i just finished reading an oldish book [amazon_link id="0865715319" target="_blank" ]The Sustainability Revolution[/amazon_link] by Andres Edwards.
i’m a little embarrassed… that book is nearly 6 years old. this is the first time i’ve read it. yes, i’m a bit behind.
but i’m trying to get caught up!! damn. jumping on a rolling bandwagon can be a bit of a challenge.
i’ve always been a little bit green – my brother & collected bottles for spending money when we were young (4 & 8 ish), we never littered, always recycled bottles & cans & cardboard, clothes were more often 2nd hand or homemade. All that was generally a result, however, of a) hippy parents, and b) not a lot of excess cashola.
thru the late 80′s & early 90′s i definitely went a bit off the rails in my extravagance. young, single, making decent money (compared to what i was used to, at least). bought lots of stuff. threw out lots of stuff. wasted lots of stuff.
becoming a mother brought me back to reality a bit. being smacked in the face with the reality that i had a responsibility to provide a safe, healthy world for my son to grow into, helped. but i still wasn’t vigilant. ya, we installed low-flo toilets, and stopped running the water while brushing our teeth… used the dishwasher once every few days instead of multiple sinks full of hot water each day. washed all our laundry in cold with biodegradable soap… only bought recycled tp & paper towel. set up a recycling station in the kitchen. dug a garden, composted, reused building materials… etc etc.
becoming a business owner (brick & mortar) made it even more apparent how much we have to do… suddenly we were responsible for the habits of our customers… out come the biodegradable coffee cups, lids, stir sticks, sugar packets! sugar-cane & potato starch take-out containers. all containers of every type recycled, along with more cardboard than i’d ever seen. lobbying suppliers to stock items with less packaging, or sourced more locally. buying locally, as much as possible, even when it cost more. supporting local talent.
with that business now out of our hair, and the nest empty, i have time to ponder my personal contribution to the sustenance of our earth.
that’s how we got to that book. I was struck by the sheer depth of what real sustainability encompasses. i thought i had a general idea – and i did, to a degree. but really, i was just looking at the tiny tip of the iceberg.
i don’t know if there’s time for me to learn everything that i can do. there’s simply SO much!
i think i’ll pick one aspect and learn that first, rather than trying to learn it all simultaneously.
the asilomar declaration for sustainable agriculture interests me. i am very interested in food security and this set of “seven challenges” seem common sense to me for any semi-rural community.
william mcdonough interests me – smart human, with a wry sense of humour – (check out his TEDtalk). it’s mind-blowing to me what can be accomplished with attention to details, and a little lateral thought.
so, my challenge is to look at how i can apply principles of sustainability to my own business. that is my target for 2011. to become a sustainable, green, lateral thinking, detail-oriented business(person) and share what i learn with others and encourage them to do the same.
look out 2011…
if you’ve suggestions of other books, talks, videos, etc that are important to one’s sustainability education, i’d love to hear about it! i have read/watched more than just the above, btw – this isn’t the extent of my learning so far, just the most recent.
