What is "Sustainability" really ?

With the amount of greenwashing and fake news in the media about what being sustainable really is I thought it would be important to share the facts on the subject.

The definition of sustainability according to the english dictionary is as follows; "avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain ecological balance".

To me, this definition doesn't do justice to the word. I agree that in order to be sustainable you should avoid depleting the earth of its natural resources, but it is much more than that. To be truly sustainable we need to create a circular life cycle in order to return those natural resources to the earth.

To explain this I'm going to use the exchange of energy in the food web as an example:

In this food web, the arrows represent the exchange of energy. The sun, air, water and soil give energy to the plant to grow, the herbivores eat the plants which give them energy and the omnivore eats the herbivore and so on. Until the detritivores who break this energy down and recycle it back into the earth. The earth is already designed for circularity, so why don't we ?

Sustainability is not only about attempting to use fewer of earth's resources, it's about returning those resources back to our home. In order to truly be sustainable we need to design products with circularity in mind. We can do this by asking questions like: 'Where will this go when it is no longer useful?', 'Is this product going to last?' and 'how can we return the resources we took to create this product?'. Companies who ask themselves these questions before creating products are pushing towards sustainability.

At home and in our closets we can create circularity by:

1. Repairing old products when they break

2. REUSABLE BAGS (For your fruits/veggies use reusable mesh bags)

3. Get in the habit of always turning lights off and unplugging electronics that aren't in use

4. Avoid using paper towels and try reusable products like Papaya

5. Follow recycling instructions on your items

6. Throw out as little food as possible, try composting instead

7. Borrow(rent) instead of buying

8. Get food off platforms such as toogoodtogo instead of doordash, to minimize food waste (it's also cheaper:)

9. Donate old clothing or sell on resale platforms such as: Depop, The Real Real, Thread Up, Poshmark, Grailed and Pickle [a rental platform]

10. Purchase local and regional foods and try more meat free meals (lovefoodhatewaste.com)

Please feel free to reach out with any comments/questions. Thank you for reading !

-AJ

9/27/24