Environmental Sustainability
Imagine you are at home. It's 6:00 and the food is ready for dinner. You look in the fridge and there is no more milk. What are you going to do? You can a: drink water for dessert with your fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies, which sounds pretty gross to me, or you can attempt plan b: drive to Cub, perk, walk inside, trek the quarter mile to the dairy section, trek the quarter mile to the checkout lane, wait a half hour to get help (even in the 6 items and under lane) before driving home to salvage what you can from your now bone-dry casserole. Now although both of those sound pretty unappealing, there is one more option: sustainable living. What is that, you ask? Sustainable living is, in short, living in harmony with the community around you and the natural world you are placed in, in such a way that your actions will not harmfully affect the world around you now, or the state of that community for future generations. In a sustainable community, the above situation could have been resolved a lot more simply. Ideally, you would have walked out your door, and the walked or biked the four or five blocks to the corner market, where there is no line and the whole store itself is the size of cub's dairy department, maki
Bringing back public space is a big part of this idea. One great example of this the library in uptown, which is built underground with a park on top of it. This includes recognizing the issues of gender equality, active participation in community decision making, and access to education and health care. At D'amico and Sons, where I work, there are apartments upstairs, and office space next door. Where every sustainability indicator applies and is played out successfully. In Uptown, due to high meters and expensive ramp prices, people are practically discouraged from driving a car. This happens by promoting development that reduces adverse effects on ecology and the natural resource capital. The second most important aspect of sustainability is at the social level. The imbalance between humans and the systems that make life on earth possible has many causes, including population growth, polluting technologies, economies blind to ecological value, lack of public awareness, and heavy resource consumption. The term "sustainable development" goes beyond the boundaries of science and business development and trade to include human development, values, and differences in cultures. I believe that through environmental and social sustainability we can grasp the sense of community that we lost so long ago, while still feeling emotional, economic, and ecological success. Human habits are out of balance with life on earth. Through locally owned shops offering locally grown, produced, or built products, along with the communities respect for each other, organizations and companies can have economic success within in the community without having to even leave the community itself.
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Acceptance Essays
