Solutions

Hundreds of solutions, strategies, actions, and ideas exist within 5 key areas of sustainability; energy, food, population, planet, and cities. By addressing these components of sustainability, and beginning to implement strategies and actions from each area we can start heading towards a life in a healthy and sustainable world. 

Energy

Although you can't make all the decisions when it comes to where your energy comes from, and how good it is for the environment, you can take steps that will greatly reduce your negative impact on planet earth and bring yourself onto the path to sustainability. Here are some of the many steps that we can take to begin to solve our sustainability problem:

- Begin generating electricity off-grid. Off-grid electrical generation is a means of energy generation and supply that is not connected or apart of the main grid(the electricity that flows through cables on the street and into homes). Creating an off-grid electricity supply will either offset your electrical bills and strain on the environment or completely eradicate any electrical bills and ecological strain from your electrical supply and use. Installing solar panels is generally considered the best and the easiest way to have an off-grid supply within your home. Solar panels intake the energy emitted from the sun and convert it to useable electricity right on top of your roof. As energy from sunlight is ever-present and completely renewable no matter the usage amount it is sustainable, and harnessing it will lead you to begin your journey onto the path to sustainability and a healthy world.

- Conserve energy within your home(s), places visited, work, and school. There are many ways to conserve energy, including making sure only the only lights on are the ones in rooms with people in them, putting on a jacket and using the air-conditioned or heater only when absolutely necessary, not leaving the air conditioner or heater on in a room that no one is in, and switching to energy-efficient light bulbs and appliances.

- Drive a hybrid or electrical vehicle. driving a hybrid or electric vehicle is one big thing you can do that decreases the amount of earth's non-renewable resources being used. Petrol is made out of non-renewable materials and is therefore non-sustainable.

- Carpool, ride a bike or catch public transport. Carpooling and catching public transport is a great way to reduce ecological strain. They use the same amount of energy as transporting one person, to transport lots of people. And, riding a bike requires only the energy you create and nothing from the environment.

Food

Food is a powerful resource, it is vital to the life of most organisms. Here are some of the many ways we can help move the date of overshootday when it comes to food:

- Shop locally or regionally and only ever buying anything that was made in another country or that has ingredients from another country. Buying products that came from far away or will come from far away is extremely bad for the environment. For example; although the peanut butter jar you just bought from your local grocery store says it was made in your country, it also says it is made up of only 30% of ingredients grown in your country. Say there were 10 ingredients, this means that 7 of them each had to travel from far off different places to your country before being made. Each seven of these ingredients journey's to its final destination emits lots of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and noxious and toxic fumes. Their journey also involved them using lots of fuel which is draining from earth's resources. Making sure to buy things only from local or regional areas means that your strain on the environment for one product will greatly lessen. It is very easy to check either the back of the product, a sticker, or a tag to see where it was made, and most of the time how much of the things needed to make it came from your country.

- Only buy what you need and don't buy food in bulk unless you are a caterer. Globally people waste a whole third of all food produced for human consumption. we are taking food from our earth so If we take to much and then don't even use it, it is a waste that puts a big strain on ecological health. Expert reports say that if we continue like this we would be wasting the equivalent to 66 tonnes of food per second. 

- Compost everything that you can. Banana peels, eggshells, and carrot tops are all waste products from food. Composting is a form of recycling which gives back organic matter and nutrients which we have taken to the environment. Composting ensures there is less rotting food in landfills and dumps. When food rots, it emits a greenhouse gas called methane, a gas that the U.S. environmental protection agency has declared is 20x more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide.

- Eat seasonally. Eating seasonally means your food was made or harvested recently and locally which means that it hasn't been sitting on a shelf for weeks or been sprayed with chemicals to make it last longer and that it hasn't had a long carbon-filled journey to get there because it wouldn't have had to be transported from overseas if it was in season within your area.

Population

On average, 4.2 people are born per second, this means our already huge population is growing rapidly. The more people there are on earth, the less planet there is for each person. Already we are each using more of the earth than there is for each of us. Below are some ways we can stabilize the population, and move the date of earth overshoot day.

- Encourage smaller families. If in the next generation of families, every second family had one less child, then by 2050 we would have moved the day of earth overshoot day by 30 whole days. And that's just doing that alone. Imagine what we can do if we apply all solutions to our life?

- End all forms of discrimination and manipulation towards women and girls. By empowering women and girls, and stopping sexism we would be able to reduce the population growth. This would work because several online studies and polls report many women feeling either forced, manipulated, or pressured by social norms to have kids. To help with this, you can get involved with educating, empowering, equalling projects and campaigns, as well as listening and helping women's rights advocates such as Malala Yousafzi and Emma Watson. Remember, feminism means fighting for equality between genders, it is not believing that any gender is better or more deserving of something than anyone else.

Planet

Our Planet Earth is our only home, to make sure we aren't damaging our home, or lowering its capacity to sustain life, we need to begin doing some things to help:

- Reforesting. If granted permission, refreshing, and/or planting trees is a great way we can help. If not able to, there are also many charities that are reforesting, and some shop/eCommerce websites that will plant trees after you purchase something from their stock. Some of these include Tentree, International Tree Foundation, TreeSisters, Ecosia, Leo's Box, Tree Tribe, Baron Fig, Trillion Trees, and Landcare Australia.

- Try a vegetarian, plant-based, or vegan diet. The many ways that these diets help save our environment are: 

◾ A vegetarian diet emits 2.5x less carbon than a carnivorous one.

◾ Many more resources go into producing meat for consumption than vegetarian food and crops. a meat-filled diet uses much more, water, land, food, effort.

 ◾ By eating vegetarian for a year, you would save just as many emissions as you would by taking a family car off the road for 6 months.

◾ Choosing one of these diets will combat overfishing problems

- If living in Australia or New Zealand, only buy fish that has been certified to be sustainable by the MSC and has the blue tick.

- Cut down on plastic use. The things we use every day are often contained by plastic which is then thrown away and replaced. This is an unnecessary and unsustainable use of our resources. One way we can cut down on plastic is by replacing some of our everyday items like toothpaste, shampoo, dishwashing liquid, etc. Plastic tubes, containers and bottles all end up in landfill. Instead you can get chewable toothpaste tabs in a compostable cardboard container, bar soap instead of liquid soap that is in a plastic bottle or container, dishwashing bar soap instead of dishwasher liquid, you can even get shampoo and conditioner in bar form. Another way we can cut down on plastic use is by reusing our products. We can do this by carrying a reusable water bottle and refilling our products at refill shops instead of buying a whole new one.

Cities

Every day, urbanization continues. It is estimated that by 2050 that 70-80% of people will be living in cities. The way we live and the way our city is run contributes greatly to sustainability. Here are some ways that sustainability in cities can be achieved:

- Create green spaces within the city. Creating Greenspaces within an urbanized area increases biodiversity as well as increases mood and sucks carbon out of the air. It also ensures that any greenery removed is the replaced in some way or form to be sustainable.

- If you think your city isn't giving education on the environment and sustainability, hasn't got a sufficient and efficient public transport network, has little to no public green spaces, and not enough bins around the city, contact them immediately to see what can be done. Most councils are very open to helpful and important suggestions.

Photography, web design and web creation by Abigail Cribb
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