity Gap Report 2022.
