Introduction to Week 1

Welcome to [INAUDIBLE] house, on the University Park in Nottingham. I’m Sarah Speight. Are we sustainable in the choices that we make? Using some common dilemmas, we’re going to gather some of your opinions before we look a little bit deeper into some of these issues. We’ll get you engaged in some discussions, and we’ll see if we can arrived at a shared understanding of sustainability. But before we get going, let’s find out what sustainability means to some of the academics and other colleagues who have contributed to this course. The concept of sustainability seems to be everywhere nowadays, but it’s such a broad concept that it actually means different things to different people.

For me as an engineer, sustainability is about balancing economic viability with environmental concerns and the social impact of any project. Sustainability, for me, is a proper, inclusive democracy. To me, sustainability is all about meeting the needs of today, without inhibiting the needs of tomorrow. To me, it means making choices for the way that one lives and works. But not only as an individual, but mainly, or more importantly, as part of our communities. What sustainability means to me is finding a way of living that we can all share, and such that the well being of the present generation is not purchased at the expense of the well being of subsequent generations.

Sustainability to me means using the world’s resources in a way that means they can meet the present population’s needs, without compromising those of the future’s. Sustainability to me means using renewable and already-used resources to do our day-to-day activities. Sustainability to me means trying to be cleverer about doing things more efficiently.