One thing’s for sure, circular economies can and often contribute astronomically to reducing Carbon emissions.
A 2016 Deloitte publication asserts that circular economies help cut down on Green House gas emissions by reducing energy expenditure. By placing a greater emphasis on high-quality raw materials, products maintain in use longer resulting in the elimination of the need to extract new raw materials.
As an added bonus, the number of processing and manufacturing steps is reduced translating the steps to energy savings for everyone. Want to ensure you are doing your part to reduce CO2 and maintaining a circular economy?
Here are some examples of what you can do:
Find Substitutes for Carbon-Intensive Materials
In a bid to incentivize energy efficiency, climate policies help to focus on cutting down CO2 emissions. While this method may work to lessen emissions, it fails at addressing the question of finding safer alternatives.
Low-carbon alternatives are future-proofing and innovative approaches that maintain circular economies.
A sustainability report in 2016 from Shell found that biofuels, energy-efficient transport vehicles, and upcoming solar and wind technologies are just a few examples of lower-carbon alternatives that are available today for utilization.
If you have the ability to buy an energy-efficient vehicle or add solar or wind energy to your home, these would be great ways to contribute to reducing CO2 emissions.
Consume and Discard Responsibly
Maintaining a circular economy demands we do things differently and change our standard routines.
Greenhouse gas emissions can be largely cut back with resource efficiency and an emphasis placed on circular business models.
However, by adopting principles such as re-using, recycling, and re-manufacturing we can each make a difference.
Research has shown that sneakers generate a large emission of greenhouse gases with as much as 30 lbs. This means, when you’re done with your sneakers you should send them to a company like GotSneakers that will clean up, repair, and repurpose your old footwear when possible and recycle the used footwear when upcycling isn’t possible.
In this way you are directly contributing to the circular economy, allowing your unwanted footwear to be used by someone else or turned into a new product.
Reduce Your Carbon Footprint.
Your carbon footprint refers to the total volume of CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels as a result of your daily activities. To get a sense of your Carbon Footprint, you need to establish the following:
- How many miles do you travel by car, bus, or plane?
- How is your domestic energy consumption?
- How much do you shop? How far do those products travel to get to you?
- What is your diet primarily composed of?
If you want to easily calculate your Carbon Footprint you can use this free calculator from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Once you see the biggest contributors to your Carbon Footprint you can think about changes you can make to reduce it.
Partner with GotSneakers to Contribute to the Circular Economy
Here at GotSneakers we love partnering with individuals, organizations, and retail partners to help create a circular economy for footwear. You can ship us your unwanted sneakers and we’ll clean them up and redistribute them when possible. If your old footwear is too used, we’ll make sure the materials get recycled into new products!
You can learn how to get started here (it’s free)!