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| My baby 05/2015 |
It is a common misconception that long-lived products cause less of an environmental impact than short-lived products. However, both cases pose an interesting question, what are the materials and the energy inputs involved in creating these products?
Lets say, we have a long-lived product like a vehicle - does this vehicle cause less of an environmental footprint than something like yoga pants which have a relatively higher frequency of turnovers? This is a tricky question to answer. Vehicles run on fuel, thus emitting harmful chemicals into the atmosphere. But also consider the life-cycle and all of the energy inputs the vehicle had to go through prior to us owning one. Now in terms of the yoga pants - what do you do with it once its battered and the life is exhausted - well, lets just say it eventually ends up in our landfills - and we purchase a new pair.
So which has a higher environmental impact?
This is a very complex question to answer as we have to consider all of the energy inputs and the materials used in the products life-cycle.
Consider my bike that I purchased last year.. how much energy is required in constructing this beauty? Undoubtedly LOTS. We also have to consider the transportation aspect in the products life-cycle. Hence, the individual parts that comprise this bike has to travel some distance to finally meet in a factory and be assembled, then transported to the bike store where it can be purchased and further transported home. Add this all up in our equation = more energy!
Am I really reducing my footprint by riding my bike to work for three months of the year (i.e. if the weather permits me to)? Tradeoffs are inevitable. After all, I am just 1 person out of the 7.3 billion we have today - what are you doing to reduce your footprint?
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Another way we can prevent waste is by giving it to someone else - there are a suite of ethics involved here - BUT nevertheless, it's a great solution to minimizing waste in our landfills! - I know what I'll be doing with my bike once its life has degraded.
