No really, I’m asking you – what does sustainability really mean?

To some, sustainability means choosing the lesser of two evils. Wikipedia tells me sustainable is “the capacity to endure” (sounds a bit painful, doesn’t it?).  It can mean ensuring life for the next seven generations, or indefinitely. To others, it is a word that has a comfortable vagueness allowing for marketability. Conversely, It may be a mathematical calculation of population and greed. The trouble with sustainability today is as much about finding out how it’s done as what it genuinely means.

The theme of this year’s Organic Islands Festival is sustainable transportation, sustainable buildings, and sustainable food production. I’m writing this because I want to challenge you. I want you to get the most out of this festival. I want you to put meaning back into the word: sustainable. How do we measure sustainability? What does it look like when it’s transferred from a proposal to a reality?

I have a couple of good ideas (okay okay, they’re not my ideas).

First, I think that sustainable means cradle-to-cradle design, a phrase coined by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Cradle-to-cradle means that new items are composed of only two categories of materials, either technical nutrients, which can be recycled in industrial cycles or biological nutrients, which can re-enter natural cycles. This also means that all waste can either be recycled or composted, without introducing toxicants into the earth and without downcycling products.

We can’t ignore energy either – which is why I think something called embodied energy is important. Embodied energy is the energy required to create a product from extraction of raw materials to delivery to the consumer. Choosing products with low embodied energy values and choosing clean energy sources would seem as an important factor in sustainability.

Lastly, I have a hunch that sustainability means consuming less.

These are difficult questions, and I admit that I may be glossing over some details, but please, I want you to join into this dialogue. Here, if you want, but more importantly, at the festival. Even, if the dialogue is only in your head.

“Imagine what a world of prosperity and health in the future will look like, and begin designing for it right now. What would it mean to become, once again, native to this place, the Earth – the home of all our relations? This is going to take us all, and it is going to take forever.

But then, that’s the point.”

- William McDonough and Michael Braungart