Why is Sustainability Important?

Sustainability is the application of Social, Environmental, and Financial practices to create the most efficient system possible.

Sustainable data analytics can be applied to everything we see, do, and think.

What is the ultimate goal? Contrary to what you might think, the idea of "zero impact" sustainability is generally unrealistic for most people and most business. Sustainability is more about responsible consumption when consumption is necessary.

Furthermore, sustainability is defined as the usage of something without inhibiting future generations to use the same resource. In our current economy, we struggle with sustainability because we often don't understand how much we can consume before having an adverse impact on others. Our consumption is mired by layers of opaque and unclear supply lines. In fact, much of our consumption has an adverse impact on current generations, let alone future generations.

For Greenisms, Sustainability is not ethereal. Its real. It is possible, realistic, practical, and obtainable for everyone. But to what extent? That is an ever-changing and will always be an ever-changing subject. The idea of zero-waste is unrealistic for a human, but the idea that sustainability has to be zero waste is also unrealistic.

Sustainability is important on so many levels. To continue running a business, sustainability requires a plan for the future. To continue a healthy lifestyle, sustainability is part of the thought process. To continue living, we must sustain ourselves through sufficiency, before excess.

In places less fortunate than the United States, consumption is not as overblown, and waste is not as prevalent because provisions are less common. Most people in rural places cant just place limitless orders on the internet for junk we likely don't actually need. This isn't to say that people can't consume anything, though. From the point of view that sustainability actually promotes growth, knowledge and supply is often all that are required to radically change an entire community.

Some places around the world over develop in ways where planned expansions are expected but are unrealized leading to ghost cities. In other places, underdevelopment or inequity causes social dillemas where the divide between those who have and have not is visible literally across the street. Looking up in high places doesn't always reveal perfection. Much of the time, riches lead to waste. Too many options just makes for wasted time, indecision, and wasted resources that could be distributed to people who actually have unmet basic human needs.

How many people sleep cold, hungry, or uncomfortable simply because they don't have shelter or access to food? It isn't that there isn't enough shelter available, it's that progress for the sake of progress, inequity, and economic cycles have left these people behind. If you live in a place that is torn apart by a war, it may or may not have anything to do with what you believe. But nonetheless the consequences of war fall to those who live where wars happen. The politicians fighting with words and bombs have no idea what it is like to live in a place physically torn apart by war. Maybe they would behave differently if they did.

All this is to say that Sustainability is truly about love and caring for others; providing for the future and giving to the less fortunate at the potential expense of some often unnecessary choices so that growth is mutually assured.

Sustainability is about conscious thought for the future. Whether that becomes waste free or not isn't our choice. Social equity is for everyone though. Whether your faith or religion has a problem with someone else should have no bearing on human rights to "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a country sustainability, and they'll be good to go forever. At least, that's the goal.

Thanks for reading,