Sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. The term, in its environmental usage, refers to the potential longevity of vital human ecological support systems, such as the planet’s climatic system, systems of agriculture, industry, forestry, and fisheries, and human communities in general and the various systems on which they depend in balance with the impacts of our unsustainable or sustainable design.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability
Maintain, consume, balance, emission, impact, conserve, preserve, environment, green, eco-friendly, global, influence, footprint.
This word “Sustainability” seems to be a relatively new one but it’s one that is continuously getting thrown around. So what does it mean? How does it affect me? How can I create a more sustainable environment around me? How can I do all of this without becoming invisible?
It seems that the answers are unclear so much needs to be done to save this world in which we live. A major part to the problem is that society can use resource much faster than they can be replenished.
“A sustainable world, says World Bank economist Herman Daly, would not use renewable resources (forests, soils, waters, fish and game) faster than they are replenished. It wouldn’t use nonrenewable resources (fossil fuels, mineral ores) faster than renewable substitutes can be found for them. It wouldn’t release pollutants faster than the earth can process them to make them harmless.
By that definition there is not an economy on earth that is sustainable. The human world is a long way from meeting the needs of the present, and it is borrowing massively from the future — not only by piling up money debt, but by degrading the resources from which all real wealth ultimately comes.”
http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/index.php?display_article=vn432btlsustainabilityed
