Sustainability begins at home?
The insights on Sustainability from the perspective of a mother of a family of six. Does Sustainability begin at home?
By Deborah Sloan, Course Director of the University’s Graduate Leadership Programme and founder of the University's Wo/Men's Network and Deborah Sloan, her career-break project.
Recently, we have been struggling with the limited capacity of our bins. Our 240-litre black one can’t cope with the amount of general waste stuffed into it and our blue recycling one is straining due to reams upon reams of cardboard packaging from regular online deliveries. We asked the local Council for help. As a family of six (plus a dog), their website advised we were entitled to additional refuse space. They said they’d send someone out to check how well we are managing our rubbish.
The truth is, we’re not managing it well at all. If I’m honest, acknowledging and tackling our environmental impact, engaging in reducing, reusing and recycling has fallen way down our list of priorities. When I was asked to share my thoughts on sustainability and how I imagine the future for my daughters as we face irreversible climate change and continue to deplete our natural resources, I panicked. I am ashamed to say it just hasn’t been top of my agenda. Whilst I have a sub-conscious awareness that we are facing a global emergency, I am only reminded about it when it occasionally pops up as the main story on the evening news. My focus has shifted to other (seemingly) more pressing matters – health, education, jobs.
Sustainability takes a backseat to the pandemic
We used to care so much more about planet earth but surviving day-to-day through a pandemic has made us increasingly short-termist in our outlook and increasingly reliant on instantaneous gratification. There was less to look forward to, so we bought more treats. There were rules about shopping local, so we ordered internationally instead. There were concerns about shortages, so we stocked up.
Since March 2020, taking each day as it comes and living primarily in the present tense has reduced our capacity to even think coherently about the future never mind believe that we can have any influence over it. When our world narrowed and became limited to the four walls of our own home, we somehow lost sight of the bigger world out there. When the COP-26 summit dominated the headlines for two weeks in November 2021, most of us were questioning the strange timing, concerned more with rising Covid numbers, discussing new restrictions and potential lockdowns rather than pledges and pacts.
It didn’t get the attention it deserved. We only had so much mental space. There was enough going on already. We couldn’t see how we could fix any of it anyway. It was so massive, so out of control. The collective power of governments and nations, of industry, business and commerce couldn’t even agree a consolidated way forward so how could we, individual citizens, make any difference.
From a position of privilege
I don’t even know where to start. I have reflected on the distorted reality my children have experienced over the last two years. Like most teenagers in a privileged, Western, consumerist society, they accessed anything and everything they needed via the electronic devices they carried everywhere. Their connectivity depended on not straying too far from a charger. They went to school via a screen.
They rarely suffered any hunger, because as soon as their stomachs rumbled, they could select an app and Uber Eats or Deliveroo would bring their burger or burrito within thirty minutes. We were on first name terms with Gareth, Steve and Mark, the drivers that carried their fast fashion parcels to the front door. Our washing machine cycled repeatedly with loungewear worn once. An endless supply of piping hot water meant they could pass long hours of confinement having lengthy showers using a range of products in disposable plastic bottles.
Hundreds of throwaway lateral flow tests have assessed whether they can or cannot re-join normal society. They hear about ecological disasters, but they are happening in far-away places. They feel little sense of urgency, extreme weather has not yet infringed their comfortable lifestyles, they aren’t struggling with socio-economic fallout, their awareness of poverty is quick and easy donations to foodbanks. Generally, they discard and move on, choose convenience over discomfort, live only in the here and now. That’s a lot of unlearning to sort out, a lot of perspective to change.
Understanding how we can change our mindset
Already exhausted and depleted by the pandemic, it seems easier, as a parent, to just throw in the towel and give up. Isn’t climate change inevitable, too big to do anything about? Teaching my children new habits and behaviours is just a drop in the ocean, barely action at all.
We could continue to live in the way we have always done, in denial, selfishly presuming it will all work out without us, maybe even go away, blaming our leaders if it doesn’t. But, absolving ourselves of our individual responsibility is probably the single biggest danger we face right now. My greatest challenge is acknowledging that I only view sustainability from a position of privilege.
We have spent a considerable amount of time inside those four walls of our own homes over the last two years. I have openly admitted that I had stopped caring about sustainability, that I have allowed many other things to take precedence over it, but writing this has been my wake-up call. At home, is probably the best and only place to start actively focusing on sustainability. First things first - I’m phoning the Council back; we definitely don’t need any more bins.
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