In the last 50 years, there has been an exponential acceleration of wasteful and unsustainable use of natural resources in our planet. Businesses and governments were chasing economic growth at the expense of our planet’s well-being. The disastrous effects of human greed on Earth can be keenly felt as there were more volatile and extreme weather events that disrupt the lives and livelihoods across disparate regions. Thus, in recent years, more public attention have been given to encouraging sustainable practices of both individuals and businesses
This sustainability problem is complex to address as a collective because the sources of pollution are largely invisible to the general population. The video below gives us an idea of what researchers think about the difficulties in convincing people to take action against climate change.
There have been government-led initiatives to educate the public on energy conservation and recycling practices, but most importantly, ground-up movements by the people are also influencing businesses to start thinking how to go green.
Government’s role in sustainability practices
This year, the government has launched its campaign called ‘Singapore’s Year Towards Zero Waste’, aiming to raise awareness about water issues, and adopting the concept of the circular economy. The aim of zero-waste is to reduce our consumption and also to close the loop by turning trash into something of economic value endlessly. While we have ample access to recycling bins in our public housing estates, people are not aware of their proper usage and those behaviors negate recycling efforts. Hence, there is a greater need for public education and awareness initiatives.
Ground-up movements
Individual who have come to a realisation that their consumption patterns have accumulative negative impact on the environment are coming together to work towards a zero-waste lifestyle. Instead of producing more waste that goes into the landfill, these group of people make lifestyle changes such as refusing disposables as much as they can, and recycling or repurposing what they do not need anymore. Social media groups such as Journey to Zero Waste Life in Singapore attract eco-conscious individuals who share their tips on how to adapt to a different lifestyle.
How businesses respond
As more people start to become eco-conscious, businesses have to keep up with changing consumer behaviors. We see many food and beverages companies introducing incentives for Bring-Your-Own (BYO) reusables such as metal straws and tumblers for drinks. Organisations have stepped up to announce their commitment towards reducing disposables in their operations such as removing plastic straws to plastic bags in their stores.
Different stakeholders are finally taking notice of the harm that we have brought upon our planet and it is indeed heartening to see us moving towards solving this intractable issue.
Questions for further personal evaluation:
- To what extent do you think that businesses genuinely care about their environmental impact and carbon footprint?
- Do you believe that individual actions have an impact on the larger ecosystem?
Useful vocabulary:
- ‘unprecedented’: never done or known before
- ‘paradigm shift’: a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions
Here are more related articles for further reading:
- Channel NewsAsia: A professor suggests that in order to tackle the root causes of the world’s plastic problem, the global supply chain systems need to be improved.
“Paradoxically, it is both a supply chain system built on waste and convenience, but born out of necessity when it has provided needed infrastructure for some of our most basic needs such as food, water, and healthcare
Solutions that may appear logical on the surface, such as reducing usage, eliminating single-use plastic, and developing new product alternatives can lead to an even worse impact to the environment if the same supply chain system stays intact.
Take for example the important role of plastic in the developing world as millions are being lifted away from poverty and elevated into the middle class. Middle class consumerism generates waste, but this is also a function of the improved health, sanitation and population control.
The efforts by large consumer product companies, such as Nestle, Starbucks, Coca Cola, and Pepsi to become more sustainable in their products is almost always well intended, but these campaigns without transformational changes to how their supply chains operate just leads to more publicity than results.”
- World Resources Institute: This is why banning plastic bags and straws will not be the silver bullet for our environmental problems.
“For example, Denmark’s Ministry of Environment and Food found that you would need to reuse a paper bag at least 43 times for its per-use environmental impacts to be equal to or less than that of a typical disposable plastic bag used one time. An organic cotton bag must be reused 20,000 times to produce less of an environmental impact than a single-use plastic bag. That would be like using a cotton bag every day for nearly 55 years. (Note that these figures aggregate the bags’ impact on water use, CO2 emissions, land use and more, but they do not include their impact on plastic pollution.)
Banning plastic straws is also increasingly popular. Starbucks recently announced that it would phase out use of plastic straws by the year 2020. Straws don’t provide as much utility as bags, so for many this is an easy adjustment.
But these bans leave the impression that they solve the plastics pollution problem without much discussion of systematic solutions. As a society, we should think holistically about the products we use and their impacts. We can’t just ban bad products—we must invest in alternatives.”
Picture credits:https://pixabay.com/en/rain-water-element-drop-of-water-1563957/