Hey everybody!
One of my passions has always been sustainability. I have had a deep interest in learning about ways to help our beautiful Earth and learning more about the environmental problems the whole world is facing.
According to dictionary.com, the definition of sustainability is: “the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance.”
But LIVING sustainably means you are attempting to have a lifestyle that reduces your negative impact on the earth.
A major concept that we have spoken about in this class is the idea that for something to be a sustainable solution it has to have three parts. It has to be; socially desirable, ecologically viable, and economically feasible. Any solution that is missing one of these three factors will not be feasible in the society we live in today. I’ll briefly go into each one of these factors to give you a better idea of what I am talking about.
Socially desirable: As described in the name, this factor has to do with the social aspect of sustainability. This means that every level of a social system must benefit or have social well-being in some way of the solution. BUT most of the time this factor doesn’t have a straight definition. There is a universal disagreement among all parties about what “social well-being” looks like. The opinions of politics, different cultures, and religion all get pulled into this factor making it the hardest to fulfill.
Ecologically viable: This factor is simply the question of “will this solution work?” Will it benefit the society we live in today? And is it correctly using Earth’s resources?
Economically feasible: In my opinion, this factor is the most controversial. For any solution to work, it has to keep some sort of economic “peace”.
thwink.org gives this definition; “Economic sustainability occurs when a political unit, such as a nation, has the preferred percent of its population below its preferred minimum standard of living level.”
This website is a great source for more information about each pillar of sustainability and for a better understanding of what that looks like.
Here are two great links for a short quiz showing your water footprint and your ecological footprint. Each quiz only asks a few, simple questions and they are both amazing tools to start your sustainable lifestyle.
But I also have my theory. So many people in today's society know that there are major environmental issues. It seems like a new problem is on the news every day. But the issue is that a major part of the population is not educated on simple things they can do to start making a positive difference in the environment.
There are a lot of people who do not understand the importance of helping the environment. I believe that if I can provide EASY, AFFORDABLE, and UNDERSTANDABLE tips on how to help the environment more people will be inclined to do it. To truly start helping the Earth we must figure out the root issues and challenge the way we are thinking about these problems.
I plan to start a series all about sustainability. Featuring different types of blog posts about living a sustainable life and making a difference. My goal for this series of posts is to educate my readers on how important the environment is to our quality of life and how we can help the quality of life for generations to come.
This post is just an introduction to what sustainability is and why it’s important to our environment. Be on the lookout for more posts featuring simple ways to start living your best, sustainable life :)