INDUSTRY COMMENT
NO SHORTCUTS ALLOWED
Resident TC columnist Max Adam, Sales & Marketing Director at Scottish chemical manufacturers RP Adam, is something of an expert on sustainability. Here, he explains the deeper meanings of the word, and why there are no shortcuts in the quest to be sustainable.
Over the last 20 years in particular, the word ‘sustainability’ has woven its way into the fabric of many companies’ CSER policy statements. Since the 1980s sustainability has been used more in the sense of human sustainability on planet Earth and this has resulted in the most widely quoted definition of sustainability as a part of the concept ‘sustainable development’.
The UN issued a statement in 1987 which read: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Powerful stuff – whether at work or at home, parents are now dictating the future of their children’s and grandchildren’s well- being, by having to dramatically alter their own consumptive behaviours, which after all they learned from their parents and grandparents before them.
Our modern needs and expectations have defined the state of the planet, and therefore societal behavioural change is urgently required, and part of that is our desire for more of cheaper and better quality products. When you see MORE, CHEAPER, BETTER, it clearly shows the unsustainable balance of these three modern consumer requirements.
Keeping ourselves, our clothes and our environment clean has become both a benchmark of civilisation and a cornerstone of our ever-increasing health and longevity as a species. All cleaning processes depend on the consumption of energy, water and a variety of chemical substances or mixtures. The key to controlling negative environmental impacts is therefore to control consumption, make processes more efficient or simply to use less to get the same results.
14 | Tomorrow’s Cleaning Sustainability Supplement 2015
In simple terms sustainability is the capacity to endure; it is how biological systems remain diverse and productive indefinitely. Healthy marshlands and forests which have existed for thousands of years are good examples of sustainable biological systems, but in more general terms, sustainability is the endurance of systems and processes.
Let’s face it, healthy ecosystems and environments are not only necessary to the survival of species of plants, animals, birds and fish, but critically that of mankind. Ways of reducing negative human impact are chemical engineering, environmental resources management and environmental protection. Information is gained from chemistry, earth science, environmental science and conservation biology.
The central organising principle for sustainability is that of sustainable
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