You Heard Of Sustainable Design?

Have you ever wondered what will happen when the world runs out of resources? I mean, there are so many people in this world and we continue to use more and more “stuff” that won’t come back once we use it all up. Maybe you’ve heard the term “sustainable design”, or maybe you’ve heard people throw around the term, “green”. Will going green really save our planet?

Planet resuscitation begins with sustainable design with can be discussed in easy-to-understand terms. When people design the tools that run our world, they use resources. The resources are either renewable or non-renewable, meaning either they regenerate themselves, or they don’t. Non-renewable resources, such as petroleum or natural gas, are totally gone once we use them up, whereas renewable resources, such as trees, will grow back (although we may cut them faster than they can grow, but that’s another story for another day!). In the design of the tools that keep the world running, preserving resources should be our goal, which means we need to design our tools in such a way that will sustain them.

One of the easiest ways to sustain resources in our own lives is the old “reduce, reuse, recycle” routine. Reduce your consumption of products made using non-renewable resources. Use the things you already have over and over; don’t throw away things like waterbottles and then go out and buy new ones! Recycle anything in your home that you can. Make recycling a family project and get kids and teens involved. The younger children would love to keep five cent refunds, and teens will love the responsibility of driving to the transfer station!

The concepts mentioned that you can use in your own home to promote greenness can also be used globally. We need to focus on reducing our consumption of non-renewable resources on a national level, reusing what we already have, as well as recycling on a national level which will cause a balance between resources we have available and resources we use. Having balance is extremely important.

I suppose the significance of all of this lies in the fact that the world must use non-renewable resource temperately. You can’t swoop in and save the world alone, but without designs aimed at sustaining resources on an individual level, we will never get to it on a national or global scale.

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