Earliest time I did something close to being sustainable was organizing plastic trash to be recycled in the 80s. I thought that it was the grand honor of the consumers to ensure that our trash does not destroy the planet. I was so wrong. I learned quite a bit as part of my journey to break into the sustainability industry post being forced to leave my hospitality job. This is what I learned:
Plastic is not the enemy, manufacturers are
- The whole plastic recycling campaign was a move started by fuel-producing companies to ensure the plastic business lives on.
2. Plastic, in its own form is very sustainable as it possesses a very low carbon cost in terms of manufacturing, but there is a LOT of debate on that; I would link them here but there’s too much. I will do a dedicated post on that soon.
That does not mean plastic is the best
Plastic is just a type of material, it’s a hot topic as now we are experiencing severe ecosystem disruption that we MUST review how we are living. There are other materials that can be used in replacement of plastic, such as glass and aluminum with varying practicality depending the usage.
As I got more the issues of sustainability and environmental issues, I started putting together different problems we’re facing, telling our industrialized society to slow down and change our way of living.
A few case in point:
- It is estimated to produce 1 kg of beef, water usage ranges from 3 to 540 L of H2O or H2O equivalents for the life cycle assessment approach and from 10,000 to 200,000 L of H2O for the water footprint. The range is high due to different methods of measurements. Points remains too much water is used for too little food production in today’s standards.
- This leads to our capacity for food production. The banana that is consumed by most of the world – specifically the Cavendish is at risk due disease, and partly due to our over-reliance on it, i.e. monoculture approach to food. Our extreme monoculture approach is unsettling a balanced ecosystem that will take time to fix.
- Increasing wildfires and also erratic cold snaps indirectly tells us (at least me personally) that earth is ailing because these things should not be considered standard phenomenons.
And there is much more that we have to do to reduce our negative impact on our environment
There is no argument that our consumer habits and industrial production needs to be improved and changed.
We’re so used to the fact of the earth is not in its best condition, there are so many conflicting information out there telling you otherwise.
We will explore concrete facts and proven scenarios that WHY we REALLY need to change the way we live to not only fix the planet, but heal it in the next round.