This post has been possible through the collaborative effort made by the following members: Nicole Fyvie, Ian Oxman, Neha Marolia, Molly Byrne, Melisha-Li Gatlin, Emily Tsoi, and myself, Andrew Weber.
The topic of sustainability has been increasingly discussed among the current generation, as the environment is crucial to our existence, and yet, is suffering. Recently in class we’ve started analyzing sustainability and exploring what we can do about it. After a preliminary research, our group found that, “Sustainability focuses on meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” When discussing sustainability, people commonly think of the three pillars which divide the complex issue into social, economic, and environmental sectors. In further research, we found that the three pillars all have different jobs when it comes to sustainability. The social pillar conveys that as citizens in this world, we all have responsibilities to promote and fix social issues such as poverty, human inequality and social injustice. The social pillar involves both saving our planet and also saving everyone on it. We tend to ignore these issues because it may not affect us directly, however, it will impact future generations. The second pillar we learned about was the environmental pillar, which is about saving us from corporate exploitation and neglect. Many people take our natural resources for granted and use them however much one would like. The degradation of the environment and its resources by irresponsible companies negatively affects us all. This pillar attempts to raise awareness on ways to decrease our carbon footprints recommending the use of renewable resources, recycling, and ways to reuse our resources that we already have so we don’t have to keep retrieving more. The last pillar we learned about is the economic pillar. This pillar is about maintaining a healthy balance of our ecosystems by using fair trade and efficient allocation of all of our resources between companies. This is another important pillar because a lot of people in the U.S. are heavy consumers and we consume an abundance of unsustainable products, which is once again increasing our carbon footprints. Continue reading “Sustainability: Generational Impact Seen Through Literature Study”