What is Sustainability?
By Tom Tozier | Posted on August 24, 2010
Green this, green that, sustainability, recycle, global-warming, ice-melts, polar bears—do you ever feel that you’re just sick of hearing about all these things? Of course then you feel guilty for not being “green” but just what does all this mean? So many terms, so little time.
Is being green sustainable? Is sustainability the same has recycling?
I know that for a while I just could not tell the difference between recycling and being sustainable. I was just unclear whether these two things were the same concept just using different terminology or two separate practices. I came to be under the impression that sustainability had to do with farming and food and that was about it. Recycling was, well, recycling.
And don’t forget we were being told that all of this had some strange effect on the earth’s temperature and was causing the arctic ice to melt and the oceans to rise and since I was living at about 12 feet above sea level at that time, I figured my house would be under water before you knew it. Maybe that’s why I moved to the mountains at 5,000 feet above sea level.
Sustainability isn’t just about growing food or climate change; it’s also about managing our resources. You see if we’re not managing our resources a little bit more responsibility there isn’t going to be many resources left to manage. Sustainable living is really about trying not to deplete the earth of everything; it’s about leaving the world a better place for future generations.
What does all this have to do with your printing operation? Well, how you run your shop, how you produce your work from start to finish has a pretty significant impact on the environment. And it’s not just whether you’re recycling or not. You would be surprised at what you can do to become more sustainable.
But before I even look at that, here’s a piece of advice, if you haven’t done this already, take a look at your parent organization's sustainability policy. Once you have an understanding of the goals your organization has, you can get involved and become a contributor towards achieving those goals, and that makes your print operation even more essential to your organization. One of the best things I ever did at my last job was get a seat at the campus’s sustainability initiative committee.
