What Does Sustainability Really Mean?

 I was at a conference down in Southern California last week where a keynote speaker outlined the principles of sustainability. As she spoke, I pictured life as it began filtering out all those gases, setting down the carbon into the crust of the earth. Painstakingly these first organisms organized matter, the air becoming purer and purer, until animals and then humans could live here. How miraculous! We’ve looked through the heavens, but at this moment we’ve not seen any signs of life on any other planet, let alone humans. Yet now we are reversing this process, digging up earth’s crust, releasing all those gases that are harmful for life, right back into the atmosphere. And the plants who could, through photosynthesis, clean that air, are being cut down and destroyed.  This is obviously not sustainable.
 Many of us in the environmental community have become familiar with the newest buzzword, sustainability. Yet it has become such a popular word that many of us don’t necessarily know what it really means. We probably all have an idea. I think of my children inheriting a world whose air is still breathable, whose water is pure enough to drink and whose food still nourishes. I am afraid they will inherit a world so full of people there’s not enough food to eat, a world whose natural resources are so diminished, there’s not enough to go around. I want my children to have hope, I want them to be able to dream of doing great things. I’m afraid that won’t be true. To create a sustainable world we must quit digging up earth’s crust. How do we do that? We must reduce, as far as possible our use of products that are made from materials from under the earth. Metal, oil and minerals. We must use, as much as possible, materials which grow above the earth, tree products, plant products, find ways to use the energy from the sun and wind and water. These products don’t release pollutants into the air, these products are nourishing and health giving. While we are doing that we must also do this in such a way we don’t cut down all the trees, we must plant new trees for every one we cut. We can try to repeal the laws that forbid the use of hemp, a wonderful plant that can give us so much hope for sustainability. And finally, we can simply use less stuff, we can begin to appreciate the simpler things in life, walks in the park, eating with friends, growing a garden, just to suggest some. All that stuff they try to sell us really doesn’t make us happy, does it? And it certainly doesn’t lead to a sustainable world.
 Yet the  little things that we can do seem so very futile. Many of us find ourselves arguing against the rise of the multi-national corporations and the global economy, as they seem to be the culprit in this world of diminishing natural resources. Yet fighting against them seems futile, they have all the power, they hold all the cards. They don’t need to breathe, they don’t need to eat. Despite their strange legal status in this country, they aren’t actually people.
 For many years we at Garbage Reincarnation had a war going with the multi-national garbage companies. We weren’t alone, people all over this country declared them immoral, even criminal. Yet the more we did that, the more they were indeed caught in egregious wrongdoing, the more powerful they seemed to become. There are natural laws at play here, I believe. When we attack something, we are giving it energy and it gets more powerful. So I think we must go the way of Paul Hawkins, noted author of “Ecology of Commerce” and co-founder of “The Natural Step”, a blueprint for sustainable businesses.. We must recognize that business is the most powerful force on earth right now and if we are to give a world to our children, we must engage business in dialogue. We must bring them into agreement of the need to change practices and of the ways in which they can still engage in business without destroying the earth.
 In 1995, Garbage Reincarnation hosted a CRRA conference to which we invited Paul Hawkins. He told an incredulous, yet delighted audience, that we must join forces with business. He gave us examples of businesses that were beginning to heed these principles then, but they were few and far between. Now, sustainable investment firms tell us that the companies that heed these principles are actually outperforming the others. Now even Home Depot, once the target of environmentalists anger, has made a policy to cease selling old growth redwood. Indeed times have changed.
 As Garbage Reincarnation led the way for recyclers back in 1970 to create drop-off and buy-back recycling centers, in the early seventies to knock out the nascent garbage burning industry, and in 1985 to create reuse yards, so now we wish to pursue the path to sustainability. In coming issues we will showcase some companies here in Sonoma County that pay attention to these principles, share thoughts of practices that help us move in that direction. It is time to come together with the growing numbers of people and businesses that realize this is one world, one earth that we share and whose laws we must respect or lose our habitat. For it is no longer the owls who are in jeopardy, it is the humans and all the creatures who need oxygen to breathe, and fresh water to drink.
Pavitra