Cap on Annual Material Use

Discussion

Jason Hickel:

"There are a number of policies that would help to achieve reductions in material throughput in line with the LED scenario. One would be to legislate extended warranties on products, so that goods like washing machines and refrigerators last for 30 years instead of ten. Another is to ban planned obs olescence, and to introduce a “right to repair” so that products can be fixed cheaply and without proprietary parts. We could legislate reductions in food waste (as South Korea, France and Italy are doing), tax red meat to promote a shift to less resource-intensive foods, ban single-use plastics and disposable coffee cups, and end advertising in public spaces to reduce pressures for material consumption. Ultimately, however, to accomplish significant and sustained reductions will likely require imposing a Cap on Annual Material Use and tightening it year by year until it reaches what ecologists identify as sustainable levels (50billion tons per year on a global scale, or 6-8 tons per capita." (https://www.academia.edu/38601467/Degrowth_A_theory_of_radical_abundance?email_work_card=title)