Sustainability Beyond the Environmental

This week, I talked with some friends about possible sustainability projects we could do to help our community, and I noticed an interesting pattern with them. All their proposals were strictly environmental! Whenever I introduced any idea related to the economic or social aspect of sustainability, they also could not place it as a sustainable project. In a culture where we strive to become sustainable long term, I am impressed by the misconception of what “sustainability” truly is. As a scholar that I am to become, I always used google search to define sustainability. According to the Brundtland report in 1987, sustainability is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This definition may not introduce something new, but it will help explain why sustainability is also important and fundamental in other areas that are not necessarily environmental. The idea of sustainability is that our communities can “sustain” the pace of time. Keeping this in mind, if companies use all their resources on an environmental project and lose their ability to remain operative, our industries would perish. Therefore, even though it could meet the present needs, it will compromise future generations' ability to meet their own needs.</