Remember the Idea

In my first definition of sustainability, I said it was the ability to preserve the world, the environment and the life in it. I think this is what sustainability should be, but isn’t always interpreted as. Sustainability has come to replace previous vague words like environmental, green, and organic to name a few. The problem with all of these words is the people interpreting them, the people who are going to ignore the intended connotation of the word in an effort to be labeled “green” or “sustainable” or whatever the word may be because that implies to everyone else that you are better than the competition. What I mean is that greedy people look for loopholes. For example, some juice companies will advertise their juice as “organic from concentrate” or “organic flavoring” but what do those phrases even mean anymore? I can’t imagine that organic flavoring is any better than regular flavoring.

The word “organic” no longer has very much weight because it has been interpreted and reinterpreted to fit various money-making schemes. Similarly, “green” has lost its connotative meaning just as “sustainable” will likely lose its power. Sustainable literally just means the ability to sustain. The “what” must be added. To sustain life? To sustain the environment? Those ideas are intended to be implied but they might be lost as the market tries to manipulate “sustainable” products.

In general, the vast amount of things sustainability can be applied to (like the 12+ types of sustainability named by Curran) makes using the word “sustainability” both a vice and a virtue. It’s nice because it can be applied to any situation. It’s bad because it can be misinterpreted, misleading, or manipulated. I think “sustainable” is better left as an adjective as Newton and Frefogle suggested. The reason it is so vague is because it is intended as a modifier – it requires the “what” as I said before.

I hate criticizing something without offering a solution, but frankly I don’t know what kind of word would perfectly encompass all of these new ideas about the environment. Maybe that word doesn’t exist yet. Maybe we don’t have one word to recall every subject Curran brought up, but the most important point is to remember those ideas regardless. We must hold on to the meaning – focus not on the dictionary or technical definitions, but rather on the idea, the lifestyle, and the movement behind sustainability and whatever new words we may begin to use in the future. “A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.” (JFK)