Europe Is Serious About Dealing with Plastic Waste

Placing Responsibility on Producers for Their Plastic Waste Is Yielding Results

 In the natural world, every bit of waste is a food or input for another creature or process. Contrast that with plastics in our society. Almost all our plastics litter, pollute, and harm creatures and habitats.

 Starting a few years ago, the European Union (EU) launched major efforts to handle the 28 million tons of plastic waste it generates annually. Its approach is to create a circular plastics regime. The EU is already driving investments and innovations toward circular solutions in many sectors of its economy, lessening their carbon footprint and, according to experts, making them increasingly competitive worldwide. A circular economy is one in which products and materials are kept in use along their entire life, from design and manufacture to reuse or recycling — much like with natural systems. Europe’s closed-loop plastics system means every product will be designed and made so that it and its components will be used for as long as possible, repaired or refurbished if broken, and recycled into secondary raw materials multiple times without losing quality.

 Plastics is big business, employing 1.5 million people in Europe and generating $410 billion in 2019. By pushing money and innovation into the design, use, and recyclability of plastic products, the EU was able to set industry-wide targets: All plastic packaging in the EU market must be recyclable by 2030. Starting this year, companies will no longer be allowed to dump plastic waste on poorer countries. The EU has just this year banned the sale of 10 plastic products — those that most commonly litter its beaches and shores, including cutlery, straws, plates and Styrofoam food and beverage containers. By 2030, there will be a total ban on throwaway plastics, a comprehensive reuse system for all other plastics, and a large and potentially lucrative continental market for recycled plastics.

 Perhaps the most powerful aspect of the EU’s plastics strategy is creating producer responsibility. Any company introducing packaging or packaged goods will be responsible for the full cost of the collection, transportation, and recycling of its products. In essence, the polluter pays. Extended producer responsibility is already widespread in Northern and Central Europe. For example, German companies are paying $1.75 billion in fees annually to finance the transport, sorting, and recycling of their plastic waste end-materials. Since January this year, plastic producers in Europe now pay $940 per ton for non-recycled plastic waste. Producer responsibility is leading to the redesign of products with circularity in mind. Already, plastic recycling has soared to three times what it is in the U.S.

 The EU’s strategy for plastics will help it reach its ambitious climate target: cutting greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) 55 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Reducing oil-based plastics production is projected to shave 3.4 million tons of CO2 from their carbon footprint. Imagine the impact on climate change if producer responsibility were applied to GHG emissions.

Energy Upgrades for Existing Homes

Information on how to build an energy efficient home is easy to come by these days—but what if you can’t start from the ground up? What about the 18 million homes that already exist in California? Are those of us living in existing homes relegated to changing light bulbs and adjusting thermostats?

Not at all. Enter the Home Performance contractor. Home Performance is the discipline of applying building science and retrofit techniques to existing buildings, and the results can be dramatic; numerous case studies cite total measured energy used by the home reduced by as much as 70%!

Building science developed in the 1980s along with sophisticated equipment making possible the measurement and study of buildings. By applying these tools and scientific principles, we now know how to transform the energy performance of buildings.

The good news doesn’t stop there. It turns out that many of the same retrofit measures that reduce energy use also improve the quality of indoor air, humidity and moisture levels plus the overall longevity of the structure itself. The benefits are many and varied, from reduced indoor allergies to less frequent dusting to decreased home repair work.

But what goes into an energy upgrade? Since every home is unique, a good Home Performance contractor starts by running tests to understand exactly what is needed for the specific building. With this data, the contractor then recommends the upgrade measures for maximum improvement.

Because most homes are “leaky”—that is, air can pass more or less freely between indoors and out, the first priority is to stop the leaks. Typically, we spend energy (and money) to heat or cool our indoors, but, because of leaks, we end up heating or cooling the outdoors. Home heating and cooling is by far the biggest use of energy in homes, so stopping this energy wastage represents a key first step used by the Home Performance contractor.

Most of us think of windows when we think of building air leaks, but the science shows us that windows are usually not the main culprit. Because warm air rises (the stack effect), most air escapes at the top and bottom of buildings, through the attic and the crawlspace. Consequently, air sealing is one of the most important strategies. With this single measure, both energy use and indoor air quality can be improved.

One caveat, this work should be done by a professional trained in building science and home performance. Tightening a home can have unsafe side effects. For example, if gas appliances are present, there is a danger of trapping noxious, life-threating fumes inside the home. A professional will understand these risks, and will use test equipment to verify that they’ve been avoided.

Natural Cooling Strategies

Since most of us have limited tolerance for hot weather, and since air conditioning consumes a lot of electricity, it is important to first consider natural strategies when seeking ways to cool a building. Architects and builders have largely stopped using these techniques over the past 100 years, but because they utilize simple approaches to cooling, they save both energy and money.

Breezes help moisture evaporate from one’s skin—one of the body’s main methods for cooling off. In fact, many natural cooling techniques boil down to one basic principle: keep air moving. Funneling our afternoon breezes through our buildings (predominately from the Southwest in Santa Barbara) is ideal for cooling. It is possible to optimize the channeling of these breezes through our buildings by carefully choosing the type and location of windows and doors. Casement windows offer maximum ventilation area for a given glass area, while also providing ways to catch and direct airflow.

Openings through opposite exterior walls create maximum air currents, namely cross ventilation. Openings in adjacent walls produce air turbulence, which also enhances cooling. A combination of small low inlets and larger outlets achieves the best and fastest indoor air movement. A size ratio of 1:3 between inlets and outlets increases the speed of air movement by 2 ½ times (the Bernoulli principle).

The effectiveness of ventilation can be further enhanced by pre-cooling the air before it enters the home. Trees can both shade windows and cool the afternoon air currents. Deciduous trees are best, because they shed their leaves in winter to allow the sun and its warmth in. Almost any vegetation between a building and the approaching breezes will cool the air as the plants release water vapor through transpiration. Moisture evaporating from a pond, fountain or supplied by a mister also remove heat from air.

Trellises, building overhangs and awnings are simple yet effective strategies for keeping a building cool by limiting solar gain. Exterior shade screens prevent direct sunlight from striking a window. Awnings block light and heat whereas shade screens allow some light through. Shade screens are lightweight, durable, inexpensive and can block between 50 and 90 percent of the sun’s heat directed toward a window. Most often they are motorized for optimum sun control. Awnings are similarly most effective when motorized.

Another consideration is a building’s color. Dark-colored exteriors absorb 70-90 percent of the sun’s radiant energy, some of which is transferred into the exterior walls resulting in heat gain. In contrast, light-colored surfaces reflect most of the heat away.

Cooling Without Air Conditioning

As we increasingly experience summer weather during winter months, some locals are deciding to add air conditioning to their homes. Air conditioning draws significant electrical power, most of which is generated from fossil fuels, thus exacerbating the warming that this equipment is designed to counter, at least indoors. Even when powered by renewable energy, caution is advisable, since the production of any AC equipment uses a lot of resources.

If not air conditioning, what other options make sense? Adding exterior shading devices over windows that are bathed in the sun’s heat is one possibility. These can be trellises, with or without deciduous vines; canvas awnings that are fixed, manually adjustable or even motorized; fixed eyebrow extensions; vertical louvers or fins for east and west facing windows; or mesh solar shades that slide in vertical tracks on either side of the window which can cut out as much as 80% of the heat.

These exterior shading strategies are more effective at controlling solar gain than interior shading blinds or curtains. Well-designed sun control and shading devices can dramatically reduce building peak heat gain, while also improving visual comfort by controlling glare and reducing contrast ratios.

Another option is to change the glass in south facing windows to high-performance glazing that has a very low shading coefficient (SHGC-solar heat gain coefficient). Such glazing greatly reduces the need for exterior shading elements. To carry out this change, sometimes just the glass panels in old windows can be swapped out. At other times the entire window frame and sash need to be replaced to get optimal performance. This latter approach is expensive but does have advantages beyond just keeping unwanted heat out.

Top performing windows can also attenuate outside noise and keep the place warmer on cold winter days. Putting an operable window in a key location, where perhaps none existed before, can allow residents to open a house to cool early morning air on hot days, thereby implementing an effective natural cooling strategy.

Consider adding insulation to your existing walls and attic. In most cases this is less expensive than installing air conditioning equipment and helps not just to keep the house cool but also quiet and, when desired, warm as well. It definitely saves on heating and cooling bills. There are at least five materials and approaches to insulating existing houses: loose-fill cellulose, dense-packed cellulose, loose-fill fiberglass, dense-packed fiberglass and injection foam. Application skill is important for achieving a complete, high-performance thermal barrier, so getting the help of a professional is advisable.

A final, low-cost cooling option is to install Casablanca ceiling fans in the main rooms of a house. These don’t lower temperatures but they move air, thus making us feel cooler. If a room has a central ceiling light, a combined fan-light fixture can easily replace it.

Consider exploring these options before automatically turning to air conditioning.