By continuing where I left the topic of sustainability in the LR1, I have chosen a scenario “resource usage in a professional organisation (School).
School is an important element of our social life hence, it has a critical role in overall sustainability practices of the surrounding community. I visited ABC School yesterday and observed the resource usage from three dimensions of sustainability (social, environmental, and economic). I found that there was extra and enormous amount of use of resource such as paper, water, food, cleaning products, and energy. From environmental point of view, the resource usage was resulting in pollution, waste, and greenhouse emissions. This situation also has economic concerns as it results in incurring extra costs. It has negative social consequences also because, schools are seen as a role model in the surrounding community. When a school is found to be wasting or not properly using resource then the surrounding community tend to follow the similar practices which can cause disproportionate division of resources in the society.
As per my understanding, there is need to first address the economic concern. The school need to control the costs. For this purpose, the school need to efficiently use its resource. Moreover, they can be producer of their own energy needs. For example, they can install solar panels. This would not only help in controlling their costs but also will help in addressing the environmental concern because, solar energy is natural energy and doesn’t cause emission of greenhouse gases or pollution. The production of own energy will also address the social concerns as the school will be followed by the surrounding community. The community will be encouraged to produce energy for their own usage which will not only equally accommodate needs of all the community members but also will further reduce the negative environmental impacts.