Sustainable Greenville

Here are 5 words to describe sustainability:

"In the aggregate, resource integration."

Every place, every time exists within its own set of standards and complexity. In order for sustainability to exist, every place, every time must be carefully studied and evaluated for potential systems that will help in the decision making process. True sustainability can never exist. Systems evolve. So anyone attempting to standardize sustainability risks unbalancing the system, which happens in nature all the time (and for good reason). For us (humans), we must create "actions and constructs" that will have adaptability.

Resources are not static. Most of the time we don't ask ourselves what resources to acknowledge when attempting to create sustainable "actions and constructs". More often than not, most sustainability professionals only talk about three resources: people, planet and profits. The triple bottom line is simply "too simplistic". But it is an excellent way to initiate people into the discussion and get them to realize the importance of removing themselves from linear thinking to circular thinking. Most people are familiar with recycle, reduce, and reuse. The new R is Rethink. We must continually think about how resources change and how we should adapt with those resources.

Let's list resources (still rather general): natural (both renewable and non-renewable), environmental, economical, cultural, social, civic, political, educational, spiritual, etc. Sustainable models will address each of these resources on a case to case basis and remember that we should not only look forward, but backward. By recognizing trends we can then create adaptable sustainable models.

Hoping to sound not too trite: sustainability is thus holistic.

Holistic implies a moral imperative. And with a moral imperative we must ask questions about why we do what we do and should we do it, rather than just asking how. Sustainability is a process in which we ask how, why, what, where, when and should.

What are your 5 words to describe sustainability?