Resources — How to be sustainable?

This week’s seminar, workshop, and study visit relates to resources. It is the final block of the five-part block course. Cambridge English Dictionary defines a resource as ‘a useful or valuable possession or quality of a country, organization, or person’. Resources are vital for success and sustainability of mankind. Resources can be subdivided into those that can be renewed and those that cannot be. Hydropower, wind energy, etc. are examples of renewable resources; whereas, coal, oil are examples of non-renewable resources. Wars have been waged for resources, especially, non-renewables one, and are poised to be waged in the future as well. For example, the Gulf War of the early 90s were largely due to disputes between Iraq and Kuwait regarding oil.

For the workshop, the team listed the activities that can be performed by students in Chalmers campus. After listing the activities, we identified materials needed to support a particular activity. Furthermore, we categorized the materials by their average lifespan to understand what kind of materials last for a long time and those that don’t.

Ongoing Activities at Campus

Walking around the area of campus Johanneberg one quickly realises that it is an active area bustling with people, especially daytime. The space is shared among many different user groups, mainly students, employees and residents of the area. Aiming at identifying activities performed at campus Johanneberg, we used these different user groups as our point of departure. In Fig. 1, our main findings of activities within the area is presented.

Fig. 1. Activities performed at Campus Johanneberg

Identifying Products Needed When Borrowing a Book at the Library

Among the activities found at campus, borrowing books at the Chalmers library is one. Aiming at understanding this activity further, we mapped down the sub-activities performed when borrowing a book, as visualized in Fig. 2.

Firstly, borrowing a book at Chalmers Library the user needs to reserve a book. In order to do so, the user need to use a computer or a phone but also have access to a email address and a internet connection. Secondly, the user needs to pay a visit to the library. During the transportation products that can be used are for example a bike, public transport or shoes. Thirdly, arriving at the library building the user needs to locate the book, marked with a name tag, on a certain shelf. Having found the book, the book needs to be borrowed. This is done through using a library card and the scanning machine, upon which a receipt is received. Finally, the user has accessed the book and can start to read. To do so, the user may need its glasses and a reading lamp. If the book is truly interesting, perhaps a notebook and a pen is required. Lastly, when finished with the book or when the time is up, the student returns the book to the library.

Fig. 2. Sub-activities performed when borrowing a book and the products needed.

Lifespan of Physical Products

Taking a closer look at the physical products used when borrowing a book, it is interesting studying their lifespan. In Fig. 3 the products are categorized according to how long lifespan we estimate them to have.

Deciding upon the lifespan of a product appears to be quite challenging. Firstly, different products are used differently by different persons. For example, one person can lose a pen after one use while other persons can keep the pen for several years. Similarly, different products can be used in different ways throughout their lifespan. For example, a notebook may only be used for a short time until it is fully written, then it can no longer be used as a blank page. Though, the notebook can still be kept for many years to come due to the information kept in the notebook. As for example, a notebook with recipes can be passed on to following generations.

Fig. 3. Lifespan of the physical products used when borrowing a book at the Chalmers Library

Possibilities for Efficient Use of Resources

So far, the paper products have been analysed according to their current lifespan. Though, using circular economy strategies, as described by Ellen Macarthur Foundation (2015), their lifespans can be prolonged, and the resource efficiency increased. Utilizing the ReSOLVE framework (Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 2015) we identified three action areas of how paper products could be moved towards a more circular economy, loop, share and virtualise, as visualised in Fig. 4.

Loop
One strategy described by the ReSOLVE framework is moving towards a more circular economy through looping materials, products or components. For example, this could be done through recycle the materials. We believe that all paper products studied could potentially be recycled, though, we believe this method to be especially convenient for the receipt and the name tag. These items are seldom kept by the user but rather immediately tossed away. Thus, they could be gathered for recycling already at the scanning machine.

Share
Another strategy described in the framework is sharing. This could, for example, be to share products, reusing products or prolonging a products lifespan through second hand. As of today, a library already builds upon sharing as its books is shared between all the library visitors. A possible way of even further prolong the lifespans of the books at the library could be for the library to sell or give away the books when they are no longer wanted at the library.

Virtualise
A third strategy described in the framework is virtualizing. This could be done directly, as when dematerializing a book into an e-book, or indirectly, when dematerializing a physical store into a online shop. Studying the paper products virtualizing appears to be applicable to many of the products. The books borrowed at the library could be e-books, the notebook could be a notebook app and the recipe could be sent through an email. Through virtualizing, the use of paper seems to be possible to decrees a lot.

Further analysing the example of virtualizing a book into an e-book, a potential challenge appeared. A e-book in itself does minimize the use of paper. Though, several of the students borrowing the e-book may print out pages of the book. If a large enough number of students prints out pages, the resource of paper may rather increase than decrees. To learn if the resource of paper is increased or decreased of course needs more investigation to decide upon. Though, we believe this to be just one example of how aiming for a efficient use of resources can have effects that end up decreasing another resource.

Fig. 4. Possibilities for efficient use of paper products through looping, sharing and virtualizing.

During the workshop one very interesting aspect was brought up of a possibility of efficient use of resources — to simply stop performing the activity or using a certain product. This may be a very effective way of reducing resources in some situations and products. For example, it would be possible for a visitor to the library to simply stop reading for fun, to save the resources of the products involved. Though, as a lot of information for school as well is retrieved from the library, to stop reading books may not be the best solution.

Measuring the use of resources for borrowing a book from the library

There’s a lot of different data and parameters that could be measured when borrowing a book from the library. First step is to figure out the lifecycle of a book at the library.

Lifecycle of a book at the library

• The manufacturing of a book could be measured by identifying what materials it contains and how it is produced. For example there are probably a lot of paper, water and electricity consumed when manufacture a book.
• The transportation from the factory to the library will probably consist of a traffic pollution that could be measured.
• The transportation of the book while borrowed could be interesting to measure, plus that you can measure how many readers that read every unique book. When measuring the amount of readers, the readers could be divided to the manufacturing of each book to distribute the emissions of one unique book.

It could also be interesting to measure and compare books to eBooks. Since the eBook only needs to be created once, it will be more resource efficient itself, but you should also remember the emissions manufacturing and usage of the device you use for reading that eBook. The usage of device could be compared to the emissions of lightbulbs.

Sharing community

The sharing community and circular economy are already rapidly increasing, we think that this is perfect for students to have a more resource efficient living. Since the student life is temporary with a limited period of a few years and that students have low income, the sharing of equipment and resources is a handy way to get more out of the money plus that the use of different products would increase. Some examples of more resource efficient activities could be fairs of different kinds. Example of fairs could be bookfairs, household utensils fairs and sports gear fairs.

References

Ellen Macarthur Foundation (2015). Delivering the Circular Economy: a Toolkit for Policymakers. Retrieved 2020–10–15 from https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/assets/downloads/publications/EllenMacArthurFoundation_PolicymakerToolkit.pdf