What Does Sustainability Really Mean?

The #1 green thing we can all do.

Green.

Eco-friendly.

Sustainable.

Zero waste.

Low carbon.

Net zero.

Alongside the expanding lexicon of environmental terms, sustainable businesses continue burgeoning to satisfy the ever-growing consumer appetite for eco-friendly products and services.

Yet, how many of these ‘sustainable’ businesses are actually helping us live a lower-carbon lifestyle?

Let’s not lose focus on the premise behind the sustainability movement: to protect the earth’s natural ecosystem, which we’ve been systemically destroying for decades due to mass consumerism.

While some green businesses do provide genuine solutions to help us reduce our environmental impact, most of them don’t actually help us minimise carbon emissions.

On the contrary, the majority seem to exist solely to get us to buy more stuff under the guise of ‘green is better’.

Ah, the feel-good factor of buying stuff labelled ‘good for the environment’.

It’s an emotionally compelling incentive that justifies our desire to buy things. Who doesn’t love going on a shopping spree, especially when it’s for a good cause?

Likewise, corporates and organisations have been spending huge amounts on carbon offsetting based on the premise that it would neutralise their massive carbon footprint and make things right for the planet.

Alas, this burn now, pay later approach has done nothing to improve our planet’s well-being, as revealed by the Guardian’s exposé that found 90% of Verra’s rainforest offset credits to be “phantom credits” (Verra is the world’s leading carbon credit certifier).

As it stands, our global greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high, as of June 2023.

But if buying sustainable products and offsetting our carbon emissions aren’t actually helping us achieve our climate goals, what will?

What’s the Most Efficient Way to Reduce Our Carbon Footprint?

The single most effective way to lower our carbon emissions is to simply consume less.

Simple, but not easy.

Yes, some sustainable products are lower-carbon and do allow us to meaningfully reduce our carbon footprint, but do we really need them in the first place?

For example, shoes made from upcycled or vegan materials might tick the sustainable boxes, but if you end up with a whole closet of them—and remember, you’re one out of millions—you’re still generating unnecessary carbon emissions.

It would be different if you bought a pair because your old shoes were worn out and you couldn’t repair them. That would be a purchase based on need rather than want.

But enforcing that level of self-control requires a fundamentally different mindset and value system.

Unfortunately, until and unless businesses can implement truly eco-friendly and clean end-to-end processes—from sourcing to production to logistics to distribution—which isn’t happening anytime soon, every time we buy something new, we’re racking up our carbon footprint.

(Update: I just came across the world's first net zero carbon shoe—without carbon offsets!—by Allbirds.)

Recycling and offsetting are reactive measures that won’t make a meaningful difference if we don’t radically change the way we live and consume.

Examples of things that meaningfully reduce waste and carbon emissions:

Anything reusable for a long period of time (e.g. menstrual cups, washable & reusable grocery bags & containers)
Second-hand or vintage apparel and shoes
Energy-efficient, repairable appliances and devices
Things powered by renewable energy (electric cars, solar-powered homes)

The problem is that reusable and repairable things don’t generate as much revenue for businesses compared to single-use and fixed-life products.

Businesses need consumers to keep consuming so they stay profitable; that’s the essence of our capitalist economy.

But at what cost?

We are out of time to prevent our planet from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celcius above pre-industrial levels. In fact, according to the BBC, “Researchers say there's now a 66% chance we will pass the 1.5C global warming threshold between now and 2027.”

That’s only four years away.

Why Is It Important to Keep Our Planet from Warming Beyond 1.5 Degrees Celcius?

As of March 2023, we were at +1.48°C compared to pre-industrial levels.

Keeping it below 1.5°C will help preserve the Arctic’s sea ice layer and avoid further destabilising Antarctica and Greenland, which are key to averting severe climate disasters that could worsen global poverty, hunger, and drought.

The prospects aren’t good. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do everything we can to prevent the worst-case scenario.

This means radically adjusting our expectations and needs.

All of us—businesses, corporates, and individuals—need to scale down our materialistic and monetary expectations.

How much money or stuff is enough? Won’t we always want more?

The truth is, we need a lot less than we think.

The Moneyless Man, Mark Boyle lived without money for 3 years. He stayed in an off-grid caravan, scavenged and grew his own food, and walked or cycled to get around.

Boyle’s story is a powerful demonstration of how adaptable humans can be, though not necessarily a good example of modern-day sustainable living.

For more practical yet equally inspiring examples, here are some amazing individuals living ultra-low-carbon lifestyles (excerpts below).

“In her effort to live on one tonne of carbon a year, London-based activist Rosalind Readhead realised that turning on her gas boiler for just 45 minutes ate up her entire daily budget of carbon. When she later installed secondary glazing on her windows, however, she found she hardly had to put the heating on at all.
Readhead found herself struggling to completely abolish meat from her diet, especially through the colder winter months when she did eat the odd meal with lower-carbon meats, such as chicken and venison.”

Sustainability Involves Doing the Hard Things

No, it’s not easy or comfortable to make the drastic lifestyle changes needed to limit our carbon footprint, as those striving to live ultra-low-carbon lifestyles have found.

But if we really care about our planet and want to ensure humanity’s survival, we need to do a whole lot more than just buy sustainable products and offset our carbon emissions.

We need to treat the climate crisis as an actual crisis (which it is), and proactively avoid high-carbon consumption and activities.

We have to be willing to do the hard things, such as:

Eat a plant-based diet.
Only buy new things when we absolutely have to (which is a real challenge in our capitalist economy).
Walk, cycle, or take public transport as much as possible (how I miss the pedestrian-friendly streets and temperatures in the UK!).
Prioritise our collective well-being over personal gain—what helps the planet ultimately benefits the human population.
Question the environmental impact of trends before jumping on the bandwagon.

None of these things is easy, but we (humans) caused the problem, and we’ve all got a duty to step up and fix it.

Technology’s Destructive Carbon Footprint & Our Role in Enabling It

I love technology.

I think the technological advances and inventions that allow us to live such empowered and independent lives are nothing short of remarkable.

I can’t imagine living without the Internet and the digital tools and apps we have at our disposal.

But therein lies the problem.

It’s easy to be distracted by the flashiness of our smart AI-powered world, alongside the hyped-up promises of a free and liberated Web 3.0 future.

As a concept, Web 3.0 (aka Web3, the third generation of the World Wide Web) promises to make the Internet more accessible, private, and secure for users.

It envisions a world without centralised companies, where people are in control of their own data, and transactions are transparently recorded on blockchains (i.e. databases searchable by anyone).

Sadly, the reality is far from the ideal vision we’ve been sold on.

I love Molly White’s perceptive characterisation of Web 3.0 as “an enormous grift that’s pouring lighter fluid on our already smoldering planet”. She’s one of several enlightened critics of cryptocurrency who’ve pointed out the devastating environmental effects of blockchain technology.

In a 2022 report entitled ‘Revisiting Bitcoin’s Carbon Footprint’, climate and economics researchers across Europe estimated that “Bitcoin mining may be responsible for 65.4 megatonnes of CO2 per year … which is comparable to country-level emissions in Greece (56.6 megatonnes in 2019).”

Meanwhile, we’re burning through our carbon budget despite the increasingly frequent and worsening droughts, fire seasons, and floods.

Will AI Solve Humanity’s Greatest Problems?

And of course, we have to talk about the current obsession with generative AI, which has the world’s tech giants scrambling to stay ahead.

Once again, we’re told that this newest technology will do it all: end poverty, cure diseases, solve climate change, etc.

But like all the others before it, this too, will be nothing more than a sham unless there is a complete transformation of our economic and social system.

First, we need a system that prioritises our collective human needs and the protection of our planet.

A truly egalitarian, life-supporting social and economic system. Not our current capitalist system designed to benefit the rich and powerful.

Naomi Klein puts it eloquently in her insightful dissection of AI:

"Clear away the hallucinations and it looks far more likely that AI will be brought to market in ways that actively deepen the climate crisis. First, the giant servers that make instant essays and artworks from chatbots possible are an enormous and growing source of carbon emissions.
Second, as companies like Coca-Cola start making huge investments to use generative AI to sell more products, it’s becoming all too clear that this new tech will be used in the same ways as the last generation of digital tools: that what begins with lofty promises about spreading freedom and democracy ends up micro targeting ads at us so that we buy more useless, carbon-spewing stuff."

This isn’t to say that technology is bad.

It’s not, but the way it’s used and the intentions driving its development are.

Progress is important; it’s how we grow as humans. But it shouldn’t come at the cost of our home.

Money and materialistic possessions might make us feel good, but all the money in the world can’t buy us a new planet if we keep plundering our natural ecosystem.

So, What Does Sustainability Really Mean?

In our current world, sustainability seems to be rooted in buying sustainable products and subscribing to commercial initiatives to offset our emissions.

These are merely half-hearted ‘burn now, pay later’ measures that allow corporations and governments to continue business as usual without doing the hard work to actually make a meaningful difference.

In reality, sustainability starts with drastically reevaluating our needs as consumers and embracing a far more modest and minimalist lifestyle.

One where we appreciate what we have rather than covet what we don’t.

It’s not an easy thing to do. It requires a total reset of the way we think, live, and consume.

But it’s a simple matter of priority.

The question is, does the planet’s well-being matter enough for us to do the hard things?