Defining a really big idea, a pocket guide for how to live sustainably, and tools for measuring our success along the way.
By Jaymi HeimbuchSan Francisco, CA, USA | Thu Jul 16, 2009 06:00 AM ET
What's Sustainability?
Tackling the Linguistics
Sustainability is a big, big concept. Attempts to define it feel nearly impossible since it encompasses philosophy, ecology, economy, sociology and more.
The most famous definition is the Brundtland definition that came out of the 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. It states that sustainability is "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Wikipedia editors have boiled sustainability down to "the capacity to endure," though still noting that this definition applies to nearly every aspect of life on earth across physical and chronological planes and therefore is humongous. These thimble-sized summaries are helpful, but beg questions such as what exactly are "needs" and just what does "endure" mean when considering sustainability and future quality of life? The Wikipedia entry thankfully notes that attempted definitions can be 'statements of fact, intent, or value with sustainability treated as either a 'journey' or 'destination.'" In other words, there are lots of ways of forming a definition of sustainability and one may actually not have much overlap with another, other than the common word we struggle to define.
“Definition or no definition, we know we aren't living sustainably now, and we know we must change.
Perhaps all this tells us that definitions for sustainability can often be a case by case issue, and the more important thing for us to have is an understanding of sustainability in a broad sense and how it applies to our daily ways of living in an eco-friendly manner. Really, that comes down to a gut check. After all, definition or no definition, we know we aren't living sustainably now, and we know we must change. Most of us can agree that living sustainably means living in a way that ensures Earth is a flourishing, healthy planet indefinitely. This means drastically reducing pollution and waste—and aiming to eliminate them—and cutting way down on our use of natural resources and greenhouse gas emissions.
Aspirations for Sustainability: What Does a Sustainable World Look Like?
Image courtesy of Hiroshi Watanabe/Getty Images.
Is there a much bigger question than this, or one more subjective? Yet we have to know what we're aiming for as we plan how to change.
Everyone has their vision for what a sustainable world looks like. It likely includes a world with clean air, soil and water, plenty of food for everyone, healthy ecosystems and a restoration of the natural rhythms of life. However, when it comes to human civilization, there are also lots of variations. Some people feel a sustainable world includes one where cars are gone and clean-running, efficient public transportation reigns supreme, whereas others may envision a sustainable world is one in which we've overcome the polluting and wasteful aspects of cars and use them without damage to the planet. Some people may see a world in which all products in stores (and the stores themselves) are designed as cradle-to-cradle, whereas others may see a world where there are hardly any stores at all but rather a series of product service systems.
“Experts have shown that to return to functional levels of CO2 - or, that magical number of 350 parts per million—each person on earth has a CO2 budget of around 2 tons per year.
While we may each have a slightly unique vision for a sustainable world, there are a few things we all will need to agree upon if sustainability in any sense is to be achieved, primarily that we all reduce our consumption levels and greenhouse gas emissions levels to those our planet can tolerate, so that earth can continue to support human life.
Structuring Sustainability so We Can Achieve Sustainability
Image courtesy of Anthony Harvie/Getty Images.
Putting sustainability into measureable categories
Living sustainably also requires not only a grasp of what it is we want to achieve, but also how to achieve it. Because sustainability touches so many various aspects of our lives and social structures, we have to come at it from all sorts of different angles. As the Presidio School of Management points out, incorporating sustainability fully into our lives includes looking at it from business, social, financial and environmental points of view. For instance, when assessing the sustainability of a product, a business will need to look at, among many qualities, how the product works into the lives of the people who will use it, if it is economically sustainable, and its potential impact on future generations. These, and dozens of other angles all come together to weigh how sustainable a product or service is.
So how do we measure if we're achieving sustainable living? There are at least four ways we can tick off immediately:
350 PPM
This is the magic number for carbon emissions within our atmosphere, arguably the biggest threat to life on earth right now. Scientists state that 350 parts per million is a safe level of Co2 in the atmosphere, and right now we're soaring above that at around 387 parts per million, and rising. Bill McKibbon started the group 350.org, which works to explain and educate people about this number and why it's so important to keep it down at a level where our oceans, trees, and other life forms can absorb the CO2 fast enough to keep the planet's systems balanced. The closer we get to acceptably low levels of emissions and closer to 350, the closer we are to sustainable living.
Carbon Footprints
We know that we are emitting carbon dioxide at levels far too great for the planet to process, and it's wreaking havoc on our natural systems. The average American has a carbon footprint of 20 tons of CO2 per year. That means, each American, through food choices, travel habits, energy consumption, and other habits is responsible for putting roughly 20 tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere every year. That's equal to flying round trip from New York to LA 12 times!Experts have shown that to return to functional levels of CO2—or, that magical number of 350 parts per million—each person on earth has a CO2 budget of around 2 tons per year. Globally, we are learning rapidly how to measure and track the carbon footprints of everything from products to buildings to plane flights. We're also getting ever more firm about requiring the tracking and measuring of carbon emissions for businesses and their supply chains, which makes measuring our personal footprints more thorough and effective. Each of us knowing our carbon footprint and keeping it at a sustainable level of 2 tons per year is a vital step in knowing we're living sustainably.
Here are three ways we can cut our footprints in half right now, and incorporating carbon-cutting actions (or inactions like staycations and buying less stuff) into our lives at every turn will get us there.
Cradle to Cradle Design
Coined in 2002 by industrial architect William McDonough, Cradle to Cradle is the idea of designing everything as closed loops that mimic the natural cycles of "dust to dust." Ideally, everything we produce, from buildings to products, would be made of natural ingredients, have no negative impact on the planet during their use, and return as raw materials for natural or industrial systems at the end of their lives, producing no waste and giving more of the planet than they took in. By mimicking the natural cycles that have kept this planet going for millions upon millions of years and shifting from cradle-to-grave design to cradle-to-cradle design, we will make huge strides in living sustainably.
Green Thinking as Common Sense
Living sustainably really comes down to using common sense in our daily decision making. There are choices everyone can make to live more sustainably regardless of how much they read up on environmental issues; for example, purchasing just the things we need rather than everything we want, taking the train instead of taking a plane, or drinking shade-grown organic coffee instead of whatever is brewing at the chain-store coffee shop, are all obvious ways of living much more sustainably. Of course, the more informed we are about environmental issues, the easier it is to access common sense for quick and effortless decision making. For instance, once we understand that it takes more water to raise a cow than it does to raise a chicken, and more to raise a chicken than it does to raise a crop of veggies, then we can make fast decisions in our food consumption that drastically reduce our water footprints without our having to put a lot of thought into it, or use our iPhones to do green research while standing in the middle of the farmer's market. Bringing this information into common knowledge so that green common sense is effortless will show us we're becoming much more sustainable as a species.
Sustainability in Daily Life: A Pocket Guide for Thinking Sustainably, 5 Things to Remember
Image courtesy of Indeed/Getty Images.
1. Understand the Scale of Your Daily Decisions
Some decisions seem small and have big impacts, some seem big but aren't as huge as you think. The difficulty comes in identifying which decisions fall into which category. For instance, recycling seems like a big deal, and it helps to diminish the waste stream going to landfills. However, purchasing a product that has zero waste in the first place is actually the more impactful decision. Another example is the fact that skipping that 12 ounce steak for dinner holds the same impact on your water footprint as showering only every other day for a year. Skipping the steak seems like a small decision, but the impact is larger than what would seem like a big decision—skipping showering!
2. Remember Everything is Connected
It can be difficult to grasp how vastly interconnected everything is. With how specialized we are and our lives have become, we can forget that everything we do affects something else. But taking our thinking at least four or five steps down the chain of cause and effect helps us understand the impacts of our actions and choices.
We need to remember to think about things in terms of their wide-ranging effects. For example, looking at a food product on a store shelf not just in terms of what ingredients it contains, but also how the ingredient choices impact the health of both the consumer of the final product as well as the people working harvesting the ingredients and their exposure to any chemicals, and the health and longevity of the ecosystems impacted by gathering the ingredients used in the product, and how our political systems impact and are impacted by raising, importing, and exporting the ingredients...and the chain can keep going. So, we can see how one food product on a shelf is actually connected to much broader parts of our lives. Keeping this in mind guides us towards more sustainable living choices.
3. Consider True Cost
Sometimes buying green seems expensive, and it's difficult to bring ourselves to spend more money for organic or locally made products. However, one thing that helps us understand that greener is cheaper is considering true cost. While something like a factory farmed steak may have a lower price tag than a locally raised grass-fed steak, the true cost is actually far higher, because it takes into account things like increased healthcare costs because the factory farmed steak is actually less healthful than the other to your health, the higher amounts of water used to raise factory farmed steak thanks to the vast amounts of corn raised to feed the cattle, the higher cost of pollution emitted into the atmosphere and water systems, and so on. In the long run, our unsustainable choices have a far higher true cost than our sustainable choices. Eventually the market will adjust to true costs as people more and more value making sustianable purchases. For now, you can invest a bit more for your health and the planet's on sustainable products and save money by buying less stuff you don't need and reading our eco-nomics feature with tons of tips on going green and saving green.
4. Remember Your Two Footprints
Water and carbon. While many aspects of our lives leave footprints, these are the two biggies. We use water heavily in everything from manufacturing and processing goods to running buildings, from growing food and livestock to landscaping. Our water consumption in our home lives, like showering and washing the dishes, is just a tiny fraction compared to the amount of embodied water we consume throughout the day. In the same way that our water consumption is embodied in the goods and services we access all day long, so too is carbon. We might not think of the computers we use or books we read as having a carbon footprint, but just like the methods of transportation we choose, most everything we use and consume during the day has a carbon footprint. Learning more about water footprints and carbon footprints, and working to minimize both our own and that of everything we produce and use, will get us closer to living sustainably.
5. Don't Get Discouraged or Overwhelmed
Easier said than done, right? But the key to achieving success here is not letting yourself get depressed about how much work lies ahead of us, but instead focusing on the many ways we can tackle the problems and make progress. Simply sit down in the evening, look back on your day, and ask yourself, "Did I go through my day in a way that got us all closer towards living sustainably?" If you can say yes, consider yourself successful.Live sustainably by staying informed, thinking logically and connecting dots as you interact with your world during the day.
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