Products/Waste and Recycling

"One way to decrease the quantity of resources consumed is to design products for longer life by making items that are more durable, items that can be upgraded, or items that are easy to repair. The result is that fewer total resources are demanded per product use." (Robertson 2014)

I think this is becoming an ever increasing problem that the world is facing. In modern society, we use technology for everything. If we are continuously throwing these technologies away because there is something new on the market we will not have any important resources in the future. Companies that make things like phones need to produce better quality products that we can upgrade internally instead of having to buy something new every time. I know I have seen Motorola produce a phone that has attachments, such as a camera, that can be added to the outside. This provides multiple uses for this one devise which helps cut down on waste from the company.

Technology Waste posted on computerweekly.com

"Packaging design is a subspecialty within the engineering fields, with several professional societies, professional journals, and industry organizations devoted to more sustainable packaging." (Robertson 2014)

When I think of ways to cut back on waste I never think of the packaging things come in. with companies like Amazon and Ebay we are shipping millions of things throughout the world. Each one of these things needs to be packaged so if you add up all the waste from those packages it is crazy to think about. If a company could come up with a way to reduce the materials used in packaging or find a way that their packaging could be used for more than one use this would greatly cut down on waste. Companies should start using biodegradable materials in their packaging which can be used in compost or it will be easily broken down in a landfill. Companies use to package everything in packaging peanuts but over the past decade the use of these packaging peanuts have been reduced. This is a start in the right direction.

Packaging Waste posted on treehugger.com

"Composting, long a practice of organic gardeners, is increasingly part of many municipal waste management programs, which provide composting of leaves and yard debris." (Robertson 2014)

Composting could help with sustainability in a bunch of ways. First it allows you to use waste as fertilizer for plants instead of having it sit in a landfill. Second it promotes residences to start growing their own gardens that they could use their compost. This garden could help feed the household or at the very least reduce the amount of food that is bought at a grocery store. I know at my house we have a compost pile that we use to fertilize our fruits and vegetables that we have in our back yard. This is a never ending cycle for us because we use the fertilizer to help grow plants and then we add the waste from those plants into the compost pile which will in turn become fertilizer. If most households had something like this or if a community got together and used this technique, we would start take a big step in the way of sustainability.    

Composting posted on bluetreelandscaping.com

Robertson, M. (2014). Sustainability Principles and Practice. New York, NY: Routledge.