Yesterday, friends, was my first anniversary. How did I celebrate it? After team meetings at school, Ian and I grabbed dinner with some friends at Pop's for some delicious cheesesteak action. Yes, so romantic, right? Well, fine, but after that we went to a fire circle in the country where the stars were crazy-bright, bluegrass was playing, and someone had a telescope set up.
Through that telescope, you could see Saturn, rings and all. It appeared ablaze with light. Looking online, I see Saturn is, at its closest, 1.2 billion km away from Earth. That I could so clearly see the thing from a distance my brain can't even comprehend makes one feel deceptively less small than one probably ought feel in the universe.
Still, my anniversary rocked.
In other news, I had the second half of a Saturday short-course today. In it we discussed the business case for sustainability, especially issues facing large companies. There are some things that have bothered me a lot about the sustainability discussion of late:
1. Certifications. One big one recently touted has been the ISO 14000 family. ISO 14001, in particular, simply certifies that you have an environmental management system that you track. The goals and performance metrics are set by the company. In one way this is great, since it allows flexibility across industries and disciplines, but on the other, it doesn't necessarily guarantee much at all.
2. Trade-offs. This is the subject of some of the major "sins of greenwashing"--shielding trade-offs or implying false trade-offs. This has been a major gripe of mine with use of compostable products and "biodegradable" packaging. Turns out, if you do an actual life-cycle analysis, it's terrible to put in landfills. If you're going to have compostable service ware, COMPOST.
3. Businesspeople think sustainability is at its zenith. It's not. It's in its infancy, and there's no dialog on how to realistically advance past mere efficiency in the long term. What happens when everyone is equally efficient and your efforts no longer offer you competitive advantage? What happens when consumption increases and disposal options decrease and/or become more costly? Let's brainstorm on this, folks.
That's all for now. Exhausted.
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