Critical Question 2

This is going to argue that our actions do impact sustainability. By sustainability I mean sustainability could be defined as an ability or capacity of something to be maintained or to sustain itself. It’s about taking what we need to live now, without jeopardising the potential for people in the future to meet their needs. If an activity is said to be sustainable, it should be able to continue forever and by actions I mean the fact or process of doing something, typically to achieve an aim. By impact I mean a marked effect or influence and although some actions impact sustainability more than other I still believe that they will all in the end either have a positive or negative impact on sustainability. The example I will be using to prove that our actions do impact our sustainability are environmental and culture.

The first factor that shows that our actions impact sustainability is culture. Our actions have a big impact on the sustainability of culture, on one of our mini trails we met a man named Dean Stewart. He told us about the sacred lands that his past generations called home, he took us to places along the Yarra River (Part in front of crown casino) and told us about the significance of it. For instance at Enterprize park, it use to be a bank which was a gathering site for all of the wurundjeri.   He explained to us by the English blowing up the rocks, cutting down the trees and moving the traditional custodians out of their homes the culture and significance of some places were lost. This shows that by the English not respecting the traditional custodians and taking action on what they thought was right, broke millions of generations of stories and tales about the land. It is said that over 50% of the world’s 6,000 languages are endangered, 96% of the world’s 6,000 languages are spoken by 4% of the world’s population and 90% of the world’s languages are not represented on the Internet. I believe that this is mainly because we have a lack of acknowledging the custodians to the culture and as our world widens and the population grows, cultures that are not big slowly die out. This shows that our actions do impact on our sustainability as a whole.

The second point that demonstrates that our actions do impact our sustainability is the environment. Our actions definitely impact the environment around us and a clear example of this is the Yarra River. While we were driving to Upper Yarra Dam through Warburton we were told to look outside at the river that was clear and beautiful. Our teacher told us that one man changed the Yarra in Warburton from a murky rubbish-filled river to a nice clear spotless river. This one man went down to the Yarra every Saturday to clean it up, and at first he was the only on but then the community of Warburton got behind him and started to help. Cleaning up the Yarra should be in everyone’s goals because it is such an important water source to Melburnians, a lot of people living in Melbourne know that about 70% of the water they use comes from the Yarra. The federal government know this and that is why they giving 1 million dollars over for years to make the Yarra the clean river it once was. This goes to show that this man’s actions changed how the river looked completely and this shows that our actions do impact our sustainability.

Another important point into why our actions impact the sustainability in the environment is litter, our actions of not recycling, composting and using packaged goods that can not be broken down and not putting our rubbish in the bin are having a dramatic effect on our environment. This rubbish that is not being decomposed such as plastic bottles are not only having a effect on our waterways, it is also having an affect on our animal life. When i was in a class on garbology  there was a video shown to us about rubbish that had being taken out to sea and being eaten by baby albatross’s as their first meal. “As a result of this the birds stomach cavity got filled up to the point where they could no longer eat a single thing, and although their stomach’s were full they weren’t getting any nutrition and ended up dying of starvation, dehydration and choking.” – Chris Jordan. This shows that with you action to not put our rubbish away we are destroying the natural habitat of animals all around us. While I was in the garbology lesson we took 1 bin from our school and emptied it out sorting through it to find out what was compost, recycle and what was landfill. We found out that only about 1/3 of the full bin was landfill and the rest was either compost or recycle. So if 2/3 of most full bins are recyclable or able to go into the compost than we could be saving a lot more of our earth’s resources. a recent water quality tests point to high concentrations of E-coli, indicating contamination in the river. This contamination is mainly caused by poorly operating and old-fashioned sewerage systems. Poor management of general waste, including rotting food also contributes. On top of that, up to 350,000 cigarette butts enter the Yarra every day via storm water drains. The environment is just one factor to how our actions impact sustainability, another factor is the culture.

Although I agree that our actions impact upon sustainability I also acknowledge that our inactions do as well. Just as our actions impact upon sustainability our inactions do the exact same thing. For example if we see rubbish on the ground and we don not pick it up, we are using the inaction of not picking it up which means that the rubbish will find its way into the ocean and might kill an animal that digests it thinking it is food.

In conclusion, from the points i have stated that our actions do impact sustainability also acknowledging that our inactions do too.

http://www.eschooltoday.com/waste-recycling/effects-of-poor-waste-management.html

http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/hunt/2014/mr20141018.html

http://www.sustainablebabysteps.com/human-impact-on-environment.html

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/yarra-river-still-badly-polluted-despite-decades-of-talk-about-cleaning-it-up-20150316-1m0dha.html

http://www.cleaneryarrabay.vic.gov.au/issues/litter

http://www.coolaustralia.org/part-1-melbournes-yarra-river-a-lifetime-of-change-primary/

http://www.awarenessmag.com/julaug07/ja07_sustaining_cultures.htm

http://www.ran.org/how_many_trees_are_cut_down_every_year: find out how many trees where being cut down a year.

http://textilewastediversion.com/how-many-trees-are-cut-down-each-year/: verify the number.

http://chemistry.about.com/od/environmentalchemistry/f/oxygen-produced-by-trees.htm: found out how much oxygen one tree produces a year.

http://www.adelaideaffordabletreeremoval.com.au/how-much-oxygen-does-a-tree-produce/: verify the number.

http://www.sciencefocus.com/qa/how-many-trees-are-needed-provide-enough-oxygen-one-person: verifying