Blog: everyday sustainability

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Why is it so hard to resist fashion?

And maybe even more so, the sales?

It’s three years this August since I gave up conventionally produced fashion. Three years ago I decided to only buy sustainably produced fashion. Many of the items I subsequently bought (Veja shoes, Serendipity organics sweater, my Palmgrens bag) are still wardrobe favorites. The only time I cheated was when buying a pair of Chloe pants at the sales that winter (that in the end didn’t fit me and ended up with my sister). One and a half years ago, I decided I actually didn’t need any new clothes at all. The same month I traveled to London during the sales and  found it really challenging to resist shopping. I decided to not even enter the big department stores to resist fashion shopping. Shopping abroad and the sales-  getting expensive fashion cheap- is somehow so very hard to resist.

It also seems that fashion is more difficult to abstain from than other kinds of shopping. I recently finished the book ‘Not buying it’ by Judith Levine. Levine and her husband decide to only buy the very necessary goods (basically groceries) during a year. The book is a personal reflection on this experiment. They obviously save lots of money but also find certain types of socializing tricky. Interestingly, the only times Levine does cheat is in the fashion department. One time she cannot resist a second hand store when on vacation. She cheats a second time at the sales of her favorite fashion brand. Thus of all the kinds of consumption she has to abstain from- restaurants, books, interior design- fashion turns out to be the most difficult. And particularly when traveling and at the sales.

Funnily enough, Levine uses some grey area shopping strategies, just like me. In the book, friends buy her cinema tickets and give her presents, things she isn’t allowed to buy herself, since she has the shopping-ban. Similarly, I’m getting a year’s supply of Swedish Stockings nylon stockings for my birthday (so excited to try them!). These days when family wonders what I would like for my birthday, I tend to want something very specific in the wardrobe area. Is this cheating? It’s at least a grey area. And a way for family members to give me something I very much need as a gift.

Levine’s ‘Not buying it’ initiative was partly motivated by financial reasons but also has a political undertone. Unlike her, I don’t see anything wrong in paying someone for a service or a good as long as you can afford it and its production and consumption is environmentally and socially sustainable. My own shopping-ban is a way to stop my own overconsumption of fashion. To use what I own and get a manageable size wardrobe.

The general problem is really that so much of our consumption is not environmentally and socially sustainable. If we fix this, change production and end-of-life processes so that they are sustainable or even circular, I don’t see any reason to limit consumption.

If you are not politically against financial transactions and/or markets, there is nothing wrong with paying someone for providing you with a sustainable service or good.

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Almedalen: sustainability, research and politics

Last week I attended Swedish politics week, Almedalen, for the very first time. The occasion was a seminar about sustainability professionals in companies, their work and competences that my employer, Örebro University School of Business, hosted. We are starting a new master profile in sustainable business this autumn and have thus thought a lot about what knowledge and competences sustainability professionals need. So I represented our school and shared our experiences. When developing this master profile, we have been supported by representatives from businesses and student organizations, some of which- Nordea, Grant Thornton, Spendrups,  SEK, Telenor, Young Sustainability Professionals and Sustainergies– joined us for the seminar in Almedalen (which was recorded and can be found here).

Already there, I had the opportunity to attend over 4000 seminars arranged during the week. There was no way to attend all of them, sadly since a large proportion dealt with sustainability issues. However, I managed to attend some seminars on sustainability and some others on research politics.

The panels discussing sustainability and consumption were very gloomy. ‘Consumption has to decrease’ and is ‘destroying our environment’ and ‘the politicians are not doing enough’ seemed to be the general message. I have some major issues with these kinds of statements. First, one has to define what is meant with consumption. Services such as child care and going to the hairdresser are also consumption. We can consume second hand items and probably should increase this type of consumption. Basically, we have to differentiate between different types of consumption and their effects on the environment. Instead KTH researchers from Mistra’s project on sustainable consumption painted with very large brushes and suggested we should both consume and work less. I don’t see how they arrived at this conclusion and am consequently not convinced. Neither are my consumption researcher colleagues when I’ve discussed the issue with them. Consumption per se is not evil, but certain types, such as flying or single use plastics, are bad for the environment.

One take away from Almedalen is thus that it was engineering researchers that discussed economics and business issues such as GDP, growth and consumption. One panel even stated that ‘it is probably just as good that there are no economists on the panel’. I, however, was missing the economics and business researchers and I believe that our presence on the panels would have improved the discussions. Instead, I was sitting in the audience wondering how they defined growth and how they could state that Sweden has substantial GDP growth (clearly they did not consider GDP per capita). Of course research is interdisciplinary, but when it comes to basic definitions in business and economics, researchers in these fields have an advantage: we have worked longer with these concepts.

Attending the social events, generally organized by companies, was a more encouraging experience. I ended up having drinks with the electric cars lobby (who knew they existed?) and attending Atea’s afternoon around the topic of sustainable supply chains in the IT sector and conflict minerals. It’s really encouraging that so much is happening on both these issues. Our partner for the master program, Spendrups, invited us to an entirely organic dinner celebrating that they are now the world’s largest producer of organic beer. My take away from the company discussions is that a lot can happen in a short period of time in the corporate world. And as soon as there is something that looks like a business case for addressing a sustainability issue, companies will race their competitors to get there.

The research politics seminars were also a positive surprise and dealt with topics such as research communication and open science. As for the latter, the panel agreed that professional research communicators are needed and that we today lack incentives for researchers to address the general public. If we want to communicate outside of academia, we have to do it in our spare time. As for the latter topic, it seems as if open science is coming our way and it’s just a matter of time and of exactly how the solutions will look like. The Swedish Research Council (‘Vetenskapsrådet’) is arranging a conference in November about open science which I will try to attend.

Overall, Almedalen was a highly inspiring week that was well worth attending even for a researcher (there were very few of us there) and I hope there will be opportunity to be back next year!

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The alternative facts debate: In defense of questioning the facts

It’s challenging times to be in the knowledge business. Twitter followers question whether climate change is real and FB-followers question facts because they are published  in unknown media. And when you don’t agree with someone else’s statement you call it alternative facts. This is, I guess, a sign that parts of the public question some commonly held facts.

While some see this as a dangerous development, that people question commonly held facts and hold alternative views, it is also an opportunity to dive further into the questioned facts and learn something in the process. To proclaim that ‘this is a fact, deal with it’ is unlikely to convince anyone. We teachers know that when our statements are questioned it forces us to learn and ‘know’ the issue on a more detailed level. Having commonly held facts questioned is a challenge for sure, but if we can defend them it’s generally worth the effort.

Unfortunately, some argue that those questioning our facts are driven by emotions and thus that logical arguments do not work. This is not a helpful picture to paint. Of course all of us are motivated by emotions. But if we would apply this at universities, that emotion is the motivation for questioning our teachings and that logical arguments is not an appropriate response, it’s a dangerous path to follow. Nobody wants to be treated as an emotional creature that cannot be reasoned with. In contrast, I would argue that many of us are convinced by logical arguments and remain unconvinced when we are left with incoherent arguments and told to ‘trust the expert’. Instead, if our commonly held facts are questioned, let’s sharpen our arguments further.

Increasingly, researchers are called upon to tell us if a fact is true or not. Are researchers suitable in the role as ‘ fact experts’? Why should researchers, and not others, be able to do this? Researchers are not experts because they work at a prestigious institution, have the professor-title or speak in a charismatic way. They are not better equipped to judge value issues, such as if one political measure is more valuable to the population than another (although we often think so ourselves). However, in certain cases researchers can help us when it comes to facts. It is true that researchers are, generally, good at handling facts because:

  • We are up to date on facts within our own field of research. This field, however, is usually quite narrow!
  • We use facts to test theories and potential explanations and are thus used to questioning and interpreting facts.
  • Occasionally, we develop facts. If facts are necessary for our research but unavailable, we might create them in order to conduct our research. These facts, such as the amount of plastic in the ocean or amount of companies with a sustainability strategy, can be of interest to the general public too.

Instead of raging against those that do not share our facts, don’t agree there is climate change etc., and labelling them alternative facts or anti- this or that, why not look at the explanations we provide. How pedagogical are we? Where are the weak points in our explanations? Which parts of the argument do they question? Do they have reasons to question these points? Can we support our statements further? We might just learn something about the issue and communication in the process.

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A second year of no-shopping?

At the end of a year of no clothes shopping, I concluded that I would not be able to continue another year. Despite ending the year with ca 540 items in my wardrobe, I saw ‘needs’ that meant that I would have to resume shopping this year.

Five months into 2018 and it turns out I was wrong. There have not been any urgent needs that I have had to address. Sure, I am running low on nylon stockings (but still I’ve managed 1,5 year using only my stash!). The boots are getting worn but they are still fine with a bit of leather balm. Clearly, I overestimate how much I wear items. In this part of the world, seasons change so fast so clothes/shoes are used only a few times before the weather is too warm/cold and the items get stored away again. The wardrobe gets worn oh so gently.

A friend asked how much time I spend mending. Yes, mending takes time. In fact, I’ve kept track of how much time I’ve spent mending the last four months. As a general pattern, I mend more when I have time to do so and less when I’m too busy. Only natural. What happens when I’m busy is that I get professional help with the mending and I’ve kept track on that too this year. So far it looks like this:

February: 32 min mending, no professional help

March: 15 min mending, professional help SEK 1600 (including mending,  dry cleaning & shoes repair)

April: 10 min mending, professional help SEK 2600 (including dry cleaning & sewing)

May: 1,5 h mending, no professional help

So I don’t spend a lot of time mending, but when I do I get a lot done (17 mends overall). I had five occasions of professional mending/sewing to a totalt cost of SEK2500. Two instances of shoes repair to a total of SEK 500.

From a financial perspective, it makes sense to mend things yourself. It’s fast and cheap. However, in very busy times, it might make sense to get help and save the stress of possibly not having the clothes ready for when you need them. I get help with mending and sewing from my dry cleaner and yes the cost adds up. Above all, less dry cleaning would save both the environment and my wallet. In once instance, I successfully avoided the dry cleaner by washing outerwear in the washing machine, after realising that it was mostly cotton and thus supposedly washable despite the label saying dry cleaning. Shoes repair I’m happy to leave to the professionals at all times.

I’m also happy to report that almost half way through 2018, my wardrobe is  minus 2 items. I went plus 8 when I inherited some clothes, mostly outerwear, from my great-aunt. In addition, since January, I’ve worn out 10 items (mostly basics). Since I don’t expect to suddenly inherit more clothes (fingers crossed!) and if I successfully keep other temptations at bay, I hope the wardrobe content will decrease even more. I am, as we speak, selling a pair of hardly worn Converse All Stars on auction site Tradera. That’s another minus one.

So to sum up, I’ve now managed 1,5 years without wardrobe shopping and, since the start, reduced my wardrobe with six items. It’s safe to say that I will never have a minimalist wardrobe. And that’s not the issues here either. I love my clothes. I just need to wear them instead of getting new ones all the time.

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Another sustainable wardrobe challenge: Me made May 18

April ended with Fashion Revolution week, a yearly event that commemorates the Rana Plaza disaster (and which I’ve blogged about before).  This year marked its five year anniversary and brands such as Danish Serendipity Organics and Swedish Asket answered the challenge and showed their customers how their products are made. Fashion Revolution week thus clearly has an impact on companies and encourages another level of traceability in the supply chain. It’s not enough to know where things are made, but also by whom, how and by what materials. I’m already looking forward to next year, new companies accepting the challenge and seeing where this movement will lead.

As a very appropriate follow-up, May starts with the social media event ‘Me made May‘. The initiative involves wearing garments where your own hands have been involved in its making. As Fashion Revolution originator, Orsola de Castro, says: the less we know about how our fashion is made, the less we connect with it. It’s much more difficult to throw away a garment you’ve put lots of effort into making yourself than something you’ve bought cheaply at the store. Consequently, making clothes yourself is often an eyeopener and makes us realise how the cheap prices of fast fashion should be impossible. Learning about seams and finishes, we learn to recognise the difference between high and low quality garments. There are thus many good reasons to at least try to mend, alter or even sew clothes yourself.

Me made May was started nine years ago by blogger Zoe Edwards in order to make the home-sewing community connect with the items they’ve made. I join the challenge this year since I finally came up with a doable challenge for myself. I will wear, each day of May, at least one garment which I’ve either sewn, altered or mended myself. After one year and four moths without shopping I’ve  mended a lot of my wardrobe, so this should be doable. I also expect my few homemade garments to get some extra wear this month. You can follow my progress on Instagram. You can also sign up for this year’s #MMMay18 here.

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Sustainability & fish farming: working with a real case

Aquaculture, such as fish farming, is a key industry to ensure  sustainable food production in the future. Foods deriving from the seas face many challenges such overfishing and water pollution. At the same time, sea food has many benefits such as low climate impact and high nutritional value.

It is quite clear today that wild fish supply is not sufficient and that aquaculture is necessary in some form in order to supply current populations with sea food. However, fish farming has been criticized for unsustainable practices through the years and the industry still struggles with some of them like sea lice, escapes and sustainable feed sources.

In the course I teach at NHH ‘Measuring sustainability’ we each year work with  a real case on how to measure sustainability. Last autumn, we collaborated with Norwegian Responsible Investment association Norsif on how we can measure and evaluate the sustainability of aquaculture companies. One of the things I love about these cases is the creativity the students show when coming up with new ideas and solutions. I truly believe this kind of creativity, combined with academic thinking and facts, is one of the most important skills we can teach students.

One of the learning points from working with the aquaculture case is how important national regulation is for sustainable fish farming. One of the drastic differences is the use of antibiotics. Aquaculture uses significant amounts of antibiotics, which is a critical issue considering antibiotic resistance, but the industry also shows that it can do without it when it has to, such as in Norway.

Another difficult issue is that fish farming in Europe is mostly done with omnivorous fish such as salmon. It is less efficient to raise fish that partly eats other fish than fish that only feeds on algea. Instead of feeding the salmon other fish, we could eat this fish directly and thus skip the step of raising the salmon. The fish in the feed can also lead to further overfishing. Of course we can feed salmon a vegetarian diet but salmon that are fed on vegetable rather than animal proteins may be lacking in Omega-3, which is one of the main reasons salmon are so healthy for a human diet. A better solution would be to instead farm a fish that naturally feeds on for example algea.

Another key issue for sustainability, the students discovered, is future orientation of the companies and investment in research to find sustainable solutions to issues we have not yet solved. During the course, we we’re visited by the head of sustainability and risk at Cermaq, Wenche Gronbrekk, who explained how the company works to address sustainability issues. Wenche has answered a few of my questions below and also describes their investment in future solutions: iFarm.

Sabina: The Norwegian aquaculture industry has made quite some progress in terms of addressing its sustainability challenges. What are, in your opinion, some of the main achievements? 
Wenche: We have made great progress in lifting the industry standard the past years through collaboration –  through dialogue and knowledge sharing between government, research and industry. Also, in the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI), addressing key issues such as standardization, feed ingredients and biosecurity. Vaccine development has also been key to advancing sustainability to the level we see today.

Sabina: Still, as we have learnt when working with this case, challenges remain. What’s on top of your to-do-list in terms of sustainability?
Wenche: Sustainability requires continuous effort, and we work every day to be better than just complying with minimum standards. Developing new solutions that address key problems is also a priority – such as our iFarm concept. It may solve many of the key challenges today through individualized treatment of each fish, increasing animal health and welfare, optimizing feeding and any need for treatment, which may in turn reduce the environmental footprint of our activities.

Sabina: Sustainability is, according to its definition, about the long term perspective, future generations even. Still most organisations operate with a shorter time perspective in their day-to-day business. How are you able to take the long term perspective into account?
Wenche: Salmon farming is largely dependent on taking a long term view – we operate in the sea and biological risks do not respect financial quarters. To have a business over time, our operations need to be sustainable in all aspects: environmentally, socially and economically. 

Sabina: Many who work as sustainability officers or even head of sustainability find that change management is crucial in order to conduct their work. Is this your experience as well?
Wenche: As a sustainability officer you need to work across the organization, break silos and in many ways be a change agent. Integrating sustainability in business strategy also means that many companies need to innovate their business model – and it is my experience that sustainability professionals often play a central part in this transformation.

A big thank you to Wenche and Cermaq for sharing your experiences with us and also to Norsif and Norsif member Folketrygdfondet and Tine Fossland who attended the students presentations and provided feedback on their evaluation models. We could not have done this without you!

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Why young women going vegetarian for the climate is not necessarily a good thing

Last year one in five of Swedish young women became vegetarian because of climate change. Some might think that this is excellent news. We hear a lot that we should all eat less meat, ideally become vegetarians. The complex problem of food and sustainability has been reduced to the simple statement that vegetables are all good and meat overall bad. Unsurprisingly, such black and white statements are oversimplifications. One of the simplifications is the issue of methane and whether or not it is part of the carbon cycle, as I’ve previously written about here.

Another simplification is how the climate impact of food is calculated. Many calculations are based on how much CO2 is released  per kilogram of the food. This, however, has been criticized by research that shows that calculating CO2 per volume, calorie or even nutrient will give different results. The researchers conclude that “the sustainability of alternative diets, matched for energy and nutrient adequacy, can only be made on the basis of calories and nutrient contents and not per gram of weight”. Surprisingly, if you calculate climate impact per calorie, lettuce appears worse than bacon. Basically, how we calculate the climate impact of food makes a big difference. Like, Gunnar Rundgren I believe that there’s a point in calculating emission per nutrient density.

Taking nutrients into account when calculating climate impact is important because, as Rockström has pointed out, food is both a key factor in the health epidemic as well as the climate. Half of Swedish female adolescents have iron deficiency, one in three women in general. It is well known that iron from meat type of sources is absorbed more easily (25%) than from vegetable sources (5-10%). Research on diets and climate change acknowledges that reduced meat in diets is especially problematic for young women for this reason.

If we encourage women with iron deficiency to become vegetarians, we’d better be sure it is beneficial for the climate.

I am not so sure it is and I’ll use the following example with two high impact foods to illustrate why. Lamb is generally viewed as the meat with the highest climate impact. Rice, because of methane emissions, is among the highest climate impact grains. A Swedish lamb provides a carbon footprint of 16 kg CO2-equivalent per slaughtered kg lamb. A kilo of Thai rice provides between 1.34- 3.57 CO2-e per kg. Let’s say 2.4 kg CO2-e/kg.

Calculating emissions according to weight, yes lamb (16/kg) is much worse for the climate than rice (2.4/kg). You can eat six times as much rice and still release less CO2.

However, we have all heard about empty calories. What’s important is not only how much we eat but the nutrients the food provides us with. And we have to consider a woman’s recommended daily intake of iron, around 15 mg (9 mg for men). So here’s the issue. You would have to eat 3.2 kg rice a day to get the daily iron allowance. And considering the sort of iron and its lower absorption, it is even more. If you instead eat lamb, maybe even liver, 300g/day is enough. Of course, in reality no one would rely on a single food to provide all the necessary iron but the figure shows how efficient liver would be in doing so.

So to get your recommended daily intake of iron, what is the climate impact? For Thai rice the climate impact is at least 7,68 kg CO2-e. For Swedish lamb liver it’s 4,8 kg CO2-e.

Now, you might say, young Swedish women know about empty calories and would go for broccoli rather than rice. Still lamb liver is more efficient than broccoli in delivering iron per kg CO2-e. You would have to eat more than 2,3 kg broccoli to get the recommended daily intake. In climate impact that’s (using the example of UK broccoli) ca 5,3 kg CO2-e.

My message is really this. We have to consider nutrient content and absorption instead of climate impact per weight or calorie. When we consider nutrient content and absorption, we may find that going vegetarian is not a good idea. Instead, eating small amounts of nutrient dense food, like lamb liver, helps young women to maintain their health.

It is more climate friendly to eat small amounts of nutrient dense foods than eating large quantities of empty calories.

The nutrient argument was highlighted by researchers with connections to the Swedish dairy industry in 2010. While we of course have to be wary of industry motives, I still believe the overall idea of considering nutrients in relation to climate impact is a sound idea. And the general lesson here is that how we calculate affects the results we get.

On the picture: grazing sheep on the west coast of Norway, are they really that bad for the climate? It depends on how you calculate.

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The wardrobe audit: 2017 in review

Despite a year of not shopping any clothing my wardrobe is still full. Very few things got worn out last year. And, miraculously, things we’re added to the wardrobe without shopping. Consequently, I was quite curious to know if I expanded or reduced my closet last year. Basically, did I go plus or minus wardrobe-wise.

So I counted all my clothes the other day. I even put them in an excel sheet. If you google ‘count your clothes’, you’ll see that I’m far from the first person on earth to do so. It seems that an average, non-minimalist, wardrobe contains between 200- 500 items. Needless to say, I’m in the upper range, ca 540, including outerwear, swimwear, formal wear i.e. basically all form of clothing but no accessories or shoes. I might include these too in the future though.

To my defense, I haven’t given away clothes to charity shops the last couple of years because of sustainability reasons. As Karen Templer defined slow fashion, it’s about “wearing each item (whatever it is, wherever it came from) for as long as it lasts, extending the lives of things through care and mending, and re-homing anything that doesn’t work for you.” I think the last term ‘re-homing’ is important, making sure the item gets a new home, which isn’t the case of charity shops these days.

Reviewing last year’s wardrobe outflows, I re-homed a silk shirt and tank top to family members. I threw away some underwear, socks, and nylon stockings (after already mending them several times, thrown in the trash). Two t-shirts torn beyond mending  became rags to clean with (I remember my mom saving worn out clothes for rags when we were kids, when did we quit this habit?). A pair of jeans with broken zipper is stored away to use for second life sewing  somehow, i.e. practically they’re no longer in the wardrobe (anyone knows how to mend such zippers?). In total, I parted with ca 10 items.

On the inflow side, I sewed a scout tee from silk scraps in my fabric stash. I knitted a dark blue wool sweater (a knitting project my mom started but had abandoned). I found a 70/80s Austrian wool jacket and skirt at my parents that joined my wardrobe as well as mom’s old 80s salt and pepper wool coat. My sister trusted me with a torn Marella blouse that I mended and made sleeveless (on the picture). Thus six items joined the wardrobe. 

All in all, my wardrobe went minus four items last year.

At this pace, it will take a 135 years to wear out my wardrobe. Seen like this, it looks like my shopping days are over.

There were also a few items that neither added or subtracted but simply changed categories. A red wool jumper left the ‘wool sweater’ category and joined the ‘wool cardigan’ group. This refashioning of a sweater into a cardigan following Worn values tutorial was a success, I have been wearing the ‘new’ cardigan a lot, I never wore it as a sweater. And instead of 27 wool sweaters I now ‘only’ have 26. The wool cardigan category went from 17 to 18 accordingly.

As a knitter, it becomes quite obvious here that one might not need more than 26 wool sweaters. I so very much enjoy knitting sweaters and cardigans but will I wear them? There are, in my climate, maybe six months of wearing wool sweaters and cardigans, ca 180 days. Assuming that you wear either a cardigan or a sweater, not both at the same time, it means that I can wear each sweater/cardigan four times during the season. Basically, it will take many years to wear out a sweater when it gets worn maximum four times a year. Consequently, I have to rethink my knitting habits. While I can finish knitting my current projects, there is now a ban on starting new sweater/cardigan projects for myself. To tell the truth, I did not suspect I had such an abundance of knitwear in my wardrobe before I counted it.

While I was doing my wardrobe audit Worn values posted a review of her slow fashion year 2017. Interestingly, she calculates not only how many items joined her wardrobe but also at what cost. Since I had a year of no-shopping, I paid nothing for new items last year, the only cost was shortening the hem of a skirt (because I was too lazy to do it myself) to the cost of approximately 200 SEK. I also put new soles on few pair of shoes. It would have been very interesting to compare this amount to what I used to spend on my wardrobe. Of course, I never calculated what I spent on my wardrobe before (a passionate shopper doesn’t want to know)  but I suspect I’m saving around 30 000 SEK a year.

During 2018, I would like to not only keep track of in- and outflows but also of how much mending I do.  Sometimes I feel like mending is all I do, so quantifying it would be a way to highlight the effort I put into my wardrobe.

Previous posts about my quest for a sustainable wardrobe: “Is owning less more sustainable“, “2017, the year without shopping“,  “A month without shopping“, “The health bonus of no-shopping: reduced chemical exposure“

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The health bonus of no-shopping: reduced chemical exposure

Last year’s resolution of not shopping any clothes brought many benefits: saving money and the environment, reducing waste and getting a closer, more personal relationship to my closet. There is one aspect, though, that I have thought less about but that I was lately reminded of: reduced chemical exposure. It might even be one of the more important benefits of not shopping.

We all have hundreds of chemicals in our blood, many of which are hormone disrupting. And this is in Sweden and the EU where we at least have the REACH chemical regulation. The US has much less regulation, which is discussed in the documentary STINK (can really recommend this documentary, there is a lot of useful information in it).

New clothes are made, dyed and treated with chemicals and these chemicals can end up in our blood stream with serious effects. We were recently reminded of this fact by the H&M burning-clothes scandals (but it applied to numerous other brands too!). One of the reasons the companies are burning seemingly good clothes is because they contain harmful levels of chemicals and substances. Although it is in fact good that we are not sold these items, it is a reminder of the fact that such chemicals are in the clothes at some level. One could question why the companies do not simply remove these harmful chemicals from the production, as our minister for the environment did in the H&M reportage.

One way that chemicals, such as triclosan, gets into our bodies is thus through clothes. I remember buying a pair of jeans some years ago that smelled terribly, “I smell like a walking pool #toxicfashion” I tweeted. I washed the jeans and continued wearing them despite the lingering smell. If I had known what I know now, I would have understood that the smell could be chemicals that would end up in my body and do damage there. I would have returned the jeans to the store.

In the STINK documentary, the story starts similarly with a pair of smelling pyjamas. However, unlike me, the father in the movie realises not only that it’s a sign of chemicals but also that these might be really dangerous to his kids. His wife has recently died in cancer so he realises that some of these chemicals could even be carcinogenic (spoiler alert!- they are).

The obvious benefit with not shopping is that you are not introducing new items and their chemicals into your wardrobe and to your body. If you also consider more environmental friendly washing options (for example avoiding dry cleaning), this will reduce an overall chemical exposure. Shopping second hand, for example for your child, has similar benefits because the clothes have been washed already multiple times which should reduce the chemical content.

One aspect the STINK documentary does not discuss, and which thus is a weakness from a sustainability perspective, is where the chemicals used in production and that result from when we wash our clothes end up: in the environment and in our waters. But I guess you cannot tell all in one and a half hour.  This part of the story has also been brought up elsewhere, for example in the True Cost movie.

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2018, the year flying becomes uncool

My prediction for 2018 is that this is the year when flying becomes ‘uncool’. Admitting you’re frequent flyer gold status will become embarrassing.

We already see the early signs. Deputy Science Director at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Henrik Östblom, tweeted happily that he had been downgraded by two air miles programs this year. Swedish sport stars Björn Ferry and Heidi Andersson have stopped flying entirely, despite the fact that they live far up in the Swedish North. Björn Ferry even declined to report from the Olympics because of the required flights.

Why are people making a fuss about flying? In the case of Heidi and Björn, they try to live as climate friendly as possible. After filling in the Swedish Environmental Institute’s ‘climate account‘ they discovered that the absolute biggest impact they had on the climate was transport and particularly flying. So they got an electric car and quit flying. Pretty hard core and quite admirable.

Inspired by these people, I also filled out  the climate account and, as expected, almost all of my climate impact derives from flying. And this is after I already limit my flying to within Europe. This year, I have skipped conferences outside of Europe. Still the footprint from flying is high and much higher than the average person on earth.

Researchers propose that our total carbon footprint should be around 1-2 tonnes per person and year, that’s one return trip to Thailand.

When they compared the impact of car traffic with flying in Stockholm, the flying habit had much larger impact on the climate.

What about climate compensation? It’s not evident that we can compensate fossil fuels, that have accumulated during a very long time with carbon in trees and plants that have much shorter time horizons in the carbon cycle. Thus it’s a practice that has been criticized by researchers. The environmental NGOs disagree on the value of climate compensation, Naturskyddsföreningen is critical to it whereas WWF support the gold standard.

Will we have to quit flying permanently? Maybe not. On the optimistic side, Norwegian airports are starting to offer renewable jet biofuel, for example at Bergen airport. This is very promising, although Swedish airports, unfortunately, are far behind. 

Despite the promise of jet biofuel, the amount of flying and how it’s increasing remains a problem. Our flying habit has exploded the last decades.  Even if we replace all the jet fuel at Swedish airport with renewable ones by 2030, this only compensates for the expected increase in flying i.e. our overall carbon footprint will remain the same as today.  Thus we cannot increase our flying, as we have done the last decades, in the future. And until jet biofuel is the standard, we should simply avoid flying. If we want to save the climate.

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Corporate sustainability in 2017

I’m in the jury for the ‘Best Swedish Sustainability Report’ award and we are announcing the 2017 winner tomorrow. Because of this jury work, I have been reading a lot of sustainability reports this summer and see some current trends.

On the positive side, companies increasingly work with sustainability in their core operations. Compared to when I started my research in this area eight years ago, there is much less reporting on how much money companies give to charities. These days, companies understand that their main focus should be on the social and environmental impact of their business operations. This is where they can really make a difference. Anyone can give money to a charity, but only the company can make demands on its suppliers and reduce the carbon footprint in the operations.

Another trend is that companies increasingly connect their work to the UN sustainable development goals. This can of course be seen as a way for companies to ‘glorify’ their work. Nevertheless, the UN goals may help companies to think about the global challenges and their role therein. It’s a way to connect everyday work to a bigger picture. Similarly, some companies describe how their work contributes to the Swedish state’s sustainability plan ‘Agenda 2030’ (which, in fact all Swedish state-owned companies should do).

Still, there is more work to be done. Sustainability, in its essence, is about the long term perspective. According to the 1987 definition, it’s about future generations. In this respect, the old criticism that companies’ sustainability reports are not really about sustainability at all is still valid. When you set goals for 2020 you are not considering future generations. When you mainly report what you did last year you do not see the longer time perspective. As a company you should ask how your business operations will affect the life conditions of future generations. If there is no unpolluted water left, how will it affect future generations? No biodiversity? Unfortunately, very few companies think in terms of such time perspectives (yet).

Still, there are reasons to be optimistic. A few companies stand out and show that things can in fact change fast. Swedish textile company Ellos isn’t known for their sustainability work. However, in two years they have gone from sourcing only conventional cotton to 46% ‘better’, organic or recycled cotton. By 2020 it should be 100% and, at this pace, they will definitely make it. If all companies went from 0 to 50% in one to two years it would help the environment tremendously.

From 2018, all large Swedish companies will report on sustainability (a Swedish adoption of the EU directive). I am excited to see how this will affect business practices.

 

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Can we really compare meat to fossil fuels?

Many sustainability proponents these days encourage us to become vegetarians. At least once a day there is some article along these lines in my Twitter feed. Unfortunately, there are many arguments circulating in this debate that are quite misleading. The worst error people make, in my opinion, is to equate emissions from cattle with emissions from fossil fuels.

This is simply misleading because these emissions have very different relationships to the carbon cycle. By burning fossil fuels we are adding carbon to the carbon cycle whereas emissions from cattle have a role within the carbon cycle, it naturally belongs there.

Let me explain. We all learnt about the carbon cycle in school and thus we should know that carbon circulates between the atmosphere, to plants, to animals and us humans and is yet again released into the air. Microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi etc. also play a role in this. It is how it should work in nature. Animals have a part to play in this cycle by both storing and releasing carbon in different forms.

Now whereas cattle is part of this normal carbon cycle fossil fuels are not. Fossil fuel is stored away carbon that is suddenly released into the atmosphere through human intervention. Because the natural carbon cycle cannot absorb all this added carbon, a larger portion of it remains in the atmosphere. The natural equivalent is a volcanic eruption. But these days we have constant man-made emissions of such stored away carbon. This way, we add carbon to the atmosphere that was not there before and would not have been released without us. This is indisputable and should really be our focus since we know this for certain.

Now some argue that because we hold cattle as part of our food chain we have affected the carbon cycle by raising more cows than what existed before human intervention, i.e. before animal husbandry. That there are more animals on earth today, and particularly ruminants, is a hypothesis that is difficult to prove. We don’t know exactly how many animals existed before our animal husbandry or how many of these were ruminants, so it is only estimates. Even if there are more ruminants living on earth today, it is not necessarily a problem because cattle also absorbs carbon. Just as us humans, their bodies are partly built of carbon that is released through breathing and when we die etc.

The problem with more ruminants on earth, according to the veggie proponents, is that ruminants release more methane than other animals. Thus we have shifted the carbon cycle towards more methane, they argue. However, the more we learn about methane, it is not really an isolated case of cows as such but methane producing bacteria that we find in all kinds of environments. Moreover, most of these emissions do belong to the natural carbon cycle that was there before us. It is possible that human behavior provide more beneficial environments for these methane bacteria, by raising more ruminants (who release methane) and rice agriculture. But then again, there might have been wild animals and natural swamps before and if so there has not been a significant change. We basically don’t know. There are estimates in both directions.

Acting on very incomplete information on how methane acts is in my opinion risky. Before we start to mess with the methane-producing bacteria in the cow’s stomach (which they are now starting to do), let’s learn more on how it actually operates. And when we do address methane, let’s include all man-made sources such as rice, landfills and wetlands too.

Thus we see that equating fossil fuel emissions to emissions from cattle is misleading. In the case of fossil fuels we know that we have added carbon to the carbon cycle and in these amounts it cannot be absorbed in the cycle (although the oceans have compensated a lot). In the case of cows, we don’t really know whether we have shifted the carbon cycle towards more methane because of animal husbandry. Moreover,  the case is not just about cows but methane producing bacteria that could be affected by many of our activities. We still need to learn much more. So until we do, let’s address the things we know for certain and that are urgent: our red meat habit is pretty stable whereas our flying habits have exploded the last decades.

There’s so much more to say on the subject of climate change and food but I find this to be one of the main points.

On the picture: cow at Lovö Prästgård in the Stockholm area.

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Is expensive fashion more sustainable?

You might, as I once did, think that you avoid the sustainability issues in fashion because you don’t shop at H&M, Gina Tricot, Dressman etc.

The short answer is no, expensive fashion is not necessarily more sustainable. Luxury production in Europe should guarantee better working conditions and less chemicals, but only a few luxury brands still produce in Europe. Those who do might only produce certain parts of the collection in Europe. And ‘Made in Italy’ can these days mean made by Chinese in Italy. Even when something is made in Europe, the fabric may be imported. Luxury brands often source their materials from outside of Europe and then we have the issues with conventional cotton and synthetic fibre etc.

There are also environmental issues with the chrome and heavy metals involved in tanning of leather. If you do want a new luxury bag, check where the leather came from, that it can be tracked to sustainable farming, and for vegetable tanning. I found that Swedish brand Palmgrens had a longstanding relationship the Italian farm the leather derived from and used vegetable tanning processes for a certain bag. Thus it’s the last bag I’ve bought, before my current year of no-shopping, and I don’t feel I compromised on design just because I focused on sustainability.

Another issue with luxury brands is that they don’t consider the environmental impact of care. Many put dry cleaning on the care instructions (as on this Ralph Lauren jacket, made in the Philippines) which isn’t environmentally friendly. And, in many cases, the items are better cared for by hand washing. I don’t know how many times the dry cleaner couldn’t remove stains and when I try at home, as a last resort, it works perfectly. Money and chemicals wasted.

The luxury conglomerates seem to lack a thorough understanding of sustainability issues. For example, when LVMH reports on biodiversity, they write about how they finance biodiversity research rather than how they take biodiversity into account in their sourcing of raw materials. Now I am all for funding research, of course, but certain issues we already know a lot about, such as pesticides and biodiversity. We can act on these today.

Similarly, it is admirable that Kering has developed the Environmental Profit and Loss account (which I often teach to students) but more important is how they handle their everyday sustainability challenges. I searched for organic on Kering’s website and only found ‘organic growth’.

Taking the opposite road, many cheap brands are not as diligent about working conditions and where things are made* but are instead rapidly increasing their share of ‘better’ or organic cotton and renewable fibre. They hardly ever prescribe dry cleaning. But then again they don’t make clothes that should last.

Thus while some brands are working on social issues and others focus on some of the environmental, few brands cover all the necessary issues. Those who do are generally those that started their business with a sustainability focus. These brands are generally slightly more expensive than fast fashion but usually much cheaper than luxury brands.

So the answer is no: price is not a good indicator of sustainability.

* The Inditex group (Zara, Massimo Dutti etc. ) is an interesting exception. Around 60% of their suppliers are located in proximity to the headquarters in Spain.

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Slow Fashion in memory of Rana Plaza

This week it’s four years since the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh . 2500 workers were injured and 1129 killed when the eight-storey factory collapsed. This event is commemorated with the Fashion Revolution Week each year. Customers and consumers are encouraged to ask their brands ‘who made my clothes?’. Consequently, social media is buzzing with activity and many brands have shared pictures and stories about their production, for example Serendipity Organics and many more (to see the brands and their stories follow @fash_rev on Instagram). Even conventional fashion media, such as British Vogue, report on the activity.

Many of those active during Fashion Revolution Week are also all year round Slow Fashion proponents. Karen Templer of Slow Fashion October did a thoughtful  blog post defining ‘Slow Fashion’ as considering the human, environmental and monetary cost of clothing as well as taking full responsibility for what we own:

By take responsibility, I mean commit to wearing each item (whatever it is, wherever it came from) for as long as it lasts, extending the lives of things through care and mending, and re-homing anything that doesn’t work for you.

Independent pattern maker ‘In the folds‘ organised an Instagram challenge to direct attention to the time and skill it takes to make clothing. Most clothes are still made by hand and it should be valued, whether we do it ourselves or someone does it for us, she argues.

Elisalex of ‘By Hand London‘ made tutorials for Fashion Revolution Week on how to embroider and sew on patches to cover wholes, imperfections or just to make items more fun. The purpose is to make our clothing more useful so that we use what we have instead of buying new or throwing things out. The workers put a lot of effort into making clothing for us, one way to value their work is to give the clothing a long life (find my strategies for doing so here)

It seems to me that the Slow Fashion movement is here to stay. It is starting to have a presence in social media all year round. Fashion Revolution Week keeps the memory of Rana Plaza alive and educates customers and consumers about social responsibility in fashion production. The question is if the brands are changing their ways as fast as their customers are learning about the issues.

The Rana Plaza disaster shouldn’t have happened but it did. Supporting better and safer business practices is one way to commemorate the events.

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How businesses handle legal but toxic chemicals

Some might believe that the use of manufactured chemical substances is tightly and safely regulated. Unfortunately it is not necessarily the case. In many cases we do not know yet if something is toxic (for example hormone-disrupting chemicals). In other cases we think it is safe and later find out that it is not. A famous example is the insecticide DDT that not only affected the environment but turned out to be an endocrine disruptor and likely carcinogen. It is prohibited since the 1970s but still found in our bodies and the environment. In certain cases, the company using the substance knows it is dangerous but conceals the information. The latter seems to be the case of Monsanto and glyphosate.

Sometimes businesses are in fact allowed to use substances that are toxic to us and the environment. One current example is PFOS and PFOA. They are water and stain repellent fluorosurfactants, used in all kinds of products. I found it in my water proofing spray for shoes and bags (that I am consequently handing in as toxic waste). They are legal to use. Today, however, we know that they do not degrade and thus accumulate in the environment: in the air, water and our food. They are commonly found in breast milk. In large enough doses it’s toxic and carcinogenic to us. While we are all exposed to it to some degree, the inhabitants of Swedish Kallinge were unknowingly exposed to large doses in their drinking water. Similarly, inhabitants close to DuPont’s factory in West Virginia were exposed to large doses too and developed all kinds of diseases (and successfully sued the company that was aware that it poisoned the water). Dupont has also contaminated the air around a factory in Holland for many years with a similar substance. Swedish environmental radio show Klotet made a very good reportage about these substances this week (in Swedish).

What can we as individuals do? When the substances are out there (and they travel far, for example to the Arctic) we cannot stop them on our own.

However, we can support the companies that voluntarily limit their use of the legal but proven, or potentially, toxic substances.

We can also avoid items that contribute to this pollution, such as teflon, ski wax, stain and water repellent textiles. If we worry about our drinking water, a charcoal filter absorbs PFAS (charcoal filter made a difference in Kallinge ).

Businesses, on the other hand, can learn from the DuPont lawsuits that concealing information about toxicity and contamination is unethical business practice. Even if the substance is legal, they now have to pay for the contamination and health consequences.

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When stakeholders oppose the company’s plans: the case of Schiphol airport

A key part of companies’ sustainability work is to communicate with parties that are affected by the company’s operations. This is generally called ‘stakeholder dialogue’ (see Edward Freeman’s definition from 1984).

Engaging local communities, environmental groups, customers and investors early on may prevent critic, and even boycott, of the business later on, when it might be too late to turn back. It can also provide valuable input and reveal opportunities. However, these different groups can, and most likely will, also have conflicting ideas and needs. So what can the company do when the stakeholders’ demands conflict with the corporate plans as well as with other stakeholders’ needs?

A NHH and CEMS student of mine, Elizaveta Sokolova, wrote her master thesis on precisely this issue. She used the case of the Dutch airport Schiphol and their stakeholders (local residents, regional authorities, the Dutch state, airlines, Friends of the Earth and more) to investigate how the airport handles the conflicting demands. The conflicts concerned for example birds that get in harms way around the airport, access to the airport and noise from the airport. Elizaveta found that even when the stakeholders do not disagree on the final goal, they can disagree on how to achieve the goals.

In Schiphol’s case, the stakeholder dialogue revealed the complexity of the issues. It also created a feeling among stakeholders that the problem is shared and only coordinated efforts can bring a solution. However, when the conflicts were too divisive, the airport decided to end, or at least limit, the dialogue. To read the full thesis, you find it here.

I asked Elizaveta, who also participated in the ‘Measuring sustainability’ course I teach at NHH, a few questions for the purpose of this blog:

You seem to have a keen interest in business and sustainability. What interests you most in this area? 

On the first glance, it seems that sustainability stop business from faster expansion and revenue growth. However, being more conscious of the impact that a business creates on people and environment allows to make the growth more sustainable, less dependent on external factors such as new policies or fuel/electricity/commodity prices. Finding examples of how this idea works in real life is what attracts me the most.

What is the main point we as readers can learn from your thesis?

The Schiphol airport example that I describe in my thesis shows that changing business towards sustainability and including diverse stakeholders for consultations is never easy: opinions vary. However, this approach leads to well-rounded final decision.

Writing the thesis, what was the main learning point for you personally?

For me personally, it was difficult to understand how to find a common ground on an issue when stakeholders’ opinions are literally opposite. The answer is: willingness to compromise and understand the opponent’s concerns.

Now that you have finished your master here at NHH, what are your plans for the future?

Now, when I have finished NHH, I am implementing the knowledge I got about stakeholder engagement in practice: I work at The Global Fund and deal with sustainability and transition. It requires a lot of negotiations and communications with different stakeholders, so the communication experience and theoretical background I got while working on the thesis is very beneficial.

Thank you Elizaveta for sharing your insights and good luck with your new job!

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Can conscious consumerism change the world?

Last week, I heard from two sources that conscious consumerism, i.e. using your purchases to support good business practices is not enough. In this podcast, Stiv Wilson argues that we need to get political instead. Which is exactly what their organization Story of Stuff is all about. This article by blogger Alden Wicker states it a little more harshly:

“Conscious consumerism is a lie. Small steps taken by thoughtful consumers—to recycle, to eat locally, to buy a blouse made of organic cotton instead of polyester—will not change the world”.

These kinds of arguments are used in two contexts: those that want us to get involved politically instead, as in the above two cases, or those that want to give up, ‘it doesn’t matter anyway’, ‘we can’t change the system’ and so on.

Unsurprisingly, I do believe my purchases matter. I believe in political power too. I also believe I can make a difference with my research and teaching. Basically, let’s use the means that are available to us and with which we are comfortable. Some people are comfortable marching for environmental causes, others are more comfortable changing their purchasing behavior. However, like the politician that argues for public service and then doesn’t pay the tv-licence, it is desirable to try to be consistent.

How could then purchasing behavior make a difference? Will H&M or Varner notice that I am doing a no-shopping year? No, they will not. Most likely we cannot affect H&M and Varner politically either. They are private companies, not states, and they can shop around for the tax and environmental rules that suit them, if they like.

So the impact of purchasing behavior depends on who you are trying to affect and how important your purchases are to them.

My local organic food store in Bergen has only so many customers and I purchase most of my food there. They would notice if I move. The people I purchase food from at the farmers market might notice (Bergen’s farmers market on the picture above) . Based on this fact, I feel quite comfortable telling people to stop buying from the fashion giants (they will not notice) and start buying from small sustainable brands (who will notice). For small businesses, your purchase does make a difference.

At this point, the ‘elitist’ argument usually appears. The small sustainable brands are more expensive. Not everyone can afford to buy all their food at the organic food store. This is absolutely true but it is not an argument against conscious purchasing behavior generally. We who can afford the sustainable brands have a bigger environmental footprint than people with less purchasing power. It is more important that those with the biggest environmental impact and who can afford do change their behavior. Moreover, buying food directly from the farmer is not necessarily more expensive. Second hand stores are terribly cheap.  Most likely, we could all save money by buying less and learning to mend.

But how do we affect the big companies that are larger than states and that we cannot affect by vote or with our individual purchases? I think maybe social movements can play a role here. These companies are at least concerned with trends among customers. How large groups of consumers behave affect their business. Now I might have prided myself in being the only one I know that is on a shopping fast. Getting active on Instagram, however, I soon discovered that there are many more like me. You could even say I am late to the trend. We are not as unique as we might like to believe. If I decide to only buy grass-fed local meat, there are many more like me, acting on similar impulses. Most likely we are already part of some social movement or trend, whether we know it or not. And, as group, how we behave does concern these companies.

So, in my opinion, our consumption does impact the world and if you choose to purchase consciously it will too. This, however, is not an excuse for politicians and companies to not do their job and instead put all responsibility on the consumer’s shoulders (as happens all to often). We have some big challenges, so we all need to do our best.

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Sweden to become a ‘circular economy’

The Swedish government is investigating how it can promote a ‘circular economy’.  Now, what is a circular economy? While it is not so well defined, I’d say it’s an ambition to keep materials in a loop. Nature tends to work with cycles (the carbon cycle for example). Businesses, the circular economy proponents say, should mimic such systems. In a circular economy,  waste should become input to new production. In addition, there’s the idea that sharing and renting is better than owning things (I’d like to see some evidence for this).

The Swedish government’s investigation into the circular economy resulted in a 400 pages report, released last week. The report suggests tax deductions for rental, second hand and repair services, which sounds like more of what the Swedish government has already done. Other suggestions are for example to increase access to carpools and to facilitate prevention of waste (the latter is always a good idea).

When I encountered the ‘circular economy’ concept, I was initially a sceptic. It might be an academic instinct to question terms the industry has invented. ‘Isn’t this just a new fancy concept for recycling?’. Lately, however, I have slightly changed my mind. The more I learn about the waste issue the more it seems necessary that companies ‘design out waste’ (as the circular economy proponents put it). We need to have a plan for what happens to the materials and products when they are discarded. We need to make sure that our products are safely recyclable and can potentially be recycled more than once. If the circular economy concept is helpful for businesses (or states!) in order to work on these issues, then that’s more important than the lack of definition.

I also find the circular economy system diagram useful. The ways in which materials circulate are put into a hierarchy where maintaining products (such as mending) is more desirable than recycling. This seems very reasonable.

Now my research area is really the measurement of such initiatives. And, as it happens regularly, I got a really good question from a student some week ago: “How can we measure whether a business is circular?”  While businesses are quite different from nation states, the Swedish government’s report has in fact suggested some indicators for whether a country is ‘circular’. The proposed indicators measure the amount of recycled materials, the use of raw materials and the amount of waste produced. These are standard indicators that companies disclose in their sustainability reports. In a business setting, such indicators are nothing new. However, they might be more difficult to calculate on a national level. The government report suggests no indicators for the sharing, renting or repairing ideas of the circular economy.

Clearly, this is an area that needs some more work. Now if the Swedish government would want some help with measuring their circular economy ambitions, I am here to help 😉

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When pollution comes back to haunt us

You might remember the cadmium in imported rice scandal or lead in imported rice scandal. These are examples of heavy metal contamination of imported foods. ‘We import foods from countries with too low environmental standards’, you might think. And that’s true.

But how did the heavy metals end up in the foods? How did a fifth of China’s farmland become contaminated? Countries like China and India have for quite some time been producing for our consumption. It has been attractive because of price, but it has also been done under lower environmental standards. One example is the dyeing of clothes. Another example is the production of pharmaceuticals. We know that these industries pollute the water and soils (and there are of course further industries in this category). We also know that residuals of the toxic waste may remain in what we import.

So, ironically,  when these countries produce for our consumption, the resulting pollution comes back to haunt us in the foods we import.

Even more ironically, while contamination of soils in India and China is spreading, we are in Scandinavia placing buildings on uncontaminated good soils that used to be farmland. The national strategy is to rely on imports, both of foods and other kinds of manufacturing. When this is the strategy, we have an interest in the countries that we are now dependent on. It is in our interest that their farmland and water supply remains uncontaminated so that they can continue to produce for us. There is only so much farmland in the world. If our strategy is to rely on imports, then we need to be concerned with the pollution in the countries we import from. Because it is not only the local population’s food supply that is contaminated, it’s ours too.

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Is more recycling the answer?

We’ve learned that recycling is desirable. It’s the way to a more sustainable society. And in some ways it is. Compared to accumulating trash in landfills, then yes, recycling might be a good idea. Keeping materials in the loop means that we don’t have to produce new resource intensive materials, such as cotton, from scratch. However there are also issues with recycling.

First, toxic materials might result in toxic recycled products. In a recent case, artificial football turf, from recycled car tires, seems to be carcinogenic. Recycling is not desirable if football kids develop cancer as a result.

Second, although something can be recycled once, it does not necessarily mean that it can be recycled twice. So although we produce something by recycled materials, it may not be recyclable a second time. When it is worn out, it still ends up in the landfill or to be burned. Taking one more turn and having a second life is of course better than going directly to trash but it is not a final solution.

Third, recycling requires resources. Recycling processes require energy, the items to be recycled are moved around and transported, there might be environmentally unfriendly chemicals involved (for example in the case of textiles) and it requires money. These resources may be well spent money compared to things ending up in a landfill. However, if we instead reuse what we have and produce less waste, these resources can be saved and spent on other things.

Bea Johnson, of zero waste home, asks the thought provoking question: “What if our municipalities could shift the resources they spend on waste handling to other activities, such as schools and hospitals instead?” She has many relevant points.

Overall, the zero waste movement is doing a pretty good job in educating us on how to reduce our waste. It means fewer things going into our homes, particularly disposables, and fewer items being thrown out. Everyday. If we all did it, it would make a big difference.

Personally, I’m a bit of a late adopter in this area. I’m at this point trying to reduce everyday plastic disposables. I’m also pretty good at the DIY skincare and home cleaning supplies that Lauren Singer suggests. In terms of food packaging, although I’m recycling, I’ve got a long way to go in terms of reducing what comes into my home. On my wish list for this year is to start composting food waste. Many cities have composting schemes that you can subscribe to and in Bergen even certain houses/areas (as in my friend Turid’s case).

On the picture: buying milk directly from the farmer (Lovö Prästgård) using old Kockum milk jars. Buying directly from the farmer, also at farmers market, is a good way to reduce waste.

Are you making effort to reduce your waste? Please share your experiences.