Today our world is beautiful, but what is to come of it in the possible near future? When you walk outside your front door you see the green grass, the beautiful trees and flowers, and breathe in the fresh air. This is something we all take for granted every day. If we continue to live the way we do our environment will end up in a crisis. We must teach our population today to change their ways. Big changes must be made and we must change the way our society thinks.
I think that in order to do this we must first educate people and secondly make sustainability easy for them. In the article, Closing the Loops in Commerce, Janine Benyus describes different principles of ecology and describes how each one relates to our world today. In my opinion, every one of her principles made great points. However, there were a two principles that I really liked and supported my concept of educating and making sustainability easy.
The first principle I strongly agreed with was using our waste as a resource. As we know by now solid waste is a big problem in our world today. This can be minimized if we find other ways to use our so called "waste". Just because you do not use or wear old clothing does not mean that it could not be used by someone else or in some other way, shape, or form. In order to make recycling easy for people I think we need to set up a system just like our trash system. What if we had a container just for recycled clothing that got picked up every other week or even once a month. This would require almost nothing from people. It is as easy as taking out your trash. The "waste" could be taken to the appropriate locations to be recycled. It could be used by others or broken down to make other things.
The other principle I really like was optimize rather than maximize. Although, the assembly-line and mass producing has made things very easy for manufacturers I do not think it has had a positive impact on the environment. When products are mass produced they do not have the same quality as when they are hand made. Most mass produced products are cheap and do not last as long as hand made products. This means they are trashed and new ones are bought. This is a continuous cycle that leads to lots of solid waste. If we educate our consumers to buy less of the more expensive high quality products than in the end we will have less waste.
If we use these principles to educate our society and teach them how easy these simple things are to change our healthy environment will last much longer.
Kellee,
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job this week using the information from the readings in your blog. I like your idea of focusing on educating consumers and making sustainability easier for them. The two points your picked from Benyus's book were two points that I was also very prone to. I think your idea for a recycling container would be a great start to transforming waste into a resource. The second point you made about encouraging consumers to spend more on high quality items is also a strong thought. How do you plan on implementing these ideas within society? Would you yourself be willing to spend more on a high quality item if it meant helping the environment? Great job!
Hey Kellee,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog this week! I thought you had a lot of great points - like the recycle bin for old clothes that are not needed anymore. I am constantly going to Goodwill to drop of bags of old clothes or shoes so I think an easier way to do this would be great and it would get more people on board. We could also have plastic and aluminum bins at each house. I know I throw away TONS of plastic a day so this would be extremely resourceful in my life.
Mallory,
ReplyDeleteI think the best way to implement my ideas in society laws are regulations and marketing. We can set regulations requiring every house hold to have a recycling bin that is to be picked up every other week. I also think that if we guarantee our customers better quality on the more expensive items that are better for the environment then they will be more likely to purchase them.
I really like the weekly recycling bin idea! I wonder if we could get to the point where we could offer people an incentive such as having to pay less taxes if they fill their recycling bin every week...? Sort of a stretch, but it'd totally work!
DeleteKellee,
ReplyDeleteI liked both your points this week! I agree with your first point, waste. I find it very important that we change our concept of what the term "waste" really means. I actually stressed it as one of my points in the first portion of our paper. In my class book (Midcourse Correction), the author suggest that we need to reset our mental modes of waste. Furthermore, the concept means resetting waste to mean only "off-quality and scrap", not what we personally view as unusable. I like your idea of further implementing recycling bins to influence consumers that it is conceivable to recycle! Well done!