Consumption and Cruelty

As my last blog entry, I wanted to use this post to sum-up the ideas of the class and my learnings over the semester. But, after seeing this video, I had to share this first. 

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Source: Sante Nature Innovation 2014, Sans un mot cette video vous rend muet en 6min, Facebook page, 11 April 2014, accessed 3 June 2016, <https://www.facebook.com/554178414627483/videos/741072019271454/>.

In his post, John Voss, former architect now artist whom shared this video, accompanied it with only three words: "faster cheaper more". For me, this perfect summation of what the horror witnessed in this video represents, was just as powerful as the video itself. The suffering experienced by these animals to increase the efficiency of production - fitting more animals in less space, feeding them minimally, processing them alive - all to save a few hours and dollars. And while we may not advocate or even be able to control the conditions these animals have to endure, the possibly even more unnerving scale of production hits home because it is to feed our gross over-consumption. 

We are consumers. Consumers of resources, Consumers of money, Consumers of food. And it's not only bad for our planet, but its bad for ourselves and yet we do it anyway. The discussion on food waste in last week's lecture detailed the environmental impacts of clearing land and the disposal of waste. But we did not touch on the implications of wasting animal products. Animal cruelty as a byproduct of gross consumerism and food waste is a powerful message. Source locally. Only take what we need. Manage waste responsibly. 

To Sum Up

It's difficult to sum up this blog across ideas of population growth, urban planning and smart cities next to climate change and resilience and sustainable behaviours, education and waste management. It's been a rollercoaster of debate over the place of technology in the future of our cities and the role of governments, professionals and individuals in the sustainability movement. City-based solutions to global issues are diverse and sometimes conflicting but there is one message that seems to shine through all of this. When managing sustainability and urbanisation in cities, no matter the tool, the intent must be good and true. This seems obvious but a growing preoccupation with economic outcomes is clear in so many of these articles and videos and it deters from social and environmental objectives, without which, sustainability cannot be achieved. 

Vivid Festival Sydney

Source: 7 News Sydney 2016, Facebook page, 31 May 2016, accessed 2 June 2016, <https://www.facebook.com/7newssydney/?fref=nf>.

It's that time of the year again. Sydney's Vivid Festival, the world's largest festival of light, music and ideas, wows us and over 1 million of our fellow residents as well as more than 100,000 tourists visiting specifically for the event, with an spectacular show of colour and innovation.

Although I've taken part in the event for years now and often pondered those enormous energy bills, for the first time I've stopped to truly consider the environmental ramifications of such an immense use of electricity. It is the participation of strong sustainability body, Taronga Zoo in the annual light show for the first time that really got me to thinking. How can an organisation working to promote sustainability support such a blatant waste of energy. So I dug a little deeper.

Vivid Sydney (2015) address just how much consideration has been put into the environmental ramifications of the festival. In addition to most installations comprising energy efficient LED globes, Vivid is powered by 100 per cent GreenPower accredited renewable energy. This means that all the power used by installations is offset through an equivalent purchase of renewable energy, essentially an investment in the renewable energy industry. 

Whether Vivid Festival Sydney is entirely powered by renewable energy or not, the educational benefits arguably outweigh the direct environmental repercussions. Sustainable thinking is woven throughout the displays whether they feature innovative ideas for smart cities, low-energy installations or straight-forward sustainability education. Taronga Zoo's own installation promotes education and fundraising for endangered species. Certainly, the economic benefits of the tourism aspect trump the financial energy cost. As long as sustainability remains at the heart of this incredible festival, the long-term outcomes will include positive social, environmental and economic benefits for Sydney.

Source: Vivid Sydney 2015, Vivid Sydney 2015 Lights up with GreenPower, NSW Government, 20 May 2015, accessed 2 June 2016, <http://www.vividsydney.com/sites/default/files/20150520-MR-vivid-sydney-2015-lights-up-with-greenpower_0.pdf>.

Food Waste

This week's panel discussion with Jayantha Sellahewa and Dr Talabal Islam on food waste was certainly thought-provoking. The fact that one-third of food produced is either lost or wasted has enormous ramifications for sustainability. The economic cost - $600 annually for the average Aussie family and $5 billion across Australia - is just the tip of the iceburg (Sellahewa 2016). The two critical perspectives on food waste are the impacts associated with the production of food and those with the waste of it. While Sellahewa focused on food security and the limitations of this world to provide for a growing population as well as the energy and water inputs required in the production of food, Islam explored the economic and environmental costs of the disposal of food waste and how it might be better used (such as biogas & fertiliser).

So how do we mitigate these impacts and prevent food waste? This is a such a significant problem and there are so many levels that need to be addressed, it's by no means a simple solution.

At the production level, we can grow food locally or even domestically to reduce damage (and thus loss) during transportation, the longevity of the food in the supermarket (e.g. imported fruits use up most of their shelf-life during transportation), and restrict leftovers (as home-grown food need only be picked when required and local food can restock on a on demand basis daily).

At the distribution level, which may be one of the most difficult to tackle, we need to transform consumer attitudes and the market. Shopping for less food more often at local fruit shop or corner store over supermarkets. Being less selective on the appearance of fruit and vegetables. Reinterpreting 'best before' dates and educating consumers. And charging more for fresh fruit, vegetables, bread etc. to reflect actual value of the product and discourage consumers from wasting food.

Of course, once food reaches our households, the best solution is behavioural change. To plan meals appropriately but this is a difficult solution to implement.

At the waste level, incentivising consumers to compost their organic waste through incorporation into green bin system, provision of anaerobic digestors or community group that generates fertiliser. Charging consumers for the waste they produce may also provide powerful motivation to discourage waste production. There are, however, equity issues to be considered here for instance families with babies produce a significant amount of waste with nappies.

While there are several opportunities for waste reduction at the domestic level, restaurants, cafes, supermarkets etc are throwing out a significant amount of food every day. It's costly but their businesses are dependent on having a plentiful supply of food for their customers and they operate under strict Australian food safety regulations.

There's some good news on this front in the form of OzHarvest who market themselves as Australia's first perishable food rescue organisation. OzHarvest collects excess food from more than 2,000 commercial outlets to deliver to charities across Australia. The not for profit organisation serves to not only provide quality food for Australian's in need but is a strong advocate for food waste education, tackling the social, economic and environmental impacts of food waste in Australia.


OzHarvest 2016, accessed 29 May 2016 <http://www.ozharvest.org/what-we-do/>.

Sustainable Behaviours

In the Age of Internet, all persons with access to a computer these days has a wealth of information available to them which is highly publicised on social media addressing sustainable behaviours and pointing people in the direction of what is right. Yet still so many of us are partaking in unsustainable practices - do we know it?

All it takes is for Waleed Ally of the Project to do a story on the most controversial new issue for the Australian public to jump on board as evidenced in the latest case with the price cutting of milk and the instant backlash from the public to support Aussie farmers. Unfortunately, when it comes to the sustainable future of our cities, Waleed's stories have focused on the political powers, the governments' role in preventing climate change. Yes these stories have reached a significant audience and had a powerful influence. But Australian citizens can no longer play the blame game and sit back while we demand a more sustainable future for our country, shifting all the responsibility to the fault of our public policy. We need to take responsibility. Do shows like The Project avoid such stories because they're afraid of the response they'll receive from their viewership? Maybe negative response, maybe even decreased ratings. I cannot condemn The Project for relying on evoking passion and outrage in their responders towards the political and big business baddies however behavioural change is paramount to our future and those in the position to inspire it, refuse to step up.

One of our issues then is that all those articles informing the public of the detrimental effects of our unsustainable lifestyles, need to reach the greater population and unfortunately they're only read by those actually interested, those who are unlikely to be major contributors to the problem. How do we catch people? How do we educate? Interestingly, since starting my new job in a big company in March this year, I have been far more exposed to these kind of people, the advocates of sustainable behaviours. It's refreshing to see the articles constantly being posted on our company's social network platform and the growing support sustainable initiatives receive from these members of the building industry, those in positions to make a difference.

In this week already, two articles were shared hoping to deliver information throughout the business and help us choose more sustainable behaviours. The first was on the consumption of bottled water and the extreme levels of CO2 emitted, water used and waste produced compared to tap water. Cleverly, although delivering all the environmental sustainability facts of bottled water production and consumption, the article focused on the outrageous financial costs of bottled water to consumers at 1,000 times over the cost of production. If tonnes of CO2 and barrels of oil are incomprehensible to readers, they can certainly relate to money!

Source: Cool Australia 2016, Bottled Water, accessed 25 May 2016, <http://www.coolaustralia.org/bottled-water-secondary/>.

The second article addressed food sustainability in an anecdote on the writer's experience of giving up meat for a month. The basis of the study was veganism but, probably knowing that would have a hard time convincing the greater Australian audience, the writer expresses full vegan is not a necessity, but a focus on whole foods, locally produced and a reduction in meat consumption will have the same benefits. Similar to the water article, the writer of this journal reflects the sustainable outcomes of cutting the consumption of meat but, in this increasingly health-conscious environment, focuses on the health benefits of a vegan diet, specifically productivity.

Source: Segran, E 2016, 'How Giving Up Meat For a Month Improved My Productivity', Fast Company, 12 May 2016, accessed 24 May 2016, <http://www.fastcompany.com/3059731/your-most-productive-self/how-giving-up-meat-for-a-month-improved-my-productivity?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-weekly-newsletter&position=4&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=05202016>.

Global knowledge of sustainable behaviours is growing and not only is this information becoming more available to an increasing number of people, it is becoming more 'in-your-face'. The public won't be able to avoid their responsibilities in the sustainable future of our world for much longer and it is our responsibility, as the informed population, to continue sharing this information, to reach the wider population quicker and ensure the information being published and shared is accurate. 

Sustainability Education

I find myself revisiting the sustainability initiatives of Penrith City Council again this week after coming across their "What's On" section where it's clear that educating their residents on sustainability is a key goal for the local government area. Their May initiative involves "sustainable living workshops" held every weekend from the 15th May to the 4th June, providing free courses for locals to learn some fantastic opportunities for sustainable solutions in the home. Workshops being provided equip with home-owners with all the background knowledge to keep chooks in the backyard, install solar power on their roof, grow their own vegetables, fertilise their garden and control pests naturally, and pickle and preserve their own produce. All these courses present opportunities for reducing expenses and improving health and wellbeing within the home in addition to the greater environmental contributions and even promote socialisation in the community. 

Source: Penrith City Council 2016, Sustainable Living Workshops, accessed 23 May 2016, <https://www.penrithcity.nsw.gov.au/What-s-On/EventCategory/Classes-and-workshops/Sustainable-living-workshops/>.

Penrith City Council's June initiative is a single event, a free festival held for families with live performances and displays and a central focus of promoting diversion of waste from landfill. This event is particularly clever as it integrates the fun, social activity of a festival with sustainability objectives, enabling the message to be delivered to a wider group of people and associating sustainable waste management with positivity. Sustainability education directed at families is a useful mode of delivery. People are most strongly influenced by the environment around them rather than their own will power so it takes the collective force of a family to create change in the household. Children are far more impressionable than adults and are a great source of encouragement and  a reminder for their parents, who can resort to habitual behaviours. 

Source: Penrith City Council 2016, Waste Not Free Family Festival, accessed 23 May 2016, <https://www.penrithcity.nsw.gov.au/What-s-On/EventCategory/Family-events/Waste-Not-Free-Family-Festival/>.

People are the heart of sustainability. They are not only the source of the issue but the whole purpose of sustainable development - to improve the quality of life for now and the future. So bringing the responsibility back to the people has the most obvious potential for a sustainable future. Not by putting the blame on them but by educating them, enabling them, to make the best decisions possible for the future of their society, their economy, their environment. 

Virtual Reality

With smart cities on the mind as a basis for so many of the developments and decisions relating to sustainable development today, it is not surprising that we're seeing more and more virtual reality. Whether it is because virtual cities are the epitome of smart cities or because virtual reality is a tool for realising our utopia, our ideal smart city, there is no shaking the incredible development in this field - a technology which allows us to see ourselves surrounded by technology. 

The video below allows us to imagine a world where we  become the smart phone and connect in with the city, seeing all the systems around us. 

Source: Matsuda, K 2016, Hyper-Reality, 19 May 2016, accessed 19 May 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs>.

This world presents us with something more than virtual reality, a 'hyper-reality' as described to us by the author. Where we not only see an enhanced version of the world around us but can interact with it. Buildings, infrastructure, even people project a code to the system enabling users of the system to identify every element and then an intelligent computer system provides the user with possible responses to the stimulus it receives. What is particularly strange about this hyper reality is that is hasn't actually changed the way the citizens in this imagined world do things, it has simply made them easier to do. The user still has to go to the shop to buy groceries and motor vehicles still litter the busy streets. And when the system is corrupted, the world around the user appears completely unchanged from how we know it today. Digitisation of the city's components and its people hasn't made the city a better place for the people, it has reduced them to a code in the greater system, it has robbed them of their identity. And, touching on the privacy issues related to big data collection, it was so easy for a hacker to steal the created identity of this woman. 

It may seem now to be an exaggerated portrayal of the future of smart cities, but the recognisable integration of ideas from social media platforms and smart phone apps along with the excessive advertising makes this portrayal seem all too real. It is not entirely far-fetched and it touches on some of the very real issues with the integration of information and communication technologies in our cities today.

Resilient Cities Recover Faster

This week David Sanderson from UNSW's Faculty of the Built Environment presented a fascinating lecture on the subject of disaster recovery in cities. 'Resilience' is a relatively new new term to the sustainable built environment diction. It comes as a response to climate change in which we are seeing increased frequency of severe weather events such as flooding and heat waves and increased severity of 'natural' disasters. Sanderson actively avoids use of the term 'natural' when referring to these disasters due to the significant influence of man-made contributions to the overall event and outcome. It is resilience, a city or building's ability to cope with and bounce back from disaster, that we see increasingly used in place of sustainability.
Through much of his own work in not-for-profit disaster relief, Sanderson relays a strong relationship between the social and economic sustainability of a city to its resilience, ability to recover from environmental disaster. Of course, a city's wealth is not the only determinant in its resilience to and from disaster but it is probably the best indicator.
Sanderson compares an earthquake in Japan, one of the most disaster prone countries in the world but also one of the most prepared, to the earthquake in Haiti, six years ago. In Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries, hundreds of thousands were killed and 400,000 still live in tents following the 2010 earthquake.

Images: Hazelton, L 2010, 'Haiti earthquake in pictures: Shell-shocked survivors roam streets scavenging for scaps', Daily Mail Australia, 16 January 2010, accessed 16 May 2016, <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1243540/Haiti-earthquake-pictures-Shell-shocked-survivors-roam-streets-scavenging-scraps.html>.

The impact of the disaster and the ability of the city to recover from it are influenced by the scale of the disaster, the preparedness of the city, the city's governance and inherent corruption, poor quality infrastructure and masterplanning and of course poverty, especially concentrated poverty. Poorly planned, poorly built, unprepared and corrupt cities, aching with poverty, cannot recover from disaster of this scale and severity.

But what about cities that can? What does a resilient city look like?  As resilience has become more and more part of sustainability discourse in the built environment, we see the literature unraveling on this. And of course, out come the lists - 'The 10 Most Resilient Cities in the World'. Whilst they tend to be a little North-American-centric, the way the rankings are calculated is really solid and gives a strong idea of the major factors that contribute to a city's overall resilience. This is based on a combination of the city's "Vulnerability" score and their "Adaptive Capacity". Vulnerability is based on the categories of climate, environment, resources (including access to food, energy and water), infrastructure and community. It is not surprising that Canadian cities claim the top three positions on this list, as one of the most adaptable countries on the planet with strong sustainability inclinations, sound governance and economic prosperity, stable climatic conditions and low disaster risk. Pictured below is Toronto, ranked number one resilient city in the world.

Image: Schiller, B 2014, 'The 10 Most Resilient Cities in the World', Co.Exist, 5 May 2014, accessed 16 May 2016, <http://www.fastcoexist.com/3029442/the-10-most-resilient-cities-in-the-world?utm_source=facebook>.