Sustainable shopping: how to stay green when buying white goods

It pays to think very carefully about your new fridge.
DedMityay/Shutterstock.com

Trivess Moore, RMIT University and Simon Lockrey, RMIT University

Shopping can be confusing at the best of times, and trying to find environmentally friendly options makes it even more difficult. Welcome to our Sustainable Shopping series, in which we ask experts to provide easy eco-friendly guides to purchases big and small. Send us your suggestions for future articles here.

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Most of us have a range of white goods in our homes. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, common appliances include refrigerators (in 99.9% of homes), washing machines (97.8%) and air conditioners (74.0%). Just over half of Australian households have a dishwasher, and a similar number have a clothes dryer.

These white goods provide a host of benefits, such as reducing waste, improving comfort, helping us avoid health hazards such as rotten food, or simply freeing up our time to do other things. But they also have significant environmental impacts, and it’s important to consider these when using and choosing white goods.

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How the sky can help make air conditioners at least 20% more efficient

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Most white goods are used on a daily basis for years. This means the bulk of their environmental impact comes not from their manufacture, but from their everyday use. They use electricity, for example, which is often sourced from fossil fuels.

Life cycle impacts of typical white goods.
MIT

When buying an appliance, many people focus on the retail price, but overlook the often significant operating costs. The table below shows the difference in annual energy costs and greenhouse emissions for different-sized dishwashers under various scenarios.

When it comes to appliances, size matters.
Sustainability Victoria, Author provided

What to look for

Here are some questions you should ask when shopping for a new white goods appliance:

• How resource-efficient is this model, compared with other options?

• How much will it cost to operate?

• Over the life of the product, would I be better off spending more now to buy a more energy-efficient model that costs less to run?

Read the label

White goods in Australia are required to carry a label detailing their energy and water ratings. The more stars a product has, the more energy- or water-efficient it is. The labels also provide information of average consumption across a year so that you can compare similar products, or account for factors such as the size of the appliance.

Knowing how to interpret consumer information can be valuable.
Energyrating.gov.au, Author provided

The Energy Rating website also allows you to make comparisons, and even calculates usage costs and savings for you. As shown in the figure below, choosing a 10-star fridge over a 3-star one will save you an estimated A$664 in running costs over 10 years. This would offset some or all of the extra up-front cost of buying a more sustainable model.

The Australian government’s energy rating website helps you calculate the savings from being energy-efficient.
Energyrating.gov.au, Author provided

Many other organisations and websites also provide performance and user reviews for appliances. Choice is an independent organisation that tests a variety of products, including white goods. The tests scrutinise a range of criteria, including energy- and water-efficiency, ease of use, operating costs, and durability.

Use wisely

Once you get your new appliance home, it is also crucial to use it properly. Make sure you read the manual and find out how to maximise the efficiency of the appliance.

For example, talk to your air conditioner installer to determine the optimal position to cool and heat your space, depending on the aspect and layout of your home. And make sure you leave enough space around the back and side of your fridge for air to circulate, which helps dissipate waste heat more effectively and can save up to 150kg of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

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Make sure you turn the appliance off when not in use – failing to do this can further add to running costs and environmental impact. Ask yourself whether you really need to keep that ancient beer fridge humming away in the garage.

Of course, you don’t have to wait for a new appliance before doing all of these things. You can make your current appliances perform more efficiently by reviewing how you use and position them.

Washing a full load of clothes is more efficient and sustainable than only washing a part load. If you think you need to do smaller washloads generally, then consider buying a smaller washing machine, or find a model that has smart features such as being able to do a half load.

Many appliances such as dishwashers and washing machines also feature “eco” modes that can save significant amounts of water and energy.

Finally, it’s always worth asking yourself whether you truly need to buy that new appliance. Consider having a broken appliance fixed, as this will avoid using all the resources required to manufacture a new one. Or consider buying secondhand.

Even if buying secondhand, you can check the environmental performance of the appliance, either through the energy rating website or via the manufacturer. Make sure you compare this to new options to see which works out better over the life of the product.

And if you do buy yourself a new or secondhand appliance, make sure you look into how to recycle your old appliance, through your local council, charities or other organisations.

Trivess Moore, Research Fellow, RMIT University and Simon Lockrey, Research Fellow, RMIT University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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$60 million to save the Great Barrier Reef is a drop in the ocean, but we have to try

David Suggett, University of Technology Sydney

The Great Barrier Reef has never faced such a dire future. Amid increasingly doom-laden headlines, the federal government this week unveiled a recovery package aimed at securing the reef’s prospects. The question is whether this is indeed a rescue, or just a smokescreen of false hope.

The A$60 million package will be split between various projects:

• A$36.6 million will be spent on reducing the runoff of land-based agricultural fertilisers and pesticides onto the reef

• A$10.4 million will go towards an “all-out assault” on the coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish

• A$4.9 million will fund improved monitoring and early warning of issues such as mass bleaching

• A$6 million will be spent on a new national Reef Restoration and Adaptation program.

But what return can we expect for this A$60 million investment, which is only 0.1% of the A$56 billion estimated economic value of the Great Barrier Reef?

Value for money

At face value, splitting the funding across several priority areas seems logical. Many local stressors, from pollution to overfishing, affect the Great Barrier Reef in different ways and in different places, so tackling them locally seems like a nice direct way to intervene.

But here’s the problem: these stressors interact and amplify each others’ effects. This means that spreading the money so thinly is a risky move, because successfully tackling any one problem rests on successfully tackling all the others.

Crown-of-thorns starfish is a great example. Even if we can remove or destroy them in sufficient numbers to make a difference, their populations will simply bounce back unless we also reduce the agricultural pollution that feeds their larvae. Alongside this, we need to ensure that their natural predators such as the giant triton mollusc also thrive.

Local impacts on the Great Barrier Reef are also amplified by global climate factors, such as the warming and increased ocean acidity caused by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

Focusing purely on local issues risks diverting attention from this wider problem. The unprecedented back-to-back mass bleaching that catastrophically damaged the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017 was a direct result of global climate change.

Preventing this from accelerating further requires global and collective
action on greenhouse gas emission reductions. As custodian of the Great Barrier Reef, as well as a major coal exporter and a signatory to the Paris Climate Agreement, Australia has a responsibility to lead from the front to find alternatives to fossil fuels.

For this reason, the new funding package has unsurprisingly been criticised for not attempting to “cure” the ultimate problem that ails the Great Barrier Reef. Local interventions such as the ones being funded are often called out for being band-aid solutions. But the reality is that we need band-aids more than ever – although perhaps “tourniquets” would be more apt.

Cutting emissions and curbing climate change must remain our absolute priority.
However, even relatively optimistic emissions reduction scenarios will leave us
with warmer and acidic reefs for the coming decades. This means we will have to think well outside the box if we are to ensure that the Barrier Reef stays great. We cannot deny treatment while we attempt to find the cure.

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Read more:
The Great Barrier Reef can repair itself, with a little help from science

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The problem is that most current local reef interventions are considered too risky or too expensive, and are therefore dismissed without trying them. But unless we try alternatives, and are prepared to learn by trial and error, how can we find the solutions that work? What the government’s new package ultimately therefore provides is the incentive to innovate.

In this sense it follows parallel calls from the Queensland government to find new ways to boost coral abundance. As such, the federal funding may only be successful if we ensure that the proposed investment focuses on tackling the priority areas in new ways, rather than simply scaling up the current efforts.

As the stress builds on the Great Barrier Reef, one thing is certain: its future will depend on maximising its resilience. This necessarily calls for a range of efforts, focusing on biology, ecosystems, and changing human behaviour – not just defaulting to a single solution. Intensifying efforts to harness corals that are already adapted to extreme conditions will likely be crucial.

And of course, all of this will count for nothing unless we also take parallel action to tackle the underlying problem: climate change.

David Suggett, Associate Professor in Marine Biology, University of Technology Sydney

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.