Sustainability and Charleston by William Hester

“The past few years have been very transformative for Charleston in terms of adopting sustainability oriented initiatives and practices. The past five years alone have seen the unofficial adoption by the city council of the city’s Green Plan, the opening of Growfood Carolina to encourage the cultivation and distribution of locally grown produce, growth of the city’s recycling program, etc. All of these initiatives are influential in divesting our emission levels from long distance imports, and in curbing the waste we generate from our consumption in general. With the end of Bee’s Ferry landfill lifecycle in sight, and the decline of small scale local agriculture, it is a breath of fresh air to see diverse conservation efforts popping up around the peninsula with the rapidity that we have experienced. To see the community making a push towards a more sustainable lifestyle is very reassuring, but are these efforts a sign that Charleston is on the right path towards becoming truly sustainable? What does it mean to be sustainable anyway, and how does one go about achieving what they decide it to be?

When looking to define sustainability a good place to start is with the word itself. The heart of the term is formed by the word “sustain.” One could say then that when trying to live sustainably the key is to do so in a fashion that sustains oneself and the environment in which one is living. To do both of these things would mean finding a balance in life so that you minimize your impact on your surroundings and the other lives that inhabit it while ensuring your own comfortable existence within the confines of your environment.  Can we say that the efforts mentioned above will allow us to achieve these goals?

With our recycling efforts we are trying to take the materials that we produce and develop systems so that we can reuse them, effectively extending their lifespan and usefulness. Promoting local agriculture allows us to become more in tune with our food production systems and raises awareness about how our food consumption habits affect local communities.  Having a green plan, even if it hasn’t been officially adopted by the city, tells us that the people of Charleston are aware that their lifestyle will not sustain themselves or their community and that a call to action is necessary to collect it. Of these three examples that I have listed I would say that only the later two are on the right track to achieving a sustainable lifestyle. Our recycling programs, although useful, only divert the waste we generate and don’t actually address the core issue that our consumption produces so much of it in the first place. Investing in local produces reinvigorates communal interaction and makes people more attune with their community, and the green plan shows that people are at least interested in preserving it.

Gaining popular interest in sustainability is no small feat in and of itself. I would say that the hardest part about adopting a sustainable lifestyle is first recognizing that your habits don’t achieve the balance that we mentioned earlier, and then adopting new ones that do. Most people in modern American society have developed habits of mass consumption and a disregard for the consequences of it. These habits are already having an influential effect on the world, so much so that it is now officially considered a threat to national security by the United States government. So pressing are the issues we have developed through our consumption that many major coastal cities are undertaking efforts to modify their infrastructure so that climate change does not result in the mass displacement of their denizens. Unfortunately the city of Charleston has yet to climb aboard this effort. It’s kind of ironic that a city so steeped in tradition and dedicated to the preservation of its history as Charleston is would display such a persistent hesitance to commit to a plan of action to preserve itself.

It is clear that Charleston is beginning to become aware that its habits do not allow it to live symbiotically with its environment. It is beginning to take steps to ameliorate that, but it takes more than the installation of recycling programs to achieve that goal. There is a tipping point to achieving true sustainability between becoming aware of one’s impact on their surroundings and taking the necessary action to act on that awareness. Right now Charleston is starting to look at itself and is beginning to work towards achieving that awareness, but it will be a while yet before it is ready to act on it. I think that ultimately it will involve a change in the mindset of the people, one that is oriented more towards empathy for others and their environment as opposed to personal gain if we ever hope to achieve true sustainability. Having empathy towards the environment and community will imbue people with the desire to want to preserve them. When we no longer have the desire to exploit others or the environment for our own gain then we will have learned how to truly live and work together, and can call ourselves sustainable.”