The Importance Of Compromise In Environmental Awareness

Most people will realise that there is a great need for the environment to be cared for. This is part of an awareness that has come to the forefront in society since the early 2000’s. This is particularly true of the developing world  where awareness did not take root as it did in the developed world. So, most of the planet is in agreement that something needs to be done.

There is a tendency, however, for people to make a bit of a leap – and decry any and all things that pollute or otherwise don’t work towards a shared goal. However, this is not necessarily a reasonable approach.

The assumption that is made is that we simply need to switch to the renewable ways of doing things, however it is important to recognise that renewable technologies aren’t quite sophisticated enough to take over at this point in time. Not without stagnating the global economy at least.

The real issue is finding a compromise, we need to continue to use the old ways of doing things, whilst focussing on finding alternatives. It’s very much a work in progress, and it will take some time. Australia is estimating it will achieve 100% renewable power by 2030. So, until then we need to keep our heads together and progress.

But how do we do that?

Encouraging Renewable Technologies In Business

When people think of renewable energy and sustainability, there is a inclination to think about some kind of communal village with a few solar panels and perhaps a composting toilet that is ‘off the grid’ as they say.

You may also think of people living in residential property looking to cut-back on their bills. With increasing energy prices there is a big demand for this, but it’s easy to forget a huge sector of our economy that isn’t currently embracing renewable technologies at the same rate – the business world.

Many commercial buildings are perfectly suited to technologies like solar panels, and there are in fact a few specialist solar panel contractors that install for businesses – but the trend needs to be increased.

This may be achieved in the following ways;

·         Incentives – By providing incentives for small businesses to utilise renewable technologies there will be an elevated level of use, this may consist of things like tax breaks. There are many existing schemes for residential homes, but the government needs to take action and expand these to business. The Renewable Heat Incentive is an example of some of these incentives, but there needs to be more.

·         Awareness – A lot of small business owners are pretty busy, meaning they don’t have time to research all the benefits. There needs to be an active promotion of what renewable energy technologies can do to bring the benefits of this technology to their attention.

·         Investment – By investing in the renewable technologies themselves, their development and efficiency will increase – in addition costs of manufacturing will decrease. This will mean businesses are more able to afford such technologies and ultimately that more will do it.

All in all, business has a big role to play in achieving the goal of a sustainable environment. Enhancing their contributions to sustainability is an important way of doing that.

Utilising Non-Renewables In A Renewable Way

One aspect of a compromise when thinking about the environment is making use of waste that is non-recyclable. There are many ways to do this, for example Sweden has made extensive use of energy from waste facility technologies that incinerate waste that would otherwise go into a landfill.

So frequent is their use in Sweden that the country recently made headlines when it said it had run out of waste and began importing waste that other countries wished to dispose of.  There are so few governments who take such an intelligent approach, energy from waste allows electricity to be generated from non-recyclable waste and every country should be utilising non-renewables this way.

This approach makes financial sense too, a country that takes this initiative will import waste for a fee from nearby regions. The waste is disposed of and electricity is generated for the country. So, other countries essentially pay Sweden to generate their own clean energy!

Keeping Current & Compromising In The Mission For Sustainability

It is absolutely vital for humanity, and that’s not an overstatement, to find a sustainable solution to maintaining our environment. We need to press on, so that we can continue to grow as a species.

Utilising non-renewables and increasing use of renewables across the board are an excellent way to help make that happen.

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