Most of the products that are used every day in an average household are not of local origin, so these products have come a long way to reach you. Take for example a pen, whose design and brand probably come from America or Europe, the metal needed for this pen is extracted somewhere in Africa, the plastic and energy for its production come from the Persian Gulf, to be produced and assembled somewhere in the southeast Asia. After the low-paid workforce is assembled, that pen is transported again to the shelves of a bookstore in Serbia, to finally reach you.
After you buy a pen and use it for a certain period, it ends up in the waste basket. And that is where its second life starts, most of them will end up in unregulated landfills, where a large part of waste in Serbia ends. Only those rare ones will be collected by someone and maybe re-enabled or some parts of it will be recycled. As there is no complete recycling cycle in Serbia, some parts of that pen will go out of the country again to make something else out of them.
The entire life cycle of a product is generally very complicated, and often completely environmentally and socially unsustainable. And then something like the COVID-19 pandemic happens and the whole complicated cycle is further compromised. It is enough for only one wheel to stop and for the mechanism to remain locked for at least some time. But situations like this also give us time to think - does everything have to be so complicated and unsustainable? Is it possible to produce and consume products that are local, whose production chain is shorter and whose life cycle is significantly more sustainable?
UN policies to change the way we produce and use products and resources
According to system theory, it is physically impossible to achieve constant material growth in a limited system. Despite the fact that we may not know all the boundaries of the planet Earth, they are there, and the current unsustainable way of production and consumption affects various aspects of life. The current way of production, consumption and use of resources have led to the sixth mass extinction and loss of biodiversity, climate change, excessive pollution of all environment. On the other hand, many people still live below the poverty line and do not even have enough to reach basic needs.
The United Nations (UN) has realized that something needs to be done as soon as possible and has included in its goals of sustainable development, goal number twelve - Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. Having this goal in mind, the UN primarily wants countries to create action plans for sustainable consumption and production and to integrate these issues into national policies. Of course, solving such a broad issue is impossible within one country, because production chains do not know about national borders, so the solution have to be found on at the global level.
In 2017, global material consumption reached 92.1 billion tons, an increase from 87 billion in 2015 and an increase of 254% from 27 billion in 1970, with the extraction rate accelerating every year since 2000 [1]. The constant growth of extraction of natural resources over the past decades has resulted in a disturbance of the balance of the environment. Without urgent and concerted policy action, global resource extraction is projected to rise to 190 billion tonnes by 2060.
These data are alarming and in order to move towards sustainability and social well-being, measures that cover several aspects are necessary. Therefore, Objective 12 includes targets such us changes in education, reduction of food losses, proper management of chemicals, reduction of waste production, promotion of green and sustainable public procurement practices, reduction and elimination of fossil fuel subsidies and work to make tourism more sustainable .
The global level is important because in addition to changing and reducing consumption in developed countries, it is necessary to support developing countries to strengthen their scientific and technological capacities in order to move towards more sustainable forms of consumption and production. This means that developed countries should stop exporting obsolete technologies, but offer developing countries the best available technologies at the moment, so that they can overcome their subdevelopment, while remaining within the limits of sustainability.
At the global level, work must be done to ensure that companies, especially large and international companies, adopt sustainable practices and integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycles. So far, multinational companies have skillfully used greenwashing, in order to make their image seemingly green while making only few changes in the way of doing business.
Serbia and sustainable consumption and production patterns
Where is Serbia in the whole story and how much is being done on sustainability policies?
Serbia is still working on coal and does not plan to suspend its investments in fossil fuels. A new block of the 350 MW thermal power plant is being built in Kostolac, while a contract was signed in March for the construction of the 350 MW Kolobura B thermal power plant. These two projects will tie Serbia to coal for a long time - lignite, which is one of the most problematic energy sources from the ecological point of view.
Green public procurement has not yet become a practice in our country, but it has been a long-standing practice to bury hazardous chemical waste, in order to avoid the costs of its processing. The Ministry of Environment has started to deal with this topic and it will take time to get to the point where all waste and chemicals will be treated in accordance with the best available practices.
While public attention has been focused on reducing the use and eliminating disposable plastic bags, which is one of the positive examples, in the field of recycling, Serbia is still behind the EU. The percentage of municipal waste recycling in Serbia is between 3 and 5%. The medium-term goals of the EU, which Serbia should strive for, are to recycle 50% of municipal waste by 2020, and 65% by 2035, as well as to dispose of less than 10% of municipal waste in landfills by 2035.
Similar to the global level, the growth of material consumption was noticed in Serbia, while the productivity of resources in 2018 remained at the same level as in 2012. This practically means that we spend more resources at the state level, but we do not spend more efficiently.
A large space for savings when it comes to efficient use of resources could be achieved by reducing food losses. Globally, about 30% of food that reaches consumers ends up in waste or compost. Throwing food contributes to even greater land exploitation, while losing resources and energy used to grow food that is eventually thrown away. Until recently, there was no information for Serbia about how much food is thrown away and which food usually ends up in the waste. The space for speculation was reduced when the Center for Environmental Improvement published an analysis of research on food waste in households in the Republic of Serbia. The conclusions of this research are that there is food waste in Serbia as well. Every year we throw away 246,683 tons of food, which is 676 tons of food on a daily basis. An individual resident of Serbia, on average, throws away 35 kilograms of food a year, the value of which is around 10,000 dinars.
Against the overuse of resources, there are more and more zero-waste initiatives every day, a group for directly connecting local food producers with consumers, as well as other platforms where you can find practical advice on how to make your life at least a little more sustainable. Such bottom - up initiatives have especially taken off during the COVID - 19 pandemic at a time when global production and consumption chains have been shaken. Individual examples of sustainable living are important to show through practice that a different way of life is possible, but we must also be careful when it comes to their scope because only in combination with progressive public policies can they contribute to wider social change.
Lets learn where does products we use come from and where they go when we get rid of them, so we can be ready to make a change towards a sustainable society.
Predrag Momcilovic
Photo source: Belgrade Open School