Fixing EVs’ ecological and social problems needs circularity and transport redesign

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Mike DiGirolamo (narration): Electric vehicles can solve a very specific problem, namely the emissions created when you drive. They are a big topic in conversation these days. However, as my guest today will clearly outline, any conversation about solving the emissions that come from cars, that only talk about cars, is one that is too narrow.

Jessika Richter: It’s not a problem of just cars emitting, but here we have a whole transport system that needs to be rethought and mobility needs that we need to think of as users.

Mike (narration): I’m Mike DiGirolamo. This is Mongabay Explores, a podcast series diving deep into some of the biggest environmental issues of our time and the people working to solve them. You’re listening to the first episode of our fifth season, Mongabay Explores the Circular Economy. This podcast is recorded and edited on Gadigal land. Ironically, technological solutions to human made problems often create a bunch of other problems to solve as well. It’s not convenient, but it doesn’t make it any less true. For every material that we extract from the environment, there is also a cost.

Jessika: We have multiple crises and we’re saying we want technology to be part of that. We need these materials to be part of that. We need to look at all the places where these materials are. However, I think we really do need to take into account these environmental costs, seriously.

Mike (narration): This is also the case with EVs, or electric vehicles, as environmental and social impacts from mining the minerals used to make their batteries can negatively impact ecosystems and the rights, health, and well-being of local communities where this mining occurs, which is often in less wealthy, less industrialized nations. More than half of all transition minerals, for example, occur on the lands of Indigenous communities. Protecting their rights, which are often ignored, is a key concern. Electric vehicles use minerals obtained from these locations and enter a complex supply chain, where my guest today says many improvements are necessary to achieve circularity of these materials. We do need electric vehicles, experts say, but we may not need as many as you think.

Jessika: I am Jessika Richter. I am an associate senior lecturer at Lund University, and I research around circular economy, particularly policies, but also policies related to renewable energy like PV panels, electric vehicles, also windmills, and then energy efficient technology like light bulbs even.

Mike (narration): In this conversation, Richter outlines a few critical solutions to improving the circularity of electric vehicles. This includes policy changes, scaling up public transportation, improving recycling, and reducing the size and the use of cars in general and increasing the walkability and the ease of use in urban centers, which in many cities across the globe have been gutted to accommodate cars. Above all, Richter stresses asking ourselves, when it comes to transportation, what is the need we are trying to solve, and does it actually require a car in the first place?

Mike: Hi Jessika, thank you for joining us to discuss EVs on the show today. How are you doing?

Jessika: I’m doing well, thank you. Thanks for having me on the show.

Mike: So, today we’re going to talk about EVs and their life cycle, and how to offset their impacts and improve their circularity. But before we get to those improvements and the solutions. Let’s talk about the benefits first. So, what are we seeing from EVs in a nutshell? What is the good news here?

Jessika: In a nutshell, I think the promise of EVs is the low carbon and low emissions (no emissions) during the use phase. So, in terms of climate impacts, substantial less climate impacts when we look at the life cycle of vehicles, often it is the use phase, the actual driving of the vehicle where we see the emissions and the climate impacts

Mike (narration): As reported on by Sean Mowbray, the International Council on Clean Transportation’s research says that EVs have lower carbon emissions than ICE vehicles, internal combustion engines, that are 66 to 69 percent lower in Europe, 60 to 68 percent lower in the U. S., 37 to 45 percent lower in China, and 19 to 34 percent lower in India.

Jessika: So, EVs are very promising from that point of view that there’s no emissions. That said, I didn’t say no emissions at all in the life cycle because we, if we look about entire life cycle, there are emissions at other points in the life cycle. So it isn’t there’s no emissions at all associated with EVs, but there are no emissions in the use space and using EVs, which is really important because that has been a big impact from the use of vehicles.

Mike: And you started to allude to some of those issues. So, what are we looking at in terms of the negative impacts? Cause on one hand we’re solving, the driving phase, right? But what are the issues that are coming up in the entire life cycle? What are those problems?

Jessika: Yeah. So, there are some issues that we can say are issues for cars in general. Like you don’t need to make a car, produce a car or vehicle. And there are materials that go into that and energy that goes into it. It matters where these vehicles are produced as to what energy makes is used in that production. 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. So sometimes we see, we might be talking about the materials in electronics, we see electronics in ICE vehicles now too, so that’s actually ongoing, like increasing impact for both types of vehicles. With EVs, what we see in particular are the batteries. So, it is the materials going into the batteries and where those materials need to be mined, how they’re processed, that then become another impact in that life cycle.

Mike: Right. Can you talk about some of those impacts in mining for those batteries?

Jessika: Yeah, so, some of the impacts from the mining are becoming more clear as we see more research, on the supply chain of, for example, lithium, where we know that a lot of the lithium might come from places like Chile, where it is mined in the salt marsh ecosystems there. And then we have quite a lot of impact on those ecosystems. We also have some hard rock mining around the world as well, but whenever I talk about mining, there’s an impact to it. We also have cobalt. In batteries and that’s associated with the DRC. And there we have also conflict, child labor, forced labor associated with the mining of cobalt.

Mike (narration): If you want to hear more about the impacts in the DRC from mineral mining, listen to our last season on Mongabay Explores, Episode 4. And also the episode published just before this one. You can also learn about many issues Indigenous communities face from mining projects by listening to the Mongabay Newscast episode, Energy transition minerals questions, consent, and costs are key. Published April 23rd.

Jessika: So, it can be particular materials in particular places. And when you have such a demand for these materials, as we see with rising demand for these batteries, and these batteries and EVs, it is hard for suppliers and those producers to source from other places. They need those materials, so they will source them, even if it means that they might be sourcing it from a conflict area or a place that might have problems with the ecosystem management because of that demand in the mining there.

Mike: And those problems are significant—some of them we’ve covered on previous episodes of Mongabay Explores—but tackling them is another issue. So, what is the high-level plan then to clean up the supply chain for EV batteries?

Jessika: In the longer term, the plan is a circular economy for these materials and that we would be sourcing them from recycling processes, but at the moment this is slow. In one case, we only have a small amount of these batteries actually out there when we think of EVs, there’s a lot of them being sold now, but they’re not going to become waste for many years now, so they’re not going into the recycling processes now, so that actual recycled materials right now is a very small amount available. For some of these materials there hasn’t been a recycling process in place. For when I talked about lithium, 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. What we see now coming in is legislation forcing basically the recycling by putting targets. On recycling of lithium, cobalt and nickel at the EU level.

Mike (narration): On August 17th, 2023, the European Commission published an article outlining a new law taking effect with due diligence obligations, requiring companies to quote, Identify, prevent and address social and environmental risks linked to the sourcing, processing and trading of raw materials such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and natural graphite contained in their batteries.

Jessika: We also see that with driving demand and less supply, that that also is pushing, can push prices up, which can make recycling more economically viable on its own as well. So we have a few drivers coming in to make that possible. But it’s a little slower. So in the meantime, the other thing that we see happening is more reporting, required on where materials are coming from and requiring producers to think through their supply chains past the first tier, just the components coming to them, but trying to go back through, are there materials coming from conflict areas? Are there materials considered? Also critical raw materials, according to critical raw materials lists that we have lists, almost all the major producing countries now or regions, the EU, the US, China have lists of critical raw materials now that they’re basically asking producers to report on what kinds of materials are in their products and to start thinking about those supply chains a bit more from a security issue as well.

Mike: It’s really interesting to hear you say that legislation is an effective tool to help with the financial feasibility of recycling because something I’ve heard is that one of the main hurdles to recycling is the cost of it. So, what I hear you saying is that actually legislation can solve that, correct?

Jessika: Correct. So, I mean, legislation has been used this way in the past too, where sometimes we have what in economics we would call externalities that are not priced and some of the things that are happening in the supply chains, then we also have this recycling, which would have a positive impact that also needs to be reflected or paid for in some way. One key legislation that we’ve had for quite a long time in the EU is extended producer responsibility, which basically requires producers to collect and recycle products at the end of life. And we see that with the new battery regulation, but that’s now in place for batteries as well.

Mike (narration): Extended producer responsibilities are also being discussed as part of potential solutions to plastic waste. However, the global plastics treaty is still in negotiations. And it’s unclear whether it would include these. So obviously there’s materials, like you just mentioned earlier, there’s materials that go into both ICE vehicles and EVs, steel and aluminum, right? So would solving some of these supply chain problems have benefits for other products, other cars, for example.

Jessika: Well, for some of the materials, we actually, what we could say is we actually have quite a good circular economy for materials like aluminum or aluminum steel. We’re very good at recycling those and have been for years out of cars. So, when, in one case, we don’t have that much of a problem there in terms of having the recycling capacity and being able to already use recycled materials, if producers are driven to use recycled materials. The other thing we have going on at the same time is we have a lot more demand for materials overall. Like we’re growing economies, we’re growing demand for economies, we’re growing markets for cars even still. So that that demand for materials and we’re, we’re having bigger cars that are using more of these materials, which means even when we solve this problem of having recycled materials, which we can for steel and aluminum, we still have this demand for these new materials to be mined because we’re still growing the overall market if we will. So, we still have some issues overall with vehicles. And when we talk about replacing vehicles one to one and not dealing with this issue of also escalation of what is a vehicle, a normal vehicle now for people’s needs. Then we, we still have this problem actually with materials. We haven’t necessarily solved them. We can make a loop, but if that loop returning is always smaller than the loop drawing, then we’re not closing the loop entirely.

Mike: So, you mentioned previously in conversations with us that you don’t actually recommend a one-to-one switch from ICE to EV, at least not in the immediate term until these issues are sorted out. But you just mentioned a lot of complexity there. So, can you elaborate more, especially for people who may be concerned that we’re running out of time to solve the climate crisis, as it were?

Jessika: Yeah, I think part of it gets to the heart of maybe what the idea is around how we solve multiple crises, we can say, happening here, and as you alluded to, complexity. And I think here, we need to not think that there’s going to be one technology or even only a technological solution to these problems. And I think that’s in one way what EVs sometimes represents of “okay, we have a technology here that can solve this problem that we have with vehicles. Okay, we just swap it out and we’ve solved it with technology.” Our problem here is it’s not just cars, right? And not just the use phase as we’ve talked about with the life cycle. It’s the total impact of the cars and the increasing impact of vehicles. So here we have a, depending on how we frame the problem, we have different solutions for it. If it’s only about a use phase of vehicles, sure, EVs can be an answer to that. But this is not our only problem. We also have a crisis in how much materials we’re using and that we have this impact not only occurring in the driving, but also in the production. And if we’re continue to need to produce so much, then we’re really only swapping or shifting some problems between climate impacts and material impacts and biodiversity impacts and conflict in the supply chain and the different social impacts that happen there through the need for more mining, but still cheaper materials, to keep that price down as well. So here, I think we need to be looking at this more holistically of again, what are we trying to do and what do we need from our vehicles? What problem do we have? And it’s not a problem of just cars emitting, but here we have a whole transport system that needs to be rethought and mobility needs that we need to think of as users. And instead of thinking, “I need a car,” think of “what do I need a car for?” And can I solve that problem differently?

Mike: So, the next part here is that you mentioned that cars are getting bigger. I’m sure people who are on the internet have seen those images where there’s like a gigantic SUV that like basically goes up to the top of someone’s head who is either 5’10 or 5’7 or what have you. Cars are getting bigger. So, what are your thoughts on that? Isn’t part of the solution reducing the size of the vehicles that we have, that we produce?

Jessika: I mean, part of it can be reducing the size. It’s again, going back to this key question of what is the need, the mobility need here. And I do hear sometimes when I’m talking about SUVs and how cars have gotten bigger, some people tell me, “I need it for my knees, you know, are bad, and to fit in the car.” We need to go back to exactly what do we need? Are there different ways we can solve this? Again, public transport, biking, walking need to be part of the discussion when we’re talking about transport. It can’t be just about cars and any conversation that is just about cars or vehicles is too narrow at solving a problem because it’s only going to be shifting things. It’s also too narrow in satisfying people’s needs as well. There are other ways that we can be thinking about how we accommodate people who might need certain types of vehicles for their, it could be disabilities, it could be their own needs, but again, thinking about these things and what could be best in solving them.

Mike: I had a conversation with someone a while back, and it turns out he was a retired auto parts manufacturer. And I asked his opinion on EVs, and he said something to the effect of, “I think they’re great, but really, we just need less cars in the road. I think we need more public transportation.” And that was like his opinion on it. I wasn’t expecting to hear a retired auto parts manufacturer say, “less cars.” So that was kind of interesting to hear come from him.

Jessika: Yeah. And I think the other perspective when we think of it is, it does come with an opportunity cost that we devote so much of our space and urban centers to cars that we’re using them. We need parking lots, we need roads. And what are we not using this space for that we could be using it for?

Mike (narration): According to reporting from Vox, downtown urban areas in the United States give 50 to 60 percent of their space to just cars. In Paris, France, this has historically been the case as well, yet these cars accounted for only 10 percent of all trips within the city. However, in recent years, Paris, under the leadership of Mayor Anne Hidalgo, has been removing car lanes and installing bike lanes and other pedestrian friendly infrastructure at an impressive rate, which has been responsible for a long list of benefits for the city. Car crashes are 30 percent lower, and car use is down by 45 percent since 1990, while public transportation usage is up 30 percent. Air quality, unsurprisingly, has also improved. But further to Jessika’s point, many times, what is done with a car can actually be done better by other means. One study in London found cargo bikes make deliveries 60 percent faster than vans. Substituting car traffic isn’t impractical in the United States either. A study from the Department of Transportation in the US in 2021 found that 52 percent of all trips for all modes of transportation was less than three miles. Certainly, much of that could be substituted.

Jessika: So, another thing that we talk a lot about in Europe is also active transport because it comes with co-benefits here. If you’re able to make cycling infrastructure and walking safer and more convenient and something that people want to do and find pleasant. They’re also getting the exercise in and there’s just co-benefits with it. But again, nobody wants to really walk in unsafe places or bike in unsafe places, or if it’s so much less convenient. So, it is part of rethinking the system and rethinking about what actually is good for us. As well, because it isn’t always being in a car, even though it might seem like it’s the best thing for us, it might actually not be the best thing for our health and well-being. Same thing with public transport, it may be better to be with other people more as well. So, I think sometimes we have counterintuitive instincts that aren’t necessarily good for our well-being as human beings, too.

Mike: Yeah, I personally find the act of driving to be highly unpleasant, always have. And so, I seek out public transportation whenever I can. Obviously, this is going to be a greater challenge for some people than others, like in many parts of the US where there just isn’t sufficient or any really public transportation options. So, the scale and speed at which this needs to happen feels pretty overwhelming. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Jessika: Yeah. So, I’m originally from the U.S. as well, so I know exactly what you’re talking about. Even in California, it’s a very, you know, pro-environmental, cities there. And still, the infrastructure is lacking for a lot of the public transport, walkability, and cycling.

Mike (narration): As a former resident of California myself, I can attest, public transportation is not the greatest in the state. San Francisco takes the crown, though, at only 33. 1 percent of the population using public transit.

Jessika: That said, I think it’s, it’s something that we need to also think that we need to think that it was possible to make this infrastructure the way it is now. It also needs to be possible to change it. And it may be slow there, but also putting in some of the infrastructure for alternatives at this point, planning ahead, also thinking if there’s some smarter ways even with the vehicles themselves. So, another thing we can be thinking about with vehicles is how many need to be privately owned by each household and how many could also be shared more as well. So different kinds of setups with the individual vehicles as well could be part of making it a bit more flexible while still acknowledging that there is that until that alternative comes, there’s a lack of alternative infrastructure, but still using maybe the cars in a smarter way too.

Mike: So, another aspect of this equation is I believe there’s An estimated 1. 4 billion cars on the roads worldwide currently, vast majority of them not EVs. Rather than, say, consumers buying, a brand-new EV, is there the possibility for retrofitting ICE vehicles to be EVs? I’m not saying this would be like a blanket solution, of course, but it seems like there would be some opportunity there.

Jessika: Yeah, this I know a little less about the actual technical, requirements of refitting. One question that I do get asked all the time is by people saying, “well, I have an old vehicle, or I could maybe buy a new EV, but it’s quite expensive. What should I do? What is ultimately better for the environment? Do I use my older car longer or should I really get an EV?” And here I also ask them “is there a possibility for them to drive less as well and to change their driving if they have an older car? It might make sense to just change the behavior rather than change the technology.” Again, going back to one of the issues we talked about here, it’s going to take a bit of both. So, we can also say that with retrofitting, if it is possible, then yes, that should be a good solution towards it. But also, we need to look at, is there a way to change how much we’re driving in our mobility patterns as well? And can we start shifting that and where we can as we work with the vehicles we have already and thinking about how we make those a little better when we think about retrofitting them from an overall life cycle point of view that would be good from the use stage again, but then we’re adding a battery as well. So, we’re also adding in that extra impact from the battery in production. I think once we do switch things out and we’re using a battery, we do want to use them as long as possible to then basically take that impact from the production and spread it out as much as possible over the years so that we get as much use out of it while the use stage then of using that EV car has low emissions and low impact we can keep going. That said, that doesn’t mean “because I have an EV, I should just drive more because it has no impact.” This is the other thing that we see is we can have a rebound effect, where some people buy the more efficient technology and then, as here in Scandinavia, sometimes we have, not recently, but sometimes we have low electricity prices and then it can be quite inexpensive. Once you’ve paid that upfront cost for an EV, it’s quite inexpensive to actually operate it. And we see some incentives from the local municipalities to try to have people switch to EVs where we have even free charging sometimes. So it can be very seductive then to drive more. When you do switch to EVs, and this also we want to avoid, is that we want to think about this behavior change as well and not just then driving more, using more electricity, again, more resources in a way, because that electricity, even when it’s clean, is still requiring some production to it, and that could be used for something else, so we need to really think, how much do we need to use for mobility, and what could we use this energy, these materials for instead, and do we need to use all of them in the first place?

Mike: Yeah, I think that’s a really, really important question. You did mention earlier that lithium is a key ingredient in a lot of batteries. But what about materials that aren’t lithium? Because right now communities from Portugal to Serbia and Sweden and nations around the world are mining lithium and there’s these proposals that are threatening communities. So, are there other battery metals that we could use instead that are less damaging to mine and refine?

Jessika: I know less about the technical composition of batteries, let’s say, of exactly what is substitutable. At this point, I don’t see too many battery technologies that aren’t including some type of lithium. And usually when you’re switching them out, like we saw, Tesla talking about not having cobalt, for instance, but then they’re going to need more nickel instead.

Mike (narration): Alternatives do exist, such as sodium in sodium ion batteries, which is far more plentiful in the environment, but the batteries it makes are less energy dense and have a shorter lifespan than lithium. And while the water usage for sodium extraction is far less than it is for lithium, extracting sodium is not without its environmental costs either.

Jessika: And again, mining itself is not without impacts regardless of what type of mining it is. So, it still goes back to this, that there is going to need to be some kind of mining, and that this is going to need to take place somewhere if we’re going to have these new materials. Again, we can talk about recycling, but it is gonna take a little while for that recycling to actually be usable in the batteries themselves. So it is going to require mining. And one question is going to be where that mining takes place and how that mining takes place.

Jessika: So, one thing that we see happening, we have debates. Even here in Sweden where I work around, for instance, we have a rare earth element deposit close to Stockholm and near a lake and they could mine this rare earth elements and in fact it would be in some cases preferable to mine them in Sweden because some other deposits like in Greenland are associated with thorium, uranium, and more of these problematic materials that would have a bigger impact in the mining process. Here, that’s a lower risk, and yet there’s been protests against opening such a mine in Sweden because it’s seen as it could damage the water, it could damage the environment, and there is a bit then of “not to be mined in Sweden,” but what I don’t see in that conversation then is what do we do instead? How are we going to have, these are rare earth elements used in magnets, in, in electronics. And so not only cars, but also the electronics in the cars, in phones, in tablets, in our computers. And then are we saying we’re going to do, we’re going to have less of these features, like touchscreens and, and these sorts of things in our electronics Are we going to do without that? Because we don’t want to mine it in our communities, or are we saying we’re going to mine it in other people’s communities? Cause they can bear the risk of that environmental degradation, but we’re not willing to do it? So I see some justice aspects here as well, where we need to then ask, is there really no way to do this without environmental harm then should we be doing it anywhere? Because what makes it okay to do it in China, but not in Sweden would be also my question there. Or do we say, okay, we are willing to mine also in our own backyards because we want these materials, and we’ll try to do it in a way that minimizes the risk and the harm to the environment?

Mike (narration): A UN report published this year said global demand for raw materials could increase by 60 percent by 2060, which would further stress already impacted nations and communities from mining and create further sacrifice zones.

Jessika: But I think that needs to be the level of discussion, not only this NIMBYism, “not mining here.” We need to have this discussion around exactly “how much we want and these tradeoffs” that it is tradeoffs to have these technologies and that it does need to be mined somewhere. So, I think if we are saying we want these technologies, if we are saying that we’re going to have them in the amounts that are predicted there, then I think we also need to be having a conversation about mining in Europe as well.

Mike: There’s also a conversation happening about mining in the deep sea for deposits of copper, nickel, manganese and cobalt and other things, which biologists are saying mining these will have really significant impacts on the marine food chain. What’s your take on this? Is that part of the equation or is that a hard no go?

Jessika: It’s part of the discussion, let’s put it that way. If we, again, we have complexity here in that we have multiple crisis and we’re saying we want technology to be part of that. We need these materials to be part of that. We need to look at all the places where these materials are. However, I think we really do need to take into account these environmental costs seriously. What I think we do at the moment and our supply chains do at the moment again is put them external to the cost. Put them as “these are environmental costs,” not costs to humans or not costs to humans in rich countries, so they’re “less of a cost.” I think we do need to really take into account the environmental degradation of these ecosystems. Also, we need to be taking into account how we make decisions under uncertainty. Because one thing is we know less about the ecosystems in the deep sea. We know less about, I mean, I’ve even heard some suggestions of–it’s not even suggestions–we’ve seen even Goldman Sachs doing a report on mining asteroids in the asteroid belt or in space. So that’s why I think like deep sea mining is definitely in the discussion that’s even on Earth. So, it’s getting almost absurd and where we’re looking for materials, but it is part of the equation. But we need to also be thinking of, “we don’t know what the impacts are, the further it is outside of our understanding.” And we need to also be proceeding with precaution, I think there too, because what we found when we do mine in these areas, or when we do upset ecosystems is then we find exactly how they’re connected to other ecosystems and, in a not so good way, what our impact has been on them.

Mike: Is there any solution that we haven’t talked about that you’re like, “this needs to be part of the equation?”

Jessika: I think one thing that I see at risk also, and we’ve been talking a lot about recycling and recycling batteries being a solution, but slow coming. I think we also need to think about how we’re reusing the batteries and that we also have a bit of a tradeoff here between when we have these EVs, we can technically, I mean, some of the batteries are being used or having a lifetime longer than expected in the cars and could be either reused in those cars.

Mike (narration): A study released this year says that of all EV batteries produced, most of them, like the vast majority of them, are still in the cars they were originally put into. Aside from recalls, only 2. 5 percent of them have been replaced. One study mentioned that the projected lifespan is up to 20 years.

Jessika: Sometimes these cars are going to end up outside of where they were sold. So we see also some flows, trans boundary flows, as we call them, some Europe to Africa, for example, we already see that with vehicles. We expect to see that also with electric vehicles in the future. And there’s been a lot of talk about whether that should happen, whether that’s a good thing or not. And this will also be a complex part of the solution, I think, because we want to also be transitioning all over the world and secondhand EVs will be part of that transition around the world. At the same time we want to get these materials back so they can go into new vehicles so there’ll be some tension there and I think that the solution will not be so clear there will be different optimal solutions depending on who you ask and who you are in that equation so we need to also be wary of that and how we what we see as the solution what metrics we’re using to say “this is the solution we want.” But it also needs to include social and environmental criteria, not only who makes the most money out of it and economic value making these flows happen and the solutions decided upon.

Mike: If there was one thing that you wish governments were doing right now that they’re not, what is it?

Jessika: Oh, that’s difficult…ONE thing. Well, I mean, I studied a bit of economics, and one thing would be like pricing those externalities for real. I think we talk about it with carbon taxes and CBAM coming on or material taxes, but we really aren’t doing it yet, in practice. I think that could be if we’re working within current economics that would give us better price signals and start reflecting real value, but it needs to also be value that’s considering the environmental and social costs.

Mike: And when you say, ‘pricing externalities,’ you mean the actual true total cost of a material?

Jessika: Yes, including all of these things we’ve talked about in the supply chains, right? That should be part of the cost. If we’re going to be using price and markets to be determining the value of things, those prices need to be actually reflecting things that are really happening in those supply chains.

Mike: Well, Jessika, I think that’s a great note to end it on. Thank you so much for speaking with me today. It’s been a real pleasure.

Jessika: Thank you. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure for me too.

Mike (narration): Thank you for listening to Mongabay Explores the Circular Economy, episode one. I’m your host, Mike DiGirolamo. Editorial support for this episode was provided by EriK Hoffner. The script was written by myself. Please make sure to read reporting from contributor Sean Mowbray’s two-part article miniseries on the sustainability of electric vehicles. Click on the links to both articles, which are provided here in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode of Mongabay Explores and you want to support us, please tell a friend about this podcast series and also our flagship podcast series, the Mongabay Newscast. Word of mouth is the best way to help expand our reach, but you can also support us by becoming a monthly sponsor by heading to patreon.com at P A T R E O N. com/Mongabay, where you can donate to help us cover production costs and hosting fees for all of our podcast content. Follow Mongabay on all of our social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, LinkedIn, and Blue Sky, where our handle is at Mongabay. This concludes episode one in our circular economy series. Stay tuned for the next conversation.