Reflections

What is Sustainability?

While carbon emissions reduction is significant in promoting sustainability, sustainability itself is much broader. 

It encompasses environmental, economic, and social aspects of life, with separate attention to every component in order to foster sustainability and long-term development while preserving a healthy planet for generations to come.

These are the words of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In essence, the IPCC acknowledges that the world is in deep trouble on climate change, but that we CAN turn it around. 

The synthesis report confirms humans are unequivocally increasing greenhouse gas emissions to record levels. Global temperatures are now 1.1℃ above pre-industrial levels and are likely to reach 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels in the early 2030s.

Dr Jane Goodall is world-leading primatologist who has spent decades at the forefront of conservation.

Dr Goodall says poverty and unsustainable lifestyles are among the main drivers of environmental destruction.

For all humankind's flaws and destructive behaviours, Jane Goodall believes we can still save the Earth.

Now 88, she's as focused as ever on bettering the planet, wanting to "speed up" rather than slow down while there's still "so much to be done" for the environment - and everyone has a part to play.

June 5th is World Environment Day.

Led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for 50 years and held annually on 5 June since 1973, World Environment Day is the largest global platform for environmental public outreach and is celebrated by millions of people across the world. 

What can you do?

Refuse, reduce, re-use, and recycle your plastics.

Why?

Motivation to choose to refuse single use and other plastic items...

“Between 2013 and 2015, I sailed around the world in a small catamaran. I sailed in the Indian Ocean and there, clearly, I sailed in plastic waste for nearly two months. It was a shock. Sometimes I had to stop 40 times a day because the waste was stuck in my rudders, in my daggerboards. I had been lucky enough to do that same circumnavigation as a child, and when I talk about it with my parents, they tell me they never had to pick up a piece of plastic waste in the sea.”