One year after, thoughts on Sustainability and our Future
“2020 has changed the world permanently” has been a common refrain in most people’s recent conversations.
In January I was living in Brooklyn, New York. I had just graduated with a Master in Business Impact and Sustainability at the Glasgow Caledonian University in NY and was successfully managing a luxury retail store in downtown Manhattan.
Today the world is shaking off the debris from past year’s blast and so am I.
I’m reflecting whether the concept of sustainability is still the same of what it was in 2019. One of its broadest and most successful definitions is the following:
“Meeting our present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland Commission 1987).
This definition has the great benefit of always remaining contemporary but has a strong variable. What continuously evolves are our “present needs” and at this point, the question is if our present necessities are different from the ones of a few months ago.
My basic needs remain most likely the same but how I access them has changed; my recent condition modified the perception of what I really need. Living in NY, a dinner with friends in a popular restaurant was a weekly if not a daily practice. Along with a vibrant social life there were multiple activities highly interconnected. The need of dressing up every day with a different look, the use of cosmetic products, going to the gym to stay fit, have a haircut, a manicure and plan a trip in order to socialize more, destress from the frenetic lifestyle and add fresh pics to the Instagram account.
As in many of the most advanced economies we were already in the process of reducing, reusing and recycling, but honestly if you think with today’s eyes, just a few of these actions had a real impact. After a few days into the pandemic, I can say that my life was definitely having a lesser impact in our beaten up world, but not necessarily because of my will, but due to a shift in habits and circumstances that have impacted them. I’ve lost a job for the first time in my life, as a consequence I reduced or eliminated my transportation routines, my wardrobe variety, food waste and consumption. I had time to repair or up-cycle my clothes, make my own meals. The gym subscription was replaced by a run in the park, a virtual class in front of a mirror and sometimes too much wine.
It is an opportunity to reconsider how to take it from here to be ahead of the game for when we will be back in full business. According to Bloomberg in the US alone 110,000 restaurants closed in 2020 with a huge impact on unemployment, real estate and in the long run, our safety. Streets are darker and desolate, garbage is racking up in front of the barred doors of what used to be my favorite dining spots. In the meantime online purchases are hitting all-time highs, even though many of us have more time than ever and could instead shop directly in store. One in four Americans are working remotely and 11 Millions are still unemployed. As main street business struggle to stay open and provide employment for large segments of the population, large corporations continue to thrive and become bigger players in an already disadvantaged employment market.
We are consuming less, but it feels like we are all clicking the same buttons. This is not only undermining our personalities but it is also creating an unsustainable process and we are stressing it. Think about food habits. Avocados for example became the symbol of healthy food and now they are causing deforestation, extortion and criminality. Mexican avocados risk becoming the next “conflict commodity”, akin to “blood diamonds” in Angola and Sierra Leone with cartels controlling the market. As the lockdown started, like many Brooklynites, I was making sourdough bread; a week later there was a shortage of flour in supermarkets and mills. No more bakery tools were available on Amazon since we were all following the same online classes and experts’ recommendations.
Think about trends in tourist destinations. The immense impact on a global scale in which hospitality businesses are exposed to changes in the environment, consumer preferences and trends, puts the industry in a position where a shift towards more sustainable practices becomes an ecological, economical and ethical necessity. But either way excessive popularity is a recipe for devastation as seen in cities such as Venice. Cruises are not compatible with the structure of the city and of the lagoon. It is a never ending debate whether to allow these massive floating cities to access the fragile structure of a town that was built centuries ago. 2020 increased the debate but the stakes are very high, a more sustainable future vs. more business when they will be allowed to reopen.
Corporations are doing their interests, but we should start doing ours. And just like the CEOs of our own lives, we need to understand what we really need to improve our condition and happiness. I am considering if the current way of living is helping us in this direction or it is actually distancing us from it. Personally, after covering the basics, I consider essential for our happiness the need for safety, socialization, privacy, education, environmental protection and spirituality. Seen from this perspective however, recent reports show that unfortunately we are failing.
Safety -Increasing poverty and a K shape recovery is creating social instability and inequality. As it relates to safety, in the US alone around 8.5 million people purchased their first firearm in 2020, a significant portion of total gun sales, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Hate crimes, racial discrimination and political division are overtly present in our lives and there is the fear of stepping back on time after decades of massive improvements. Politicians and social platforms are spreading far right messages and conspiracy theories towards a massive audience via online platforms. In 2020 users spent an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes per day on social media. 50.1% of the time spent on mobile was done using social media apps. There is a rise in hate crimes against minorities such as African Americans, Asians communities, Jewish-Orthodox, and Muslims. Nationalistic trends are spreading world wide creating division and social unrest. All of which in the short but especially in the long term, overwhelmingly feels like a threat to safety and freedom.
Socialization — IRL interactions are essential for happiness, or more broadly, our emotions and mental health depend on it. Personal interactions are at the base of our existence and proliferation. Currently we have never been more distant, in some countries law is enforcing isolation almost uninterruptedly since one year. According to a study conducted by KFF during the pandemic, about 4 in 10 adults in the U.S. have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder, a share that has been largely consistent, up from one in ten adults who reported these symptoms from January to June 2019. Universities were closed and especially young adults reported a decreased mental health: substance use increased 25% while in adults 13%; suicidal thoughts increased 26% vs. 11% of the adults. This summer I started taking photographs of empty playgrounds to denounce the loss of interaction and play time of the young generations. I witnessed the same situation in all the countries I visited, US, Mexico, Italy, Morocco and Serbia; we will know the long lasting effects of this year for a long time from now. Technology made lockdowns and social isolation possible as never before. Kids spent their almost entire time with their families undermining an essential developmental task of adolescence: autonomy-building. The developed world can efficiently move-on in a WFH format but the way we grow, the loss in feelings, emotions and the way our human body receives sensory information is negatively affected.
Privacy — is heavily compromised. Like many of the cloud users, I store all my data in seemingly private systems, that simultaneously allow companies to monitor my online activities and collect information for commercial purposes; it seems that there is no real control over it and this is no longer acceptable. Edward Snowden summarized it perfectly when he said: “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide, is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say”. And while we forget about our own privacy, our obsession with public figures leads us away from what matters in the digital aspects of our lives. Many public figures have been judged for something that they have shared in their social media even many years ago. The most recent one is Teen Vogue’s incoming editor-in-chief that resigned following backlash over tweets she posted in 2011, when she was 16 years old. While her words can certainly be disapproved, it should be taken in consideration the fact that her thoughts might have drastically changed in the past 10 years. Romans used to say “verba volant, scripta manent” and this is true more than ever in the social network age. Instead of opening at connections and exchange of ideas, is this limiting freedom of speech and the social practice of discussion? Confrontation is a way of growing and exposing minds to different ideas and point of views, and ultimately educating. And while the Internet held up the sudden massive increase of traffic is providing plenty of ways to socialize. Zoom, Clubhouse, Tinder, we all fit in. We all fit in our virtual rooms, we let “them” track us. We are closing ourselves in boxes, alienated. Our purchases, our online schools, meetings, gyms online, sexual preferences. We are accepting it with a few clicks, they call them “cookies”. The problem is that we are also becoming more exposed in the process. We are having less opportunities to have real life interactions, and we are becoming weaker, divided and more manipulable.
Education — has also been impacted and most of the world was not ready to face the recent events. The result is the further widening of the cultural gap. Schools were closed and the quality of teaching inevitably declined. Students of color and those in high-poverty communities fell further behind their peers, exacerbating long-standing gaps in American education. Online classes are still a privilege since only 59% of the world population has access to the internet, hence can access them. This summer in Mexico I picked up a mother hitchhiking with her child. During our short conversation I could sense all the frustrations that a mother living in a remote village has to go through. There is no public transportation that connects the pueblos of the area, so every time her son needs to go to school she has to get a car lift. In addition to the usual threats posed by a young woman exposing herself to a random commute, this year there is also the fear of becoming infected with Covid-19. Having no access to the internet, the locals rely on a volunteering program of teachers that visit the area twice a week, on Monday to give them home-works and on Saturday to check and correct them. In the long run this issue will feed the known circle of: less opportunities = more emigration = more crime = instability = discrimination = nationalism (walls).
Environment protection — We are consuming less, but some of the successes coming from years of improvements and information have been wiped away in a matter of months and in some cases, days. Most of the restaurants are using take away plastic bags, supplying plastic cutleries wrapped in plastic. We are using plastic as never before and we keep stepping on gloves, glasses and masks that contribute to the damage of our fragile environment. With the fall of oil prices during the pandemic virgin plastic became cheaper than the recycled one and it’s posing a threat to years of environmental policy progresses and good intentions. Incentivized by low interest rates most of the people that could afford the investment purchased, built or refurbished their homes. Construction materials such as steel, iron and concrete are major contributors to air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. In 1900, 41% of the materials used in the US were renewable; now the vast majority of materials consumed are nonrenewable, including metals, minerals and fossil fuel derived products. Demand for lumber outstripped supply to the point where wood prices have shot up more than 180% since last spring. This caused a year of tragic records since the increase in demand was combined with extreme poverty and fueled by deliberately weakened environmental protection’s enforcement laws by Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro. In 2020, the Brazilian Amazon Deforestation Monitoring Program (PRODES) estimated deforestation of 11,088 km2 based on 45% of the monitored area. This represents an increase of 47% and 9.5% compared to 2018 and 2019, respectively, and is the highest rate in the decade.
Spirituality — is a broad topic and a very personal one. With the term spirituality I want to express the need to connect with nature and our inner selves. There is no safe area left to re-center ourselves; we are continuously driven off of our inner search by commercials, social networks and the image we want to display of ourselves. Urbanization and natural habitat destruction and climate change are limiting our freedom to roam and immerse in pristine and untouched areas. One destination that embodies the problem is Tulum, Mexico. Till a few years ago it was a protected archaeological site, described by many as an enchanted paradise far from the noisy areas of Cancun and Playa del Carmen. Going there now is witnessing the unsustainability of an erratic behavior. When the pandemic started many young professionals that were able to work remotely moved there in search of cool, cheap and an exotic destination. The result is that there are no more wild animals, the original forest is quickly disappearing, the infrastructure is not able to keep up with the real estate and demographic explosion. There is no inclusivity, natives are forced to move away since their original jobs are no longer available and the new ones are given to the more educated and hip new arrivals. Higher prices and expectations come with lower standards. The paradise is now moved elsewhere, it will last a few years and then if the trend persists it will become accessible to too many people as well leaving a trail of destruction behind. Some people are still moving there in search of spirituality but most likely than not they will be surrounded by influencers and high-rises. The terminology that social media uses “Followers” says it all. We are following each other in a loop led by a few experts but mostly global brands represented by celebrities. Our need to be considered unique human beings in a world where we are treated as numbers is also part of this inner chaos and confusion. We need to find ourselves, our individual purpose and space among the multitude. Through our inner research we should be able to define our purpose and elevate ourselves above our individualistic point of view and embrace a collective goal, a sustainable one. The great M. L. King Jr. once said that the people that never quite get to the point of rising above selves are the victims of arrested development, they are still children. “They haven’t grown up”. It is difficult to have the courage to listen to us when the stereotype of a successful person is so generalized and envisioned with “have” and not “be”.
We are victims of a broken system that values more the act of owning than the pleasure of sharing, enjoying and benefit from something. As long as the main goal is to create monetary value, actions will be meaningless and the society will be led by a short term vision. Overconsumption is the consequence of buying items that are not needed and too often these items are purchased with the purpose of creating monetary value. Too often purchases are led by pure economical interest and speculation. People buy multiple homes, collect sneakers, beanie babies, watches, wines and whiskies and more recently NFTs. What is the purpose of buying a stuffed toy if your baby cannot play with it? Buying a bottle of wine that you can’t drink. Buying a fine art photography book or a music album that you won’t open or listen to. We don’t buy because we like or love something, we buy to create value, desire, status. Instead of chasing money I’d love to see real efforts to achieve a sustainable balance between our prosperity and the planet we live in; by creating this harmony we will allow regeneration and circularity.
My conclusion is that to realign our interests towards ourselves and our real needs it will take a massive shift, it takes courage, it takes detachment from how we have been raised, but this is the best opportunity to create a lasting impact, to take control again, to rethink actions and ideals.
I live in New York, a city where for the past year everybody has had multiple thoughts about the sustainability of living here. It is a city built with money and on money. It started to be evident that we were continuously running from a place to another, paying exorbitant rents for tiny spaces, queueing in regular restaurants that were charging us 20 USD for an appetizer. Going to the park does not mean embracing nature but sharing outdoor activities and socializing with thousands of other people, just more tanned.
The pandemic has specifically damaged rich metropolises and in New York it is extremely visible. Not only because of the elevated amount of people but because this concentration led people to be more and more individualistic, isolated and weak. I was lucky enough to travel a lot over the last year and Morocco was one of the places where I spent part of my time. When I arrived I found a country where its people were abandoned by the government. My Moroccan friend told me that somehow they were moving on, it was not the catastrophe I was expecting. I asked how and he told me that people were helping and supporting each other. They got closer in the adversity, it’s part of their culture, like in my country, Italy. The many challenges that history has continuously posed in front of the previous generations has created stronger bonds and a structure that has helped them to develop strength and continuity. Now, imagine if this cohesion is supported by the government. If polices were really aimed to stimulate communities and unity. If there is a common vision that does support the individuals but not individuality. Where New York returns to be a place where people can live and not just transit during their career. It takes some sacrifice, especially for the many people that milked the cow for so long without necessarily pouring it back in the form of development, and only consumed for personal enrichment. This is where the government should step in, for the common good, for a sustainable future.
Social media and recent trends are placing too much pressure on individuals and businesses to improve the world, sometimes above the institutions. Governments are often divided in at least two parties and they are continuously blaming each other for collective failures; in the meantime there is a loss of focus on what is really the common good and their accountability to move towards it. Companies and people tend to pursue their interests with a short term vision and approach which is often in contrast with a sustainable future. The answer should come from legitimate institutions that should start protecting the interests of individuals rather than the ones of corporations that are funding them. Our tax should fund our interests, since we are the ones that ultimately are paying them the most. In 2019 only 7% of Federal tax revenue came from Corporate income, whereas 50% came from individuals, not including payroll tax. Control should work in both ways. There must be the ability to track how money is spent and we must be able to choose our leaders; which I feel has not been the case in many developed countries, imagine in the developing ones. Going back to the Teen Vogue’s incoming editor-in-chief that resigned for her Tweets. There is the feeling that we have a great control and a strong influence on private companies because in the end we are their consumers and we can affect their decision. I would expect the same from our politicians. Do we really know how many decisions, bills and executive orders are taken by our leaders? Their effect in our lives? Those are decisions that will certainly impact our lives both in the short and long term. How many xenophobic tweets were perpetrated in the past 4 years by the former US President? In his role, representing a powerful country he refused to acknowledge a problem such as global warming, suggested to use harmful chemicals to kill a virus and disparaged scientists. He will most likely re-run for the next election as well, he had minor personal accountability for what he said and wrote although he is a grown up man that gives the impression of being aware of what he is saying. I am afraid that there is no more clarity between what is significant vs. what is (relatively) not insignificant. A fashion magazine vs true social atrocities. The damage that was done in the past years will last for years or more and is currently the main focus of the current presidency.
We have the tools, they just are not used well and for the peoples’ interest; by our interest I mean humanity’s’, I mean that of our future generations.
I’d like to see ourselves again as individuals being part of the society, not above it and certainly not below it. The world has never been so small, if modern technology is used strategically to our benefit, and we take control we will succeed.
As a society we should get the inspiration from what the American-Cuban-French writer Anais Nin once said: “In order to change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally, one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one’s mind and psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use”.
