Filed under: J840 Week 5, Waste + Recycling | Tags: food pyramid, green messages, sustainability
My definition of sustainability: use only what you need, think critically about changes you can make in your life and be conscious about how your choices will affect future generations.
Can we learn something about how to define environmental initiatives from the way food products -- espcially grains -- are labeled? Source: MyPyramid.gov
In “Leading Change for Sustainability,” Bob Doppelt says sustainability is all about protecting our options. This provided me a great place to start when developing my definition. Thinking about sustainability in the framework of these practices, which are needed to protect life now and in the future, helped me narrow the definition down a bit.
However, I wonder if a majority of the population, most of whom aren’t engaged in environmental issues, really have a good foundation for what sustainability means.
Like the word “green,” sustainable has come to mean different things to different people (and companies). It’s similar to the way food products are labeled — for example, there are products labeled multi-grain, seven-grain, stone-ground, etc., but actually don’t contain whole grains. All the different labels and definitions are confusing and complicated for me as I’ve tried to navigate them, as I’m sure they are for many other consumers.
The language in my definition is simple and straightforward enough that I could easily explain it to someone, and hopefully meaningful enough that a person could break it down and adapt it into their own life. The first part of the definition: “use only what you need” is a simple concept of frugality and not hard to work into your daily processes. The second statement, “think critically about changes you can make in your life,” is also simple but it extremely important — when environmental issues are top of mind and ingrained into your thinking it’s much easier to make environmentally-friendly choices.
The final piece of the definition — being conscious about how your choices will affect future generations — appeals to peoples’ desire to provide a good life for their children and grandchildren.
-Jennifer E.
In my world, there is a conflict when defining Sustainment; and it comes from the BOOTS one wears.
My introduction to Sustainment was as an Army Intern in Force Management, Structure, and Design. I helped design and document the Sustainment Brigade. Here Sustainment encompasses land rehabilitation, warfighter support, continuous operations, lethality, survivability, and specifically range sustainment.
My personal definition of Sustainment is shorter, but more encompassing: Sustainment is all of the necessary actions required to maintain viability into the future.
Listening to Chris Doran and watching the “Story of Stuff” has given me some questions to accompany my sustainment definition:
Q.1. Viability of what? Everyone has an idea of what needs sustaining but yet we each want tons of ’stuff’; what do we give up so we can sustain our planet?
Q.2. What are the necessary actions?
Good Reading; a Study of Our Planet and its Population
After defining what needs maintaining, we then must determine the necessary actions to ensure that viability is maintained.
Q.3. How do we institute these actions? How do we ensure it is done, and done correctly? What Sustains you?
Q.4. Who needs to act? Everyone on the planet! This asks who do we educate? Alex Steffen states, 1/3rd of our planet population are kids; they are our future so we must focus on educationg them about the necessity of Stustainment
Q.5. Lastly, and unfortunately the most heavily weighted question of all, the question that can halt all progress, the driver behind Q. 1-4: Where will the money come from to fund all of this sustainment?
My greatest fear is that we are too late. Do we know enough to determine what must be done immediately to save Earth. What if we imbalance the life-chain irreparably through our ignorance?
What if the price is too high for John Q. Taxpayer?
Will our arguing and feuding over what needs to be done and how distract us from action; will the planet die?
I find lots of information on how I can reduce, reuse and recycle, but I am scared; will it ever be enough? Is my footprint too big? How scary is your footprint?
Angela Jones
Filed under: Business + Politics, Design + Architecture, Energy + Climate, J840 Week 5, Science + Tech, Society + Media, Waste + Recycling | Tags: sustainability, recycling, The Jetsons, Hannah-Barbara, Annie Leonard, Alex Steffan, Drilling
As I watch Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff, I can’t help but yawn. Everything she says fails to captivate me. I’m not trying to be rude. The information Annie presents is very relevant and emotional in today’s society where we struggle to find ways to exist in a way that can be maintained in the long run. My problem is that I learned all of this from Jetsons: The Movie.
In 1990, Hannah-Barbara brought the Jetsons to the big screen. Kids like myself, were spellbound watching George Jetson take over a new, highly efficient Spacely Sprocket factory located on a distant asteroid. These same kids also learned a valuable lesson about sustainability as it was discovered that the factory was drilling into the home of the Grungees, the alien race inhabiting the asteroid. To make an 82 minute story short, the factory is turned over to the Grungees who can produce new sprockets by recycling old ones (I guess space traveling humans weren’t smart enough to figure that one out) and everyone lived happily ever after.
I know I reference children’s media a lot, but I do it to further dialogue and hopefully find a resolution to the wasteful habits of industry. If we can explain sustainability in such elementary terms, why can’t we make it happen? Watching Alex Steffan’s presentation on sustainable design and production, I’m struck by his statement that each generation wants its own version of prosperity. It’s true that we want to do just a little bit better than our parents. Maybe that’s why the same generation that learned a lesson by watching the Jetsons avoid the destruction of an entire race, is becoming the next generation of destroyers.
Having seen this movie, I guess I get a different definition of sustainability. To me, sustainability is a business term used to describe operating at an efficieny level that creates the greatest good for all. By “all” I’m referring to the business and its shareholders as well as the community it serves. In my mind, sustainability is a way of getting greater Return on Investment than our predescessors in a way that leaves room for the next generation to increase it even more. It doesn’t have to mean a stagnate economy.
I do find a little comfort as Mr. Steffan talks about what Mrs. Leonard refers to as the “Third World.” It seems that sustainability is possible through the “leapfrogging” and “collaboration” that Mr. Steffan describes. Simple efforts anchored in design have allowed areas with little resources to operate at levels beyond the efficiency of industrialized nations in my opinion.
So perhaps the answer to achieving sustainability is as simple as they make it seem in children’s movies. Or am a just a dreamer?
*Trey Williams*
