Being Sustainable
Seven Pathways to Success
Being sustainable is making the world better for everyone, now and in the future. But how, exactly, can you do that?
The question—How to be sustainable?—motivated me to create F. W. Horch Sustainable Goods & Supplies, a store in downtown Brunswick, Maine. Every day, for many years, I had the pleasure and privilege of helping customers be sustainable. After selling my store and moving on to other business ventures, I decided that one day I would write a Handbook for Sustainability to share the lessons I learned from coaching thousands of people on their own pathways to sustainability.
What Is Sustainable?
I discovered that some people get stuck on “What is sustainable?” before getting to the how question. In 1983, the United Nations decided to really dig into the question of what will make the world better for everyone, now and in the future. (By “the world” I mean literally, our whole planet.) Four years later, Gro Harlem Brundtland’s 1987 commission report summed it up with the concept of “sustainability:”
[Sustainability is] meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.—Our Common Future (the Brundtland Report)
My store took that definition of sustainability and put it into practical action. I stocked my shelves with sustainable products. I wrote articles, led seminars and gave interviews to show sustainable practices. One of the highlights every year was taking our store up to Common Ground Fair where my friend and employee Brett Thompson would demonstrate vermiculture to fair goers. Friday at the Fair was especially fun, since that’s the day school groups would attend. Getting up close and personal with worms is an absolutely thrilling way for middle-school-aged people to flirt!
How to Be Sustainable
Sustainability is a journey. Today you’re meeting your needs in one way. Is it compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs?
For example, you might be burning fossil fuel for power, the ability to change temperatures, move things, compute, and do other sorts of useful work. There is a limited supply of fossil fuel on planet Earth. Burning it emits pollution that will make it harder for everyone to grow food. So, meeting your need for power by burning fossil fuel is not sustainable. When you burn fossil fuel to meet your needs, you’re compromising the abilities of future generations to meet their own needs.
You have choices. Tomorrow you might take a path that allows you to become more efficient, burning less fossil fuel to do the same amount of work. That is more sustainable. You’re leaving more for future generations. Next week you might choose to use electric motors instead of fuel-burning engines. That’s even more sustainable. Eventually you might find your way to a place where you’re efficiently using electricity produced by sunlight.
Using more sunlight today doesn’t leave less sunlight for tomorrow, in fact, the more solar power we use today, the more solar power we can use tomorrow (since a solar panel we install today will produce power tomorrow). Solar is a way to meet our need for power that allows thousands of future generations to meet their own needs for power, too.
Being sustainable is about making thoughtful choices where and when you can, keeping the end goal in mind. Think globally about the future; act locally now.
Seven Pathways to Sustainability
Knowing you have choices and having good intentions are necessary but not sufficient. To be sustainable, you must make choices and take action. This is where my handbook can help. I’ve mapped out seven pathways for sustainability to empower you to determine your destination and choose your journey wisely. Each pathway is a category of needs where you have meaningful choices that make a real difference.
Along each pathway I coach several clear strategies to guide your decision making. You can be more sustainable, or less sustainable depending on the path you choose.
Energy
Energy is the ability to do work. It’s an abstract, almost philosophical, potential. Power is energy per time. Power is where energy gets real. We can’t to anything without power.
Many of us are aware that we are in a very unsustainable place for power. We’re burning fossil fuel, destroying a limited resource and emitting pollution. But we can do better.
A sustainable milestone to achieve is harnessing solar power. Sunshine is clean, abundant and renewable. Collecting and using it today doesn’t prevent future generations from doing the same.
Three strategies to reach a sustainable energy future:
Optimize efficiency.
Electrify everything.
Solarize electricity.
Food
Humans are animals. We need to eat plants, fungi or other animals to survive. We’ll die without food.
Many of us realize that we are in a very unsustainable place for food. We’re buying food and then not eating it. We’re eating too much beef and not enough plants. We’re paying farmers to deplete their topsoil instead of to enrich it. But we can do better.
A sustainable milestone to achieve is eating food grown in ways that conserve habitat and provide everyone a healthy, nutritious and sufficient diet.
Three strategies to reach a sustainable food future:
Plan meals.
Eat more plants.
Support local farmers.
Water
Water is essential for life. The processes we believe are necessary to sustain cellular function, for everything from bacteria to humans, require water. One of many great things about living on Earth is that water is abundant and everlasting. In many aspects, water never runs out because it is constantly refreshed by natural processes.
Some of us are lucky to be in a sustainable place for water, thanks to geography. Here in Maine, where my family lives, most of us are fortunate to have abundant and clean freshwater resources. Out in California, where I went to law school, many people are not so fortunate. In desert areas, we must be more mindful of how we use water.
A sustainable milestone to achieve is wisely tapping into our planet’s freshwater cycle, respecting the limits of our local watershed.
Three strategies to reach a sustainable water future:
Optimize efficiency.
Keep it clean.
Tap into it.
Movement
People like to go places. Our economy depends on constantly moving raw materials, intermediate and finished goods, and waste. We need movement.
Many of us recognize that we are in a very unsustainable place for movement, largely because we’re burning fossil fuel for the power we need to move. And we can see that transitioning from fossil fuel to clean energy for power might lead us far from our goal of truly sustainable movement. Lots of people driving by themselves, even if they are in electric cars, doesn’t seem sustainable. Autonomous electric cars driving around with no one in them seem even worse. We can do better.
A sustainable milestone to achieve on the journey to sustainability is using efficient and appropriate modes of transportation to move ourselves and our possessions without polluting. Hopping on a bicycle or taking a walk for a short trip is much more efficient and appropriate than driving (or hailing) an electric car to go everywhere. But electric cars can be a fine way to take long trips, if we power them with electricity from sunshine. One day, maybe sooner than you imagine, we’ll even be able to fly without polluting.
Three strategies to reach a sustainable movement future:
Ride or walk where you can.
Share a ride.
Go electric.
Goods
Reduce, reuse, recycle. Good advice for using stuff. We all use stuff. Most of us get to choose how much and which kind.
Almost everyone knows that recycling is a good idea. But when you take it to the next level and talk about backyard composting, many of us realize that we’re not in a great place for sustainability. When I ran composting clinics and would encourage people to compost in their own backyards, I’d often get questions about personal health and safety. Is it safe to compost this packaging? Is the ink toxic? Can I grow food in the compost I make with this stuff?
If you’re planning to throw things in the trash or recycle bin when you’re done with them, you don’t think so carefully about them. Dealing with large quantities of stuff or with toxic materials is someone else’s problem. But if you’re trying to compost all of your waste in a limited space in an area you’re planning to spend time living in, suddenly you care very much about what you’re bringing into your home.
A sustainable milestone to achieve is buying goods that can be safely composted or recycled to make new goods. If you wouldn’t want something in your own back yard, who would want it in theirs?
Three strategies to reach a sustainable goods future:
Shop wisely.
Avoid plastic.
Be safe.
Habitat
Eight billion humans now call one planet home. In the known universe, the land and ocean surface of the Earth is the only suitable habitat for humans—and for the vast majority of life forms we’ve discovered. If we evenly divide up the surface of the Earth, how many square miles would each person have?
If you guessed two square miles, you’re too high.
If you guessed one square mile, you’re too high.
Eight billion is 8,000 million people. The surface of our planet is only 196.9 million square miles. So that gives each of us about 0.02 square miles.
We’re talking less than 16 acres per person. And that’s total, including Antarctica, the ocean, deserts, everything. If you want habitable land, by one estimate we’ve now got less than two acres per person. By the way, when that estimate was made, it was over two acres per person, because there were only 7,000 million people on Earth. We’re not making any more Earth, but we are making more people!
The size of the Earth is constant. Our population is growing (but our rate of growth is slowing down). That means our habitat per person is shrinking. And so how we use our habitat is more and more important.
A sustainable milestone to achieve is wisely sharing our habitat with all other forms of life on Earth, so that fewer go extinct and more can thrive.
Three strategies to reach a sustainable habitat future:
Be a good steward.
Eat a sustainable diet.
Prevent pollution.
Community
Your impact on other people might be the most important of all pathways to sustainability. If you learn something that you use to make a positive change in your own life, you’ve accomplished something. But if you share what you learn so that thousands of people can make positive changes in their lives, you’ve accomplished a thousand times more.
A sustainable milestone to achieve is sharing what has worked well for you on a pathway to sustainability so that others can make good progress, too.
Three strategies to reach a sustainable community future:
Learn.
Try.
Share.
Horch Handbook for Sustainability
While I’m writing my Handbook for Sustainability, I’m going through my notes over decades of hands-on experience and doing more research on the very latest and greatest thinking from the most trustworthy sources I can find to compile a list of practices, products, periodicals, people and policies that can help you take effective action in your own life.
I’m working on the handbook to share step-by-step practical advice. I’m distilling my advice into clear strategies to guide your decision making. I’ll show how to put strategies into action to achieve sustainability goals. And I’ll be providing online tools to help you plan your path and measure your progress—and share what you’re achieving so that you can inspire others to join us on a journey to sustainability.
What sustainability goals are you aiming to achieve? How can I help you get there?