David Allaway Obsessing about the potential environmental impacts of every single product you might buy? David Allaway, a senior policy analyst at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, wants you to stop that.
"We could drive ourselves crazy" trying to think through all the possibilities, Allaway told an audience of about 50 Metro employees, community members and government partners during his Wednesday presentation at the Metro Regional Center.
Instead, Allaway suggested, individuals can make a bigger difference by focusing on their housing, how they get around, what they eat and how much energy their products – appliances, for example – consume.
But what about the impacts of other products? After all, use of materials is only increasing and accounts for the largest percentage of consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions in the state, according to a new Oregon DEQ report.
"If we want to reduce the environmental impacts of products," Allaway said, "we have to know the environmental impacts of products." And using life-cycle analysis rather than relying on a product’s attributes may hold the key.
Local, recyclable, compostable, biodegradable, made from plants – all characteristics that point to attributes rather than impacts, Allaway said. A product’s contribution to air pollution, however, is an example of its impact.
As consumers, "we want to reduce impacts but don’t know what they are, so we fall back on attributes," Allaway said. "We hope and cross our fingers that if we buy products with [good] attributes, we’ll reduce impacts." Yet, Allaway said, the two don’t consistently correlate.
Enter life-cycle analysis, or the science of estimating a product’s environmental impact throughout its duration. Quick? No. Cheap? Not necessarily. Universally embraced? Not yet. But it’s gaining steam, Allaway said, and can provide a comprehensive look at impacts and ways to reduce them.
"DEQ has used life-cycle analysis," Allaway later shared in an email, "to help producers and consumers better understand opportunities to reduce environmental impacts associated with e-commerce packaging, drinking-water delivery, waste prevention in residential housing and the carbon footprint of all consumption in Oregon."
Back to individual consumer choices. Like not sweating the small stuff, Allaway said, and instead acting on research that singles out housing, mobility, food and energy-consuming products as opportunities for big-impact savings.
In addition, for institutional purchasers and procurement staff, research by the Environmental Protection Agency points to cotton, apparel, industrial chemicals, vehicles, meat and housing as materials with larger environmental impacts.
Allaway, a Portland native who earned a 2009 National Notable Achievement Award from the EPA for his work to reduce the greenhouse gas impacts of materials and waste, coordinates Oregon DEQ’s waste prevention strategies. He has worked at DEQ for more than 11 years.