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