Sustainability is greater than only a buzzword. It’s our pathway to an extended and healthy life on this planet for us, our youngsters, their children, and beyond. Without sustainability, we could exhaust all our natural resources and create an excellent greater climate crisis than we’re in today.
Fortunately, recent sustainability trends are pushing us in the suitable direction toward protecting our planet for generations to come back. Below, we outline among the latest sustainability trends, the important thing areas of sustainability, and sustainable development within the face of an exploding population.
What are the most recent sustainability trends?
While many sustainability trends are working today, some are newer than others. Let’s have a look at among the latest top sustainability trends and the way they’re helping.
Working From Home
Distant work is nothing recent, because it’s been a growing a part of the workforce for a while now. Nevertheless, the coronavirus pandemic took do business from home from an unusual perk to a necessity, as offices worldwide shut all the way down to stop the disease’s spread.
Initially, some employees panicked on the considered working remotely, wondering how they may ever get any work done from their lounge. As time passed, people adjusted, and a few fell in love with working remotely. This allowed them to work in whatever uniform they desired, limit the miles on their vehicles, and avoid rush-hour traffic.
A secondary a part of this was the impact it could possibly have on the environment. With fewer people on the road, this implies fewer greenhouse gas emissions (GHG emissions) and fewer consumption of fossil fuels from each day commuters. Distant work has develop into some of the recent trends in sustainability, as many employees now see this as a convenience factor and a option to do their part in slowing manmade climate change.
Making Finance Sustainable
Finance isn’t the primary place many look to when considering sustainability, nevertheless it is a recent sustainability trend gaining popularity. The premise of sustainable finance is working with financial services that integrate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria into their models. Whether or not they use it when making business decisions, investments, purchasing decisions, business model development, or other business-related dealings, ESG at all times plays a pivotal role in the ultimate decision.
Today, many investors are taking a look at corporations that at all times incorporate ESG criteria into their business, making finance an element of environmental sustainability.
Corporations Going Net Zero
The strive to develop into net zero continues to be a giant piece of the sustainability puzzle. Corporations are finding ways to scale back their carbon footprints by switching to renewable energy, similar to solar panels and wind turbines. Also they are making smaller changes, similar to changing their fleets to electric vehicles or hybrids, installing LED lighting, changing their waste disposal methods, and more.
In some cases, corporations will purchase carbon offsets to have a sustainable business model that’s carbon neutral. These carbon offsets are investments into environmentally friendly projects that can help neutralize an organization’s remaining carbon footprint.
Seawilding within the Ocean
Ocean sustainability can also be critical, especially for island nations. One recent trend in these island nations is seawilding. This is analogous to land-based rewilding — conservation acts that aim to revive and protect natural processes and wilderness areas — but modified for the ocean.
One such sustainability trend is seabed rewilding, which goals to preserve and restore seagrass within the oceans. Seagrass not only absorbs carbon 35 times faster than trees, but it could possibly also reduce storm surges, helping protect these islands and improve year-round tourism.
What Are the 5 Areas of Sustainability?
Sustainability can take many styles and sizes, but there are five fundamental areas of sustainability: environmental, socio-cultural, technological, economic, and public policy. Let’s explore these five areas and what they mean.
Environmental
Environmental sustainability is conserving natural resources and protecting ecosystems to assist support its health and well-being now and in the longer term. A key to environmental sustainability is it’s a slow-moving process, so changes made today will not be felt for a few years, meaning you should look ahead on the longer-term effects of this area of sustainability to understand its full profit.
Some examples of environmental sustainability include:
- Offering tax advantages for corporations that get a percentage of their electricity from renewable energy or clean energy sources
- Planting trees on a company campus to soak up carbon from the atmosphere and offset deforestation
Socio-Cultural
Sustainability isn’t all concerning the environment and ecosystem. It is usually about society and culture as a complete. That is where socio-cultural sustainability is available in.
Socio-cultural sustainability is a measure of peoples’ opportunities to meet their potential. This could vary greatly by region and the varied stages of our lives, but the fundamentals remain the identical: Are you presented with the opportunities you have to reach your potential and maximize wellness?
Some examples of social-cultural sustainability may include:
- Grants for school tuition for lower-income families
- Food stamp programs to make sure those in poverty are receiving proper nutrition
- Protecting certain lands for natives of that area
Technological
Technological sustainability is innovation that considers natural resources and supports economic and social development. This technology’s fundamental goal is to dramatically reduce environmental impact and ecological risks while making a sustainable product.
There are three fundamental definitions for sustainable technology:
- Substitution: The technology replaces a non-sustainable technology or process with a sustainable one, similar to switching from nonrenewable energy to renewable.
- Prevention: The technology prevents deterioration, contamination, or other unfavorable impacts to the environment through its production or use.
- Efficiency: The technology enables reduced energy use or uses natural resources more efficiently.
Economic
Economic sustainability is the flexibility to support long-term economic growth without negatively impacting a community’s social, environmental, and cultural facets. For instance, you possibly can make a donation to a neighborhood charity that helps support a particular community or commit to only shopping locally to assist construct the local economy.
Public Policy
Sustainable public policy is when lawmakers develop policies on the international, federal, state, or local level that help to advance environmental, economic and social or cultural sustainability. For instance, enacting laws requiring corporations to lower their carbon emissions every year until they reach a certain level.
What Is the Way forward for Sustainable Development?
Sustainable development is a must moving forward, because it’s estimated Earth will likely be home to upward of 9.7 billion people by 2050. This may end in a 54% increase in food demand and 56% increase in energy demand worldwide. Without sustainable development, our carbon emissions would skyrocket, leaving our planet and our health worse than it’s today.
Based on The Nature Conservancy, if we maintain the established order and don’t make any changes, we could see global temps soar by one other 3.2 degree Celsius, one other 4.9 billion people adversely affected by polluted air, dramatic overfishing, increased water stress, and more natural habitat loss. Fortunately, change is feasible.
Let’s have a look at some key sustainable development goals moving forward.
Addressing Energy Use
Step one in the longer term of sustainable development is addressing energy use, as this can rise dramatically with the world’s population. While curtailing energy use is unrealistic, we are able to shift the way in which we obtain energy away from fossil fuels and toward sustainable methods, similar to solar, wind, water, and even nuclear power. The goal could be to scale back the share of electricity we devour from fossil fuels to only 13% — an enormous dip from the 76% we’re at now — in accordance with The Nature Conservancy.
Addressing Land Use
Because the population grows, we now have to deal with and feed people, which requires land. Compounding this issue is the undeniable incontrovertible fact that renewable energy tends to take up much more real estate than fossil-fuel-based energy. So, we now have to seek out ways to make room for renewable energy, more people, and more crops all while not displacing nature. This starts by prioritizing land that’s already been converted for renewables and maximizing the efficiency of each acre.
Farmers also need room for food production, so future sustainability trends will deal with maximizing the effectiveness of their acreage. For instance, we’d like to make sure crops are grown efficiently and match crops’ natural needs, similar to a lot of water, with appropriate geographic locations. We may also shift toward more non-meat products, reducing the quantity of land dedicated to livestock and increasing the quantity of land available for more versatile crops.
Addressing Overfishing
Our food not only comes from the land. It also comes from the ocean and other bodies of water. If we proceed on our current path, 84% of fisheries could be overfished, putting stress on the food supply from the ocean, in accordance with The Nature Conservancy. Continuing this overfishing trend would result in an 11% decrease in annual fish supply chain yields by 2050 in comparison with 2010.
Nevertheless, with improved fishery management, through technological advancements and policy changes, we are able to end all overfishing and increase the fishery yield by 26% in 2050 in comparison with 2010.
You Have a Part in Supporting Sustainability Trends Too
While sustainable development could seem too big for one person to make a difference, that’s not the case. You possibly can do your part by reducing your carbon footprint in some ways. Sure, it’s possible you’ll not find a way to rewrite national policy, but you possibly can seek a position that means that you can do business from home, add solar panels to your private home, reduce water waste in your private home, and more. If everybody does just a little bit to enhance, the combined effort can result in significant improvements.
You may as well reduce your carbon footprint and help support sustainability trends by purchasing carbon offsets from Terrapass. We provide a variety of carbon offset packages to match every lifestyle. Select the one which suits you and help offset among the carbon you create each day.
Dropped at you by terrapass.com
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