Conscious Choice: Sustainability Begins at Home

September 2001

Sustainability Begins at Home

Out of our hands? Think again. The choice is ours.

by Ana Arias Terry

We live on a planet where we’re intricately connected to all things. With six billion people roaming the globe, what we do at home trickles to other communities local and foreign. In the grand scheme of our environmental, economic, and social actions, somebody is always downstream from someone else no matter how high up the mountain we live.

To genuinely wrap our brains around the impact that our actions have on the sustainability of our planet, we must first understand something of the big picture and the terminology. It’s also helpful to understand how our communities can function more sustainably. Then we can more easily pull out the magnifying glass and see how to foster a sustainable development cycle right in our backyards.

Instead of covering the conventional suggestions for sustainability — many of which are legitimate, highly useful, and often cited — this article will draw heavily from the insights found in Alan AtKisson’s Believing Cassandra: An Optimist Looks at a Pessimist World and John C. Ryan’s Seven Wonders: Everyday Things for a Healthy Planet.

The Big Picture

Alan AtKisson is an author, songwriter, and the founder of AtKisson Associates, a consulting organization that seeks to quicken the pace of sustainable development. "To understand that humanity is on a collision course with the laws of Nature is to be stuck in what I call Cassandra’s Dilemma," writes AtKisson. "You can see the most likely outcome of current trends. You can warn people about what is happening, and underscore the need for a change in course. Some people can understand you, and a few may even believe you and try to take action — but the vast majority can not, or will not, respond."

By far, says AtKisson, the worst scenario for any Cassandra is being proved right. In his book, AtKisson offers ways to escape Cassandra’s Dilemma by shedding light on its causes and then making specific suggestions to ensure that the gloom and doom projections by the Cassandras of the human world turn out wrong.

While definitions of "sustainable" abound, AtKisson presents a compilation of definitions that build upon each other. He draws from the writings of primary authors Donnella Meadows and Dennis Meadows in The Limits to Growth and its follow-up Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future, as well as on definitions by economist Herman Daly.

AtKisson’s definition starts with the assertion that a society that is sustainable is one that can continue to persevere for generations. Yet since there isn’t a single society that can persist indefinitely, sustainability becomes an ideal, such as truth or freedom. While it’s not possible to achieve a perfect state of sustainability, says AtKisson, the goal of a society is to be as sustainable as it can be, to strive for that ideal.

AtKisson then paraphrases Daly’s three proposed conditions for the generational survival of societies. The first condition is that renewable resources (e.g., trees, water) can’t be used up more quickly than they can replenish themselves. The second condition is that if you are using up renewable resources — such as fossil fuels — for basic living requirements, you’d best be working on developing renewable options, such as solar technologies, that can someday take their place. The third is that you can’t unload garbage, whether chemicals or cars, faster than Nature can handle it — at least, not without causing havoc. This means never unloading certain types of trash, such as plutonium or chemicals that cause malformations.

When the above conditions are met, says AtKisson, we’re left with physical sustainability. But there’s an important social component that can’t be overlooked. Meadows and company indicate that a sustainable society is "one that is far-seeing enough, flexible enough, and wise enough not to undermine its physical or its social systems of support" (italics mine). Without functioning families and government, for example, long-term continuation is not feasible.

Morality and ethics should not be left out either, says AtKisson. As indicated by the Brundtland Commission (a.k.a. the World Commission on Environment and Development), sustainable development is development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." But the concept of "needs," argues, AtKisson, can be and has been vague enough to be misrepresented by organizations who claim to espouse sustainability.

Once again, AtKisson points to the definition in Beyond the Limits as one that guides us on the importance of honesty through system dynamics. "From a systems point of view," write Meadows et. al., "a sustainable society is one that has in place informational, social, and institutional mechanisms to keep in check the positive feedback loops that cause exponential population and capital growth." The authors go on to say, "In order to be socially sustainable the combination of population, capital, and technology in the society would have to be configured so that the material living standard is adequate and secure for everyone." AtKisson says that by knowing that the conditions for sustainability are measurable, we can keep ourselves honest regarding what is genuinely sustainable and what isn’t.

On Middle Ground

Turning our attention to how communities can work more sustainably helps us get a step closer to our own individual efforts. Maureen Hart, author of Guide to Sustainable Community Indicators, Second Edition, has created a checklist of fourteen indicators to evaluate sustainability. She offers insights into how communities can assess their own level of sustainability.

Among the factors to be considered are the type (e.g., non-renewable or renewable) and amount of resources consumed, and the rate at which renewable resources are consumed (which, again, should be below the rate it takes them to regenerate). In addition, communities should also evaluate the extent to which local and non-local supporting ecosystems are maintained or degraded, and the level at which "human and social capital" is actively improved, maintained, or simply "allowed to waste away."

Ken Meter, president of Crossroads Resource Center in Minnesota, an organization that provides communities with the knowledge tools they need to become more sustainable, is the author of a guidebook called Neighborhood Sustainability Indicators. Like Hart, he shares practical sustainability pointers at the community level.

The primary wisdom slice he offers is for neighborhoods to consider sustainability as a long-term endeavor. "Organize your neighborhood to think of sustainability in a very long-term way, with perhaps a fifty-year time horizon," says Meter. "The most important step you can take after that is to link issues that are often seen as separate." In other words, look for patterns in issues that seem unrelated. It’s this type of integrated view, says Meter, which is particularly effective in community-based sustainability efforts.

Our Own Backyards

Bringing the point home as to what we can do at the individual level is John C. Ryan, Research Director at Northwest Environment Watch in Seattle. In Seven Wonders, Ryan selects what he calls "seven sustainable wonders of the world," which are of note because of their "ability to get jobs done at minimal cost to the Earth. They are wondrous because unlike most wonders of our modern economy...everyone on Earth could use them without overtaxing the planet’s finite natural wealth." Ryan goes on to explain that these particular wonders are not the only ones out there or even the most crucial for sustainability. But they are extremely "powerful at improving human life at little or no cost to nature — arguably, the central challenge of the twenty-first century."

These seven wonders have the power to show us ways to see our lives differently and "understand what it means to accept or reject the challenge to live more sustainably," says Ryan. These wonders look forward instead of backwards. "The only thing colossal about them is the ecological harm they all fight."

With every instance, Ryan helps the reader make the transition from the specific wonder he addresses to others that are categorically related.

Wonder #1: Bicycle. According to Ryan, this form of transportation is the most energy efficient ever created. What else is so wondrous about a bike? How it doesn’t impact our world. "A bicyclist’s breathing (the closest a bike comes to exhaust) doesn’t acidify the rain or kill people with carbon monoxide and particulates; neither does it alter the global climate. A bicyclist fuels up on carbohydrates, not fossil fuels and imported oil. Bicycles don’t cause traffic jams or require paving over whole landscapes at the expense of croplands, government coffers, and livable neighborhoods."

By the way, almost 50 percent of all car trips in the U.S. hover at three miles or less, and 25 percent-plus are less than a single mile. If you can’t think in terms of bicycles in your own lifestyle, consider other forms of public transportation such as trains and buses.

Wonder #2: Condom. "The condom is a remarkable little device: weighing in at a fraction of an ounce, it simultaneously fights three of the most serious problems facing humans at the end of the twentieth century: sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and population growth. Those are big jobs for a flimsy tube of rubber to accomplish," says Ryan. Only about 50 percent of lovers engaging in the "40 million or so acts of sexual intercourse worldwide that risk unwanted pregnancy or disease" will actually use condoms.

Ryan thinks there’s plenty of room for us to make these things used more widely. Recently a survey of Americans with more than one sex partner showed that "those who never use condoms, or use them inconsistently, outnumber those who always used them by 11 to 1." As for other environmental factors, it’s the only sustainable wonder created to be thrown out after it’s used once. "Fortunately, because almost all condoms are made from natural latex (rubber), their ecological impact is much lower than if they were made from synthetic rubber." Let’s not forget, says Ryan, that in the scheme of things the rubber production worldwide is hardly impacted by condoms. One car tire alone has enough natural rubber to make 1,100 condoms.

Even if the packaging and lubricant are less than ideal, let’s keep them in perspective. "If all the world’s couples used condoms every time they had sex, they’d end up using 100 million condoms a day and 200 tons of rubber, 70 tons of lubricant, and 1,400 tons of packaging. But that would still pale in comparison with the 5,500 tons of synthetic and natural rubber consumed in one day’s worth of the tire manufacturing" in this country alone, says Ryan.

Wonder #3: Ceiling Fan. "Electricity is so familiar that it is easy to forget that the invisible juice flowing out of small sockets in our walls causes acid rain, global warming, salmon extinction, nuclear waste, and various human health problems," says Ryan. "Roughly half of North American’s electricity comes from burning coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel."

So why is the ceiling fan such a sustainable wonder? "It’s an elegant and energy-efficient alternative to air-conditioning and all the problems air-conditioning causes." Fans can make the circulating air in the room feel about 9 degrees Fahrenheit cooler. They also use amazingly little electricity. At full speed ahead, a ceiling fan uses about 50-75 watts of electricity — which is equivalent to about one incandescent light bulb — and about a tenth the wattage that a medium-sized room AC unit would use.

Cost differences? A fan running at its fastest speed for twelve hours daily costs approximately $1.50 per moth, whereas running the AC costs about $20 and up.

Wonder #4: Clothesline. This wonder takes few resources to manufacture, doesn’t pollute, sucks up zero electricity or fuel, and takes advantage of renewable energy sources such as the sun and wind. "Line-dried clothes smell fresh and have no static, and people who air their drippy laundry outside get to notice the weather, which flowers are in bloom, and who their neighbors are," says Ryan.

He believes that the clothesline exemplifies one way in which we can meet some of our needs without burdening the planet. "In 1997, when student activists at Vermont’s Middlebury College wanted to protest nuclear energy, they organized students across New England to hang their sheets out on clotheslines as a symbolic protest. Their simple message: sustainability can begin in our own backyards," writes Ryan.

Wonder #5: Pad Thai. This noodle dish of vegetables, garlic, and spices — a mainstay food in Thai restaurants that often make the dish available with tofu — makes the grade as a sustainable wonder because it’s comprised of vegetables and rice, ranks high in nutrition and low in fat, and its environmental impact is lower than typical American fare. This wonder exemplifies the benefits to our planet and fat intake by consuming chow that’s lower on the food chain and viewing meat as a delicacy as opposed to the featured event. Consuming more grub that’s centered around vegetables and grains places a lower impact on the planet.

To bring the point home, Ryan illustrates what relying on more beef does for sustainability. "A pound of beef produced in the United States sends about a half a pound of methane into the atmosphere — the greenhouse equivalent of burning half a gallon of gasoline. That’s six times more than a pound of U.S. rice generates."

Wonder #6: Public Library. The average library in North America lends approximately 100,000 books yearly but purchases fewer than 5,000. This saves about 50 tons of paper and the equivalent of 250 tons of greenhouse gas emissions along the way. It also means this process saves the loss of habitat and fights pollution. The U.S. consumes more than 30 percent of the globe’s paper production.

Ryan points out that libraries lend out much more than books, of course (e.g., periodicals, videos, etc). He doesn’t see a single reason why the "library concept" of reuse couldn’t be expanded to incorporate a whole set of useful things. In Berkeley, California, and Tacoma Park, Maryland, tool libraries exist. All libraries, says Ryan, but especially the public library introduce the utmost "ecological benefits: a book borrowed from a public library is most likely to take the place of a book purchased from a store." The benefits of reuse should be emphasized much more, says Ryan. After all, reuse is "one of the overlooked shortcuts that can help us quickly move toward an environmentally sound way of life."

Wonder #7: Ladybugs. Out of 450 species of ladybugs that exist in North America, 448 of them are deemed beneficial because they consume large numbers of crop eaters such as aphids. In the larval stage, a ladybug will consume 350 aphids over three or four weeks. An adult ladybug will eat between 40 and 75 aphids daily, or approximately 5,000 in its life. Large colonies of millions of such adults make a difference to agriculture. "While worldwide sales of pesticides total about $30 billion annually, the pest control services provided by the pests’ natural enemies are worth an estimated four times that amount," says Ryan.

Many farmers no longer believe in the virtues of this sustainable wonder. It’s a sad predicament, particularly when you consider that pesticides often work not only on the intended critters but beneficial ones as well, and that many insects become resistant to certain chemicals. What’s required to make agriculture more sustainable and allow organisms such as ladybugs to thrive? Changes in both public policies and consumer habits, writes Ryan.

"No species is a pest until someone deems it one, and every species — even those that become pests — is a sustainable wonder, the successful result of millions of years of trial and error (or what biologists call natural selection). The ecosystems of the world are built upon their backs."

The Power of One (by one)

We often forget that our "voices" and our "choices" really do matter, says Ryan. "Although sustainable wonders themselves deserve praise, it’s the steps we take — simplifying our lives and advocating for change — that make all the difference," says Ryan. He’s a firm believer that one of the biggest hurdles to more sustainable living is habit. But when we allow ourselves to begin by doing things differently than in the past and we allow new habits to take over, the old stuff can be relegated to memory.

Striving for sustainability in our own backyards doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Equipped with education, a willingness to make some changes in our habits, and action-focused activism, however significant or minor, we can bring sustainability into our homes.

Resources

Center for a New American Dream

BioGems

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