Reuse & climate: action for governments to take
Insights and takeaways from a meeting of the Government Reuse Forum
Upstream’s Reuse Solutions Network (RSN) and its subgroups provide valuable convening spaces for NGOs, entrepreneurs, local organizations, community leaders, and governments working to catalyze reuse. One of these subgroups, the Government Reuse Forum, offers space to discuss issues specific to local and state-level government.
Following the RSN’s exploration of reuse as a climate solution, the GRF had a fruitful conversation recently about the importance of embedding reuse into climate action plans—and how measuring consumption-based, or scope 3, emissions gives a far more accurate depiction of a municipality’s climate impact. As the effects of climate change are felt more severely—and therefore climate considerations become increasingly central to planning by government agencies across the US and Canada—we thought this conversation merited sharing with a broader audience.
This meeting included a case study on the state of Maine, where the Governor’s Office and the Department of Environmental Protection have teamed up to create a robust statewide climate action plan that incorporates sustainable materials management (spoiler alert—managing materials well means reusing them!). At the meeting, we heard from a panel of experts who have been leading this process:
Amalia (Molly) Siegel, Maine Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future
Megan Mansfield-Pryor, Maine Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future
Nathan Robbins, Maine Department of Environmental Protection
Wesley Ingwerson, Environmental Protection Agency
How to get reuse into climate action plans: a case study from Maine
In 2019, Maine established statutory targets to reduce gross emissions 45% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. The Maine Climate Council was also created and tasked with drafting Maine’s first climate action plan, with four goals in mind: to reduce Maine’s GHG emissions and meet their targets; to make Maine more resilient to the impacts of climate change; to foster economic opportunity and prosperity; and to advance equity through Maine’s climate response. Maine’s first climate action plan was created in 2020 and is required to be updated every four years, so there has been a process underway throughout this year to publish a new plan by December, 2024.
Taking a big picture view of emissions
Initially, energy generation sources (transportation, heating and cooling, etc) were identified as the main sources of GHG emissions in Maine at 94%, with waste identified as only a small contributor at 2%. This is due to the way emissions were measured.
The traditional way of measuring emissions is a sector-based, territorial view, which only includes emissions from the production of goods and services in the state—including waste as a “good” and waste management as a “service”. In this method, “waste management” is considered a sector by itself, and its direct emissions from collection trucks, landfills, waste-to-energy facilities, and recycling centers are tallied and counted toward the state’s emissions total.
The challenge with this approach is that it ignores the upstream emissions embodied in all of the goods and services people consume. In most cases, the majority of goods people consume are produced out of state, and the emissions from their production and transportation are discounted in a traditional inventory.
If only traditional sector-based emissions are considered, emissions from the “waste management sector” appear to be a tiny portion of GHG emissions compared to other sectors. But in reality, the real carbon emissions don’t come from directly managing waste; they come from producing goods and services around the world. The more we consume, the more is produced, and the cycle continues. Everything a state consumes has emissions throughout its lifecycle, regardless of whether or not it was produced in state. These embodied emissions are ignored in a sector-based inventory.
Fortunately, there is another way to measure and track emissions: consumption-based, or scope 3 emissions, which take into account not just the future emissions from disposal but all of the embodied carbon impacts of manufacturing goods through their whole lifecycle.
When looking at consumption-based emissions, the team in Maine could see that not only did they have larger overall emissions than previously thought, but once upstream impacts were included, materials and goods consumed in Maine turned out to be by far the biggest contributors to GHG emissions.
“Materials management” means more reuse
With Maine’s consumption-based emissions in mind, the Materials Management Task Force was created to look at how waste and materials management could fit into the next climate action plan and to provide recommendations to the Maine Climate Council.
Some of the top recommendations of Maine’s Materials Management Task Force included advancing policies and deploying funding to reduce emissions across product lifecycles by growing Maine's circular economy; tracking and measuring emissions reductions via Maine’s consumption-based emissions inventory (more on that below); and fostering resilience in the built environment through materials collection and reuse. You can find the full list in their presentation or from Maine.gov.
What are consumption-based emissions inventories, and what do they mean for reuse?
Given how measuring emissions through a consumption-based lens drastically affects the data, we can see the importance of calculating all greenhouse gas emissions from imported goods and services, rather than just during their lifespan in a certain area (like a city or a state). In order for cities, states, tribes and other jurisdictions to develop comprehensive and accurate climate action plans, they must consider consumption-based emissions to get the full picture—and they can do so via Consumption-Based Emissions Inventories, or CBEIs.
The US-EPA, Northeast Waste Management Officials Association, and Eastern Research Group Inc collaborated to create Consumption-Based Greenhouse Gas Inventories for eight Northeastern states. These inventories show that when calculated through a consumption-based lens, emissions are 40-60% greater than traditional territorial, sector-based emissions due to the rate of importation in the US. The final report is due out in Fall 2024, with the goal to release a tool that will allow for the calculation of a CBEI for any state.
Buying refurbished and repairing has measurable climate impacts.
In smartphones, 85-95% of emissions are embodied—meaning by the time you receive the phone the majority of emissions from extracting resources, manufacturing, and transportation have already been emitted. If most Mainers repaired their smartphones to extend their lives by about 1 ½ years, the emissions reductions would be equivalent to removing 222 fossil-fuel powered vehicles from the road for a year. If most recycled their phones, emission reductions would be equivalent to removing 9 fossil-fuel powered vehicles from the road for a year.
In Maine, manufacturing emissions—emissions from the goods we consume—is the largest source of consumption-based emissions and mostly comes from goods that are made out of the state or out of the country—a theme that continues across the other seven states analyzed. If residents were to reuse as many of these manufactured materials as possible, for as long as possible, less manufacturing would be required and overall consumption-based emissions would drop significantly. This is a critical consideration for states and municipalities creating climate action plans.
The consumption-based emissions reduction potential of reuse and repair in comparison to end-of-life management strategies like recycling can be calculated using the US EPA’s Waste Reduction Model. Using this tool, Maine was able to model the emissions savings resulting from reusing (over 25 use cycles) the actual tonnage of metal, glass, and plastic beverage containers that were recycled in Maine in 2022. The results showed significant emissions savings with reuse—equal to removing 363,349 passenger vehicles from the road for a year—over recycling, which equals removing 14,388 vehicles. (For reference, there were 779,428 registered passenger vehicles in Maine in 2023).
It is clear from these presentations that consumption-based emissions from materials are contributing the most to overall GHG emissions. Reuse can play a strong role in reducing these emissions and helping states achieve their reduction targets. To help ensure reuse is incorporated into more climate action plans, Upstream is developing a resource summarizing recommendations, which we hope to publish next year. Stay tuned!