Responsible Consumption and Production

Every day we make choices in our lives that affect the environment, the climate and other species. From what we eat to how many children we decide to have, there’s a lot we can do to “choose wild” and reduce our environmental footprint to leave more room for wild animals and plants.

Consumption and production of goods and services worldwide rely on the natural environment and plentiful resources. This has allowed economies and societies to flourish; however, it is a delicate balance of growth and environmental degradation. According to the U.N., if the global population reaches the projected 9.6 billion by 2050, three Earth’s worth of resources could be required to provide the natural resources needed to sustain our current way of life. This may seem shocking, but it is possible to prevent this eventuality through responsible consumption and production.

Responsible consumption and production hinges upon the idea of being more efficient with less. It also is about severing the failures of economic growth that cause environmental degradation and instead establishing resource efficiency and sustainability as normative practice for both economic affairs and everyday lifestyles.

Consumers are key to driving sustainable production and play a central role in sustainable development. This report highlights OECD government initiatives to promote sustainable consumption, with an emphasis on individual policy tools and instruments and their effective combination. Here, the sustainability of consumption is considered in economic, environmental and social terms. Sustainable consumption policies increasingly take into account the social and ethical dimensions of products and how they are produced as well as their ecological impacts.

In recent years a rising number of multinational corporations have pledged to work only with suppliers that adhere to social and environmental standards. Typically, these MNCs expect their first-tier suppliers to comply with those standards, and they ask that those suppliers in turn ask for compliance from their suppliers—who ideally ask the same from their suppliers. And so on. The aim is to create a cascade of sustainable practices that flows smoothly throughout the supply chain, or, as we prefer to call it, the supply network.

Anything that grows decomposes eventually; composting simply speeds up the process by providing an ideal environment for bacteria, fungi, and other decomposing organisms (such as worms, sowbugs, and nematodes) to do their work. The resulting decomposed matter, which often ends up looking like fertile garden soil, is called compost. Fondly referred to by farmers as “black gold,” compost is rich in nutrients and can be used for gardening, horticulture, and agriculture.

Organic discards can be processed in industrial-scale composting facilities, in smaller-scale community composting systems, and in anaerobic digesters, among other options. This guide focuses primarily on home composting, which is a great way to keep your organic discards out of the waste stream and produce a valuable soil amendment for your own use.

As we celebrate World Consumer Rights Day 2020, it is timely to ask whether consumers play an important role in moving the sustainable consumption agenda.

Discussions on consumer education, good business practices, government policy efforts and civil society engagement should shape consumers’ contribution at the grassroots level. Consumers can indeed be active market players when they are informed of their rights and stand ready to enforce them. Empowered consumers can encourage business innovation, investment and competition, driving sustainable production and consumption.

The 4-R principle involves the guidelines for proper plastic use as reduce, reuse, recycle and recover waste. The 4-R rule provides an environmentally friendly approach for managing waste and waste streams. It reduce, reuse, recycle and recover a waste stream into incremental fractions.

Businesses around the world recognize that sustainable consumption is a key element in any well-developed and forwardlooking sustainability program. Long term success and continued growth depend on offering consumers a way to meet their needs and aspirations within the limits of our planet.

Our world runs at a feverish pace. We are too hurried, too rushed, and too stressed. We work long, passionate hours to pay the bills, but fall deeper into debt every day. We rush from one activity to another—even multitasking along the way—but never seem to get anything done. We remain in constant connection with others through our cell phones, but true life-changing relationships continue to elude us.

Becoming a minimalist slows down life and frees us from this modern hysteria to live faster. It offers freedom to disengage. It seeks to keep only the essentials. It aims to remove the frivolous and keep the significant. It values the intentional endeavors that add value to life.

Packaging waste accounts for 40% of all solid waste in municipal waste streams. According to EPA, commercial, residential, and institutional users generate 75 million tons of container and packaging waste each year, but only half of the waste is properly recycled. This means about 37 million tons of packaging waste finds its way into the landfill.

Packaging waste is one of the top concerns that most businesses are facing today. However, to promote sustainable packaging, more and more companies are using materials that are eco-friendly throughout the packaging life cycle.

“Alone we can do so little,” said educator and activist Helen Keller. “Together we can do so much.“

It’s easy to focus on the role of leaders, but the success of any initiative requires widespread support. Here are some of the groups who can be valuable allies:

• Employees implement company initiatives and can contribute ideas based on their specific areas of expertise. Everyone from mid-level managers to operational staff to front-line employees can make a difference.
• Customers can purchase green products and services and promote the company’s brand.
• Communities are especially important if your company has a significant local footprint — for example, if you’re engaged in manufacturing or resource extraction. Keeping your social license to operate within the community reduces friction and costs and can even lead to collaborations on projects with local stakeholders

March 22 is World Water Day, a day dedicated to reminding people about the importance of water. The United Nations has a theme for 2023: Accelerating change to address the water and sanitation crisis. Unfortunately, dysfunction throughout the water cycle is hampering progress on various global issues, including health, hunger, gender equality, education, and industry.

In 2015, the world committed to Sustainable Development Goal 6, which promised safely managed water and sanitation for all by 2030. However, we are currently far off-track to achieve this goal, with billions of people and many institutions lacking safe water and toilets. Governments need to work much faster to meet this goal, but it is not a problem that they can solve alone. Everyone needs to take action to address this issue because water affects us all.

Being environmentally conscious is not all about plastic bags; it’s about making everyday choices that will — quite literally — determine our success or failure as a species. We can be more conscious about reducing pollution, protecting wildlife, conserving natural resources and take other actions that can help slow the rate of climate change.

Everyone can make a difference, particularly when smart environmental choices become a habit and perhaps even begins influencing others into taking similar actions. Doing the right thing for the future of life on Earth can even have immediate personal benefits. It can tap into your creativity, can get you more engaged with your community and the world, and may contribute to a healthier lifestyle.

We need to reduce the amount of trash we create, and to reuse or repurpose consumer goods rather than throwing them away. United States is among the countries in the world that produce the most waste.

Overconsumption is using something excessively more than you need. This could involve buying too many products, eating too much food, or watching too much television.

We have all probably heard the phrase “everything in moderation,” but humans often struggle to follow that guide, and this has led to wastage and exploitation of natural resources.

There are many different types of overconsumption. For instance, food overconsumption is one of the most common types of overconsumption. Read more to learn 20 facts about overconsumption.

It’s difficult to resist going back for more delicious food, even after we are full. It can also be difficult not to fill our shopping carts to the brim with fresh groceries every trip, even when they might get thrown away a week later

The best place to start making a difference is right in your own home.

Students, parents, and teachers can all make a difference in reducing waste at school. By practicing the “3 R’s” of waste reduction—reduce, reuse, and recycle—we can all do our part.

Engage and motivate your coworkers to buy green products and help reduce waste.

Renewable and nonrenewable resources are energy sources that human society uses to function on a daily basis. The difference between these two types of resources is that renewable resources can naturally replenish themselves while nonrenewable resources cannot. This means that nonrenewable resources are limited in supply and cannot be used sustainably.

There are four major types of nonrenewable resources: oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy. Oil, natural gas, and coal are collectively called fossil fuels. Fossil fuels were formed within the Earth from dead plants and animals over millions of years—hence the name “fossil” fuels. They are found in underground layers of rock and sediment. Pressure and heat worked together to transform the plant and animal remains into crude oil (also known as petroleum), coal, and natural gas.

Cruise ships emit more carbon per passenger kilometre than flying, even considering the extra damage that emissions cause at high altitude. It’s thought that the Queen Mary II emits 0.43kg of CO2 per passenger mile – that’s even worse than the 0.257kg for a long-haul flight.

Cruise ships also produce loads of waste and rubbish. Every passenger creates around 3.5 kilograms of rubbish each day, rather than the 0.8 kilograms produced by people on shore.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, many people will fly to the start of their cruises.

Energy efficient building design involves constructing or upgrading buildings that are able to get the most work out of the energy that is supplied to them by taking steps to reduce energy loss such as decreasing the loss of heat through the building envelope.

Energy efficient homes, whether they are renovated to be more efficient or a built with energy efficiency in mind, pose a significant number of benefits. Energy efficient homes are less expensive to operate, more comfortable to live in, and more environmentally friendly.

Did you know that in total, about one third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted? Food waste management is the process of recovering from this lost food, so less of it is produced in the first place. It’s another issue that we often take for granted, but one that needs to be addressed in order to reduce the amount of food waste in our society. The loss of so much food means that as a society, we waste about of food every year. Reducing this waste has a number of benefits for our environment, as well as for our pocketbooks.