📣 The context
All previous reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) painted a grim picture of the threats of global warming, however without ever quoting the word "reuse" or even “packaging” or “circular economy”. Indeed, none mention packaging management as one of the important levers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as MRW reports in a recent article.
❓ So, what is the IPCC?
The IPCC reports on contemporary scientific knowledge on global warming issues. The latest in the series - “Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” - was published on April 4th, 2022.
❓ What does this new report say?
In this report, the IPCC examined levers for action to address climate change. And great news - reuse is mentioned several times as a concrete solution to mitigate the effect of climate change! It is a real victory for all those who have been committed to developing reuse models for many years to see this solution highlighted many times in such a fundamental report - “reuse” appearing 61 times exactly in the full report version.
➰ How is reuse explored in the report?
The 38th mention of the word “REUSE” in the full report (p.1871) is essential as it places reuse among the solutions for acquiring “material efficiency” (ME) —the delivery of goods and services with less materials — “increasingly seen as an important strategy for reducing GHG emissions in industry”.
The IPCC also points to the fact recycling has been wrongly favored over reuse in recent years : “ The lack of policies for higher retention of material use such as Reduce, Reuse, repair, remanufacture is due to institutional failures, lack of coordination and lack of strong advocates ”.(p.1942 of the Full Report)
Let’s hope this report will be efficient enough to drive transformative change among policymakers, to strive towards truly circular models of consumption.