Week 12: Building Sustainable Communities

On the Friday of week 12, our final sustainability class, we took a tour around UL, looking at how they promote sustainable growth. Our first stop was at the orchard, planted 3 years ago (mostly) by Con Trass and Colin Fitzpatrick. It was a way of showing students and staff that food only came in seasons (ie that if you buy apples in may, they are more than likely being imported from far away meaning they have a very high ‘energy value’, the lower the better). There are 50 trees there, made up of apple, cherry and pear, the first being planted in 2010 by President Don Barry. Con Trass had another planting session today with the horticultural course. There is some fruit on the trees when they are in season, but not too many as the trees are still young and so don’t produce too much fruit.

We then went to the living bridge. Once there we learnt it cost around €12 million to build. One of the reasons it cost so much was because they needed to protect the natural environment around the river. The bridge connects the North and South campus’ which were becoming almost like a different University due to the lack of an easy way across for the students on either side. Staff had to drive between the two campus’ before the introduction of the bridges. One of the problems with the bridge was that the river itself is the most important lamprey breeding grounds in the world and also hosts a salmon breeding grounds, although nowhere near as big as it was before the building of the ardnacrusha power plant in 1929. The lamprey is almost considered prehistoric as it hasn’t noticeably evolved in the last few millennia. This meant that the architectures had to design the bridge in such a way so as not to harm the river and the builders had to work seasonally, around the breeding of the lamprey and salmon. All of this meant the bridge took 18 months to complete. It is the longest pedestrian bridge in Ireland and we at UL are very proud of that fact.

 

 

Assignment 2

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Assignment 2

Week 11: Sustainability metrics

This week we talked about ‘weak’ sustainability and ecological footprints. Our first two lectures focused on weak sustainability and how peoples notions on priorities change with differing circumstances. This is apparent in Ireland at the moment in comparison to before the recession hit. Prior to 2007 Ireland had enough money to ‘waste’ on environmental protection instead of furthering economic growth, now I think Ireland would gladly trade environmental protection for economic growth. I am at an odds as to whether this is a goof thing or not as we need jobs, but it is not sustainable over a long period of time, and should be avoided if possible in the short term. Dr O’ Regan told us of Lazlo’s hierarchy of needs, where people prioritise what they must in order to survive. Someone who is near starving wont hesitate in hunting an endangered species, as they want food and that animal provides much needed food for them and their family. Whereas people who don’t have to worry about the basic needs for survival can try and preserve the environment, or an endangered animal. 

 

  

 

Dr. O’Regan also talked about how aggregation occurs when people designate research out to others. She told us of a report that a minister wanted and how after doing research and analysing the results a 400 page report was done. The junior ministers would only read 20 pages and the minister himself would only read 4. This is a massive loss of information.  How does the minister expect to know what is the real story, or the science behind the report is if he only sees four pages. Most, if not all, of which will be kept to bullet points with no explanation. They get round this by people needing different parts of the report. On a report of Limerick city for example we may have an overall traffic flow rating of 6 (not real figures, I am just making them up as an example, scale of 1-10 10 being best, 1 being worst), the minister in Dublin will see this and think, okay that’s not too bad, Meath has a traffic flow rating of 3. The minister will put more money into the Meath transportation. A city council member will look at all the streets however and see that maybe Caherdavin has a traffic flow rating of 1 and the North Circular road has a rating of 10, bringing the overall rating high. The city council then know where the money they are given needs to be invested most.

Ecological Footprint:

Prof. Richard Moles talked about how to calculate the ecological footprint we are making on the earth. Ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth’s ecosystem. It is measured in area as it is one of the seemingly easier unit of measurement. There are lots of complications with this however, the ocean being one of them (as it is measured in volume not area) and everything measured is only counted as preforming one action, when they could do multiple ones. Only 22% of the Earth’s surface has a good carbon neutralising rating and only 4% of the Earth’s oceans have a high value. 

 

Week 10: Products and Consumption

Talking about consumption this week in lectures highlighted some disturbing facts, like how 20% of the worlds population consume 76.6% of world resources, while the poorest 20% of the world population only consumes 1.5% of the world’s resources. This hardly seems like it can be sustained, especially if the worlds poorest move up to the middle ground and start to consume more resources. Something has got to give. Resources are decreasing and the population is increasing, if it continues the way it is, then we are going to have a serious problem. The richest of us need to start to decrease our consumption and increase our renewal of old products. Just doing one of them is not enough at this stage. 100kg out of 1000kg a year, 1/10 of all resources used. That can’t be sustained for much longer, especially if we start to produce and consume more things.

Why do we waste so much? I think its because we can. Since I can use half a page and then throw it away after, I will. I don’t need to use the whole thing, I try to use as much as I can most of the time, but I don’t think too much of not doing it because it is so readily available. Plastic, one of the developed worlds most used products is very hard to recycle and doesn’t bio degrade, yet it is still so widely used. In the future I expect to see it used a little less because the price of oil has gone up, not for any environmental reason. Which is fine by me, as I said before it just matters that you get there, not how you get there. Obviously you want to get there in style but as long as you get there it doesn’t really matter in the end. 

Companies have to stop designing things to fail, phones for example are designed so the battery only lasts a certain amount of time, long enough to still trust the product so you will go back to them. The more you use it, the faster it degrades, so it can last you a lot longer than the designer planned, but the longer it lasts you the more likely you are to go back, so they still did their job. Some companies also try and get you to develop a connection with your product so you will get it fixed instead of just throwing it away and getting a cheap new one. iPhones do this very well, as soon as you get it you start to customise it adding songs, movies and apps you make the phone a very personal thing, updating it gives you a sense that the phone is growing as you grow. You’re still going to get the new one eventually, which is exactly what apple want, once your phone is old and slow you will look for the new iPhone because you liked the old one so much. 

Week 9

Corporate Social Responsibility

 

Corporate responsibility is often seen as soft law, ie you don’t have to do it it just looks better to the customers which will improve sales. Although there is no penalty for not being corporately responsible it does ‘raise the bar’. Nestle found this out the hard way when Fair Trade declared them unfair to workers, among a host of other things, they suffered a public uproar that they found rather difficult to calm down. Apple have also recently had a bit of a PR headache in the form of Foxconn and the treatment of Chinese labourers in their factories. Upon Apple’s request the Fair Labour Association (FLA) sent people into 3 of 13 Foxconn factories in China and carried out extensive reports on the factories. Apple came under huge backlash due to the treatment of the workers in these factories. Apple said in a statement: “We think empowering workers and helping them understand their rights is essential. Our team has been working for years to educate workers, improve conditions and make Apple’s supply chain a model for the industry, which is why we asked the FLA to conduct these audits.” The fact that Apple try and cover this up by asking the FLA to investigate these claims. The FLA would more than likely have gone in to investigate anyway, Apple have just made themselves sound like the good guys by asking. 

The important question is: ‘Is it OK for companies to mistreat workers or the customer just because there is no law telling them not to?’

The obvious answer is no, they should try to have the highest standards towards the customer and employees. What about the environment? I think companies should have some responsibility to the environment, if not as much as they do to workers and customers. The environment is often looked over when it comes to corporate responsibility, the biggest companies try and help the environment and limit a carbon footprint to keep their customer base happy, which is fine by me, any way, or reason why, companies help the environment is good.

Companies also have a responsibility towards the locals. Dell did this very well with local school Colaiste Chiarain. They provide laptops to students at discount prices. This is a mutually beneficial relationship for Dell and the school as:

• Dell sell more laptops. To the students at least once, possibly twice once in first year and possibly again in fifth or sixth year. They could also open up the family to purchasing more Dell products. 
• Dell could get a very educated work force once the students graduate from college who are very competent around computers, Dell in particular. 
• Students get discount laptops. 

Barcelona FC are very good to the locals, the team motto is ”Mes Que Un Club” which translates to ‘More than a club’. This is because Barcelona does so much for the locality. 9 of current starting team came through the youths set up. The area around the Camp Nou, Barcelona’s home stadium, is packed with different types of stadiums, all weather pitches and even a reserve stadium so people can visit them. Many people from Munster, particularly Limerick, will support Munster no matter what happens, the Barcelona soccer team is even more renowned with the locals, over 90,000 people frequently go to visit the team play.

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Week 8: Law and Public Policy

Last week we discussed law and public policy in relation to the environment. We first took a 60 year trip through the EU in our 50 minute lecture, no mean feat I can assure you. The first EU treaty brought out was in 1952, it was a coal and steel agreement pushed through mostly by France and Germany. Steel and coal are very important for growth and development in a country and it was in a territory hotly contended by both France and Germany, this treaty would hopefully bring an end to those conflicts and be one step on the way to restoring peace in Europe.

Once a treaty is passed in the EU it goes to each member state to decide what to do with it. It can be rejected by the leaders before it ever reaches a public vote, and unless it effects the constitution of a country than there is no need to even consult the people (as happened with the ACTA agreement). Once the people vote their decision is, in theory, final, however we know from the Lisbon treaty that it doesnt always happen that way. This begs the question; is the EU democratic or not? Personally I believe it is, but that may be due to naivety more than any real factual evidence.

All new treaties have to have some regard for the environment and the impact the treaty will have on the environment. The first treaty regarding the environment wasn’t until 1987. That’s fifteen years after the UN fist talked about the environment in Stockholm in 1972 which was 27 years after it had been set up. This shows that governments were only concerned about growing as fast as possible after world war 2 and the years that followed.

A big change to everyone’s perception of climate change wasn’t by a government or a big company, but by a marine biologist from Pennsylvania in America. Rachel Carson wrote a book called ‘Silent Spring’ about how the birds kept dying from pesticide which was deemed safe. The book got a lot of attention and is widely credited with starting the environmental movement. This proves you don’t have to be a big company or important government to make a difference in the world, anyone can make a difference if they are so inclined.

Useful links:

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid=97

http://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-and-eu-to-sign-controversial-acta-treaty-tomorrow-336764-Jan2012/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson