Reducing transportation’s carbon footprint is not as easy as replacing internal combustion engine (ICE) cars with electric vehicles (EVs). Producing EVs and disposing their components have environmental and human rights impacts, which also need to be carefully considered and mitigated, Mongabay’s Mike DiGirolamo found in an episode of Mongabay Explores podcast in November.
In this first episode of a podcast series on the circular economy, DiGirolamo talks to Jessika Richter, an associate senior lecturer at Lund University in Sweden who researches circular economy-related policies and technologies.
“With electric vehicles or EVs, we see also particular issues in terms of some of the materials that are used for the batteries or for other parts of the vehicle that are not necessarily used for the ICE vehicles,” Richter tells DiGirolamo.
She adds that the impacts of mining materials to make EV batteries, in particular, are becoming clearer as more research emerges on their supply chain. Lithium, for example, is mined in salt marsh ecosystems of places like Chile, while mining cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been shown to pollute the environment and local communities; Mongabay has reported on both issues.
DiGirolamo says more than half of all transition minerals, or minerals needed for the development of clean energy technologies like EVs, occur on lands governed by Indigenous communities. “Protecting their rights, which are often ignored, is a key concern,” he says.
While in a circular economy it’s ideal to source materials from recycling, there are not a lot of EV batteries entering the recycling process since EVs are only just starting to become popular. Some of the materials also do not have a recycling process in place, Richter says. “We haven’t been recycling lithium around the world. There hasn’t been recycling processes that made sense economically because it’s a cost. And if producers don’t have to pay that cost and recyclers aren’t going to make money off of recycling it, they’re not going to do it.”
Richter adds that in terms of addressing emissions, “It’s not a problem of just cars emitting, but here we have a whole transport system that needs to be rethought.” She suggests that instead of thinking, “I need a car,” people should ask, “What do I need a car for?” since there are other options such as public transport, biking and walking.
She says it’s also important to include externalities in the pricing of vehicles so the environmental and social costs are reflected.
To learn more, listen to the episode “Fixing EVs’ ecological and social problems needs circularity and transport redesign.”
Banner image of an electric vehicle charging by andreas160578 via Pixabay.
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