According to UN-Habitat, a global housing affordability crisis is underway, with 1.6 billion people currently in need of adequate, affordable homes. That number could rise to three billion in just a few years. Home prices in urban markets have reached "impossible" levels of unaffordability while temperatures continue to rise as a result of climate change.

On this third episode of the Mongabay Explores podcast season on the circular economy — the effort to design goods to be less resource-intensive, from their manufacture to disposal and recycling — Louise Dorignon, a postdoctoral research fellow and housing circularity expert at RMIT University in Melbourne, details this housing reform plan to address sustainability in the most unaffordable housing market in the English-speaking world: Australia.

Researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne have devised a framework for combatting this housing shortage, improving housing circularity, and reducing emissions from construction to help alleviate the housing sector's contributions to climate change.

"Our goal was to find out how implementing a circular economy approach can lead to a more sustainable housing system. And we didn't want to juxtapose sustainability and circular economy as two different things. But instead, we wanted to see how they work together," Dorignon says.

Listen to the first two episodes of Mongabay Explores the Circular Economy here and here.

Mongabay Explores is a podcast series investigating some of the biggest environmental issues of our time, and the people working to solve them. This conversation is the third episode of the fifth season. To listen to them all, simply subscribe to or follow Mongabay Explores wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Image credit: Die Sonnenblumenhäuser is a housing project in Vienna's Wildgarten neighborhood. The 11-building plan is an evolution of an award-winning project from the Europan 10 competition, which values "sustainable projects capable of creating urban intensity while taking care of the environment." Arenas Basabe Palacios built 82 units as commissioned by the Vienna city council, which owns the land. Image courtesy of Kurt Hoerbst.

Timecodes

(00:00) A more sustainable and affordable housing system

(02:18) How do we make housing circular?

(07:36) Curious case studies

(12:57) First pillar: Reappraising value

(18:23) Second pillar: Shaping markets with regulation

(22:06) Third pillar: Tilting investment flows

(23:57) Fourth pillar: Building capacity and skills

(27:38) Australia's housing affordability crisis

(34:54) The problem with using housing as an investment

(38:57) Addressing vacant homes

(40:53) Which nation is 'getting it right?'

(44:39) One thing to change right now

In 2016, Finland became the first nation to design a circular economy roadmap, in an effort to design goods to be less resource-intensive, from their manufacture to disposal and recycling. Tim Forslund of the Finnish Innovation Fund (SITRA) was one of its architects and joins this episode of Mongabay Explores to detail his nation’s circularity plan and the challenges ahead.

While 75 nations now have such plans in development, Finland is years ahead of them all, and yet hasn’t seen a reduction in its economy's resource consumption so far. Forslund explains why, and how policies implemented today may only produce results much later.

“We're seeing a lot of these policies being implemented, but it will take more [time] to see the change.”

Read more on Finland’s circular economy roadmap by Mongabay contributor Sean Mowbray here:

Lessons from Finland’s attempt to transition to a circular economy

Subscribe to or follow Mongabay Explores wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify. You can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Image Credit: Finland has produced innovative solutions seeking to increase circularity in the textile sector. For example, a pilot project incentivizing textile collection in the city of Lahti claimed a 500% increase in recycling rates. Companies such as Spinnova are adopting methods that use renewable resources, such as wood. Other circular solutions, including expanding markets for recycled materials, increasing circularity in design, and reducing consumption, are required, experts say. Image courtesy of Lounais-Suomen Jätehuolto.

Timecodes

(00:00) Introduction

(02:17) It’s Not Just Finland

(05:58) Sector by Sector, Country by Country

(11:30) Roadblocks and Challenges

(17:16) Policy and Market-Based Solutions

(20:17) A ‘Greenlash’ to Mandates?

(25:37) Slowing Down Fast Fashion

(29:07) Plastics Recycling

(31:33) Transforming Education

(33:50) Designing Solutions for People

(36:41) Credits

The fifth season of Mongabay Explores dives into the circular economy: the effort to design goods to be less resource intensive, from their manufacture to disposal and recycling.

In this episode, we speak with circular economy researcher and policy expert Jessika Richter, associate senior lecturer at Lund University in Sweden, who discusses the environmental and social impacts of electric vehicles (EVs), and what we can do to mitigate them.

As she says, any conversation about solving transportation emissions that only discusses cars misses the bigger picture:

“We need to go back to, exactly, what do we need? And 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,” says Richter.

Read more on the circularity of electric vehicles from contributor Sean Mowbray here:

EVs offer climate hope, but total auto supply chain revamp is vital

Internal combustion vs. EVs: Learning from the past to boost sustainability

Mongabay Explores is our in-depth podcast series which investigates some of the most significant environmental issues of our time. Check this podcast’s feed to hear previous seasons about Congo rainforest conservation issues, and other compelling topics.

Image credit: While electric vehicles have no tailpipe emissions, there are a lot more factors involved in producing a car: steel, tires and people affected along the supply chain. Image by Ivan Radic via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

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Time codes

(00:00) Introduction

(03:28) The benefits of EVs

(05:02) The costs

(08:04) Cleaning up the supply chain

(13:33) It’s not just about cars

(17:30) Rethinking how we use urban centers

(22:28) To retrofit or not to retrofit?

(27:41) Mining and NIMBYism

(34:35) Pricing externalities for real

(35:42) Credits