The hidden cost of sustainability initiatives
It was just recently that I came across the term True Cost Accounting (TCA) from a video posted in PBS Food channel in YouTube. The media explains the concept of True cost Accounting in the perspective of sustainable food production. The interesting thing which I noticed here is that the true costs of our actions are mostly hidden from the plain sight, but the impacts it create are huge and many a times irreversible.
As per the Lexicon of Food, TCA is defined as follows
True cost accounting is the process by which the full costs and benefits of different food and farming systems are identified, quantified and made transparent with the aim of ensuring that in future these are fully reflected in the cost of production for farmers, including the prices they receive for their product and the affordability of food for consumers and in relation to their impacts on the environment and public health for society as a whole.
The video and some further back end research got me thinking and this along with couple of other things pushed me to this article.
There is an interesting quote given by Prof. David Suzuki about the state of the world and the impact of climate change aka global warming
“We’re in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyones arguing over where they’re going to sit”
Even though, it took us a while to reach this point a lot of sensible national and international representatives have come to a common ground where, they have agreed up on the fact that climate change and it’s impacts are real and it’s imperative that we all join hands and address this issue at local as well global scale. The Paris agreement which came into force on November 4, 2016 was a by-product of this realization. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) has stated the essential idea of the Paris agreement as follows
The Paris Agreement builds upon the Convention and — for the first time — brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries to do so. As such, it charts a new course in the global climate effort.
Now, the individuals, corporations, international institutions and governments are striving towards finding sustainable and greener solutions for pressing problems. Elon Musk is a forerunner in this field, it would be interesting to share an rather funny and thought provoking quote from him, here.
Lets say theres a bunch of people on a ship and theres bunch of holes in the ship and we’re quite good at bailing water out of our section and we’ve invented this nice bucket. It’ll be foolish of us not to share that bucket design. Because if the ship goes down, we’re going with it
When asked about why his organization decided to open up patents some of the key technologies on The Colbert Report, this was his reply.
His company, Tesla motors is in the forefront of electric vehicle research (and many other things) and they have some amazing products that are (seemingly) environment friendly.
We have amazingly energetic and committed people and very responsible governments. And the goals we have set forth for ourselves seems easily achievable. But, in the perspective of TCA, there are certain issue that bothers me,
- Are we going in the right path?
- Are these solutions really sustainable from TCA perspective?
- What is the exact cost to environment due to the decisions/directives?
- Is there/ Is it necessary to have quantifier to asses this impact and asses true value of the solution in terms of the exact impact to environment?
To really bring about my point, let’s consider the example of solar panel. Roof top solar panel/modules are one of the hot sustainable product these days. There have been some amazing examples where people have gone ‘Off Grid’ and were even in a position to supply/sell responsibly generated power back to the utility companies. Another interesting initiative from the government is that in many of the cases, they support the individual/organization moving towards solar energy initiatives by providing subsidies. In India, we have the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) which support this kind of initiatives.
A basic solar module consist of A roof top panel, an inverter and a charging pod (battery). It will be too geeky if we had to analyse each of this component, to make it simple lets consider the basic roof top panel that sits out and collect the sunlight and convert it to electricity. The work is done by a Photo-Voltaic (PV) cell. The major component of a PV cell is silicon (A semi-metal or metalloid). Silicon is abundant in earth (90% of earth’s crust consists of silicates) in some or other forms. The most basic of which is sand.
It should be noted that, the manufacture of PV cells requires the finest grades of silicon and making the finest grade of silicon is not any easy process. It involves mining, a lot of it, purification and post processing (both uses a good amount of energy and resources). A technology that is employed for mining is called Frac-Sand mining which involves uses of excessive quantity of water. The process is found to have adverse impact on the every living thing that falls in the vicinity of the region. In here, I have only dealt with the refining aspect of silicon that makes the PV cells.
An in detail analysis of the manufacturing (manufacturing facilities in low cost hubs) and transportation practices (cheaper and environmentally expensive maritime transport routes) employed by industry shows that the environmental impact of PV cells and in turn the go solar initiative is massive(reports from IEEE spectrum).
Even though the details I have touched upon are too vague, concrete studies have been performed on each of these areas with an objective to asses the environmental impact. And addressing all those will be two huge for a single article. And moreover, it’s not a problem until you have a solution!
It’s a multi-faced problem and any ideal solution should address all the four points I have raised earlier. In a multi-part series, I will be addressing all of these with the help of specific examples taken from some of our major initiatives towards a greener tomorrow. And, why it is absolutely necessary to quantify this.
It’s not that I’m not optimistic. What pains me the most is the hidden face of things. We miss a lot of even if they are in plain sight. This August (August of 2017), Copenhagen, Denmark will host the first ever UNLEASH Lab event aimed at bringing together people from all over the world to address the humanities pressing challenges, with special focus to sustainable development goals (SDGs). I’ am lucky enough to be a part of the 1000 member group that they have chosen to do the brain storming and idea development. And the idea I want to take to Copenhagen is this!
What is the true cost of sustainability initiatives?
