in your opinion, are cars that include electronic components easier or harder to adapt to circular economy principles than regular normal cars?
You mean electric vehicle cars with battery?
No. Electronic components.
Not batteries.
Not only batteries. Everything. Electronics, not only electric.
Okay. And compared to what?
A normal car without much electronic components.
I mean, older cars.
Or what is easier to adapt to?
Ah the older cars were easier because they were less complex and had less metal in it, I guess. Yeah, from my opinion.
What can the automotive industry do to promote a circular economy? your meaning.
The automotive industry itself. I don’t know if they are interested in I mean, they have to pay for it. That’s that’s what they can do. So simple as that. I don’t know.
Okay. You are sharing cars. So that means do you have concerns about privacy and personal data stored by car electronics like GPS or things like that?
No, I mean, I know of it that collecting data is important to the car manufacturers as well. And I think Amazon and Google tried to get into this market and they’re already in this market. Um, yeah, but at the end of the day, I mean, we walk around with a phone, there’s if you switch on Google Maps, I mean there’s so much they track you so much. So at the end of the day, I mean, I’m personally when I use a car 2 or 3 times, um, I don’t, I don’t care about that really, But I yeah, it’s a data privacy thing. Politics. Politicians need to make laws about that. And if they don’t, then obviously that data will be used by someone for some business purposes. And as a society in general, yes, I would be a bit concerned. Me as an individual for myself, not too much.
does recycling and reusing mean different things to you?
Oh, good question. Recycling and reusing. Ah, yes, it does. Because recycling would mean for me that you transform the state of the thing. So recycling. If you have Germany, you collect lots of plastic and you bring that to some depending where you live. You bring that to some plastic, to some containers. And then I guess I hope that will be it will be burned. Either it would be burnt or it will be again, all the plastic which is in there, It will be separated and maybe recycled and then reused. But only reusing would mean for me that I don’t change the state of the material. So you can reuse a tshirt and wear it again. If you buy it secondhand, then if you donate the tshirt and to a shop and I buy it at a second hand shop, then I’m reusing it. So no recycling. I mean, no recycling really happened in my opinion. Um, yeah, yeah. So it is. There’s a difference for me.
On a scale of 1 to 5, one means not at all concerned and five means extremely concerned. How concerned are you about issues of environmental waste and pollution?
Uh, 4 to 5. I mean, yeah, the lithium from our phones. Um, I mean, everything here in my laptop, in my mobile phone, the different materials coming from somewhere and it’s usually not Germany. So, um. Someone has to dig out the stuff somewhere, and that always leaves a trace in the environment and it has an impact on human health as well. So and I think. The problem is, from what I learned, the problem will be that if we want to grow more and continuous, the economies need to grow and need to be more productive and blah blah, blah. You need to extract more metals, but it gets harder and harder to get to those metals because I think the efficiency or not efficiency, I think right now for one kilogram of iron ore or steel or one kilogram of lithium or cobalt, you need maybe one ton of one ton of dirt or material. And in the future, for this one kilogram it you need to dig out two tons and stuff like that. So that won’t be that will leave an impact and that impact will grow and it’s not a good impact, you know, especially in countries which are already disadvantaged like South America, Africa, parts of Asia. Yeah. So, yeah. 4 to 5. 4 to 5.
What, if any, actions do you take in your life to promote sustainability?
Yeah. Well, I wish. I wish. I mean, I’m not owning a car, but that’s because of the price tag itself and. I mean, I do a lot of cycling or use public transport because in bigger cities, in most bigger cities in Germany, you are quicker by public transport or by bicycle. So I, I can’t really claim that I’m not I mean, I use it, I use more cycling and public transport because of sustainability and of other things as well. But at the end of the day, I mean, I’m still eating meat. And I would still fly. So I know that those are the biggest drivers, you know, flying car and eating meat. So sometimes, as I said, I don’t have a car. Um, sometimes often I think about buying more regional. Um. I think. But then I’m aware that tomatoes in Bavaria might have a higher carbon impact than tomatoes from Spain just because you need way more energy for to grow the tomatoes in borough area. So I try to be to make conscious decisions about where the food comes from, but it’s sometimes too complex to think about all of that, you know? You’re buying less meat. Buying higher quality meat, If you can say so.