Sustainable Development Goals & Circular Economy

Sustainability & Consumer Society

1. Describe

For this reflection piece, I will be speaking about my experience using the Sulitest MCQ assessment and reflect further on my learning about Sustainable Development Goals, in particular SDG 12 and the Circular Economy.

Sulitest is a sustainability literacy test used by higher education institutions to gauge the basic level of knowledge that college-level students have for social, economic, and environmental responsibility. As a new user to Sulitest I was quite nervous to test my basic knowledge before doing any further learning. I took on the challenge and was happy to learn that my minimum knowledge level for CORE themes was relatively on par with the benchmark of my classmates and worldwide, though I was surprised to learn that my SDG 12 and Circular Economy knowledge scored over 25% more than the worldwide benchmark. Still, this inspired me to go and do some further research into the SDGs and these two areas to expand my knowledge beyond what I already subconsciously knew.

Before this assessment (naively) I was not aware of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, for me, this is the most significant thing that I learned. I am so impressed to see that there is a global framework of steps in place to combat the urgent climate crisis that we are faced with and all of the social and economic issues that come with it. However, one thing I realised from the recent 2020 report was that although these goals were set in place in 2015, we are not currently on track to achieve the intended change for the goal date of 2030.

2. Interpret

This realisation is something that is hard to come to terms with, especially as I look at it in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, it implies that the small steps previously taken in the right direction have now been reversed - and then some. The pandemic is having hugely devastating effects on the goals, keeping 90% of students out of school and having a knock-on effect for those in families who suffer from poverty, as over 370 million children missed out on school meals in the first half of last year (The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020, 2020). This puts more financial strain on families, especially those who have lost work due to the coronavirus pandemic and contributes more to the global number of undernourished people which today stands at approximately 690 million, which brings me to my second reason.

SDG 12 wants us to be more mindful of what we use and the waste we create, in 2016 13.8% of food was lost in supply chains (The SDG Report 2020, 2020). What does this mean for today’s percentage of food waste, and what wastage is occurring after consumption, when this year, in particular, there is a lot of poor decisions being made by those who can afford to overbuy, and are buying more food than needed because everyone is at home and eating from the boredom of nothing else to do. All of this is continuing to impact other parts of the issues the SDG goals are trying to combat. To make themselves feel better over the past twelve months, consumers are buying into extremely marketed goods, for holidays, for birthdays, just for weekends, all of which are over-packaged, contributing to more disposable single-use plastics.

The same goes for clothing consumption, online sales have of course increased since the closure of physical stores but, where are all the new garments that are being purchased going to be worn? Where are all the pre-COVID purchased garments now? And if they are still sitting in people’s closets today, what will happen to them once we get back to a normal society of going to work, school, college? Households will be left with piles of unused and unnecessary amounts of loungewear, inappropriate to wear in ‘normal’ situations. Consumers will continue to buy as a wardrobe refresh will be preferred to venture back out with friends, over garments even those never worn that have sat untouched in drawers for the year, just because they have been there for a year. Maybe off-trend, maybe not, but based on our consumer buying habits it is not new and therefore we don’t want it. This proves that we act in a linear economy of take, make and dispose, this has to change and this is where the circular economy needs to become the main player in our practices.

3. Evaluate

This concept of the circular economy is extremely valuable to our planet and the people on it. Reducing, reusing and recycling are pivotal to the change, and reflecting on the above observations has driven this home for me. It is important to note that these practices aid the achievement of the goals, firstly by reducing the loss of valuable materials to landfill and saving finite energy sources needed to make something new, secondly by using less and reusing instead we save money and resources by reducing consumption. This process will eventually help to design out waste and more pollution and keep existing materials in the loop, in the hope of regenerating our ecosystem.

We can also relate the circular economy to John Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line theory (1994) as its principles generally benefit the economy. It is clear when looking at it that using recycled materials should be cheaper than raw materials in the manufacturing process, as well as the elimination of material constraints. I wonder if more companies will begin to see things in this new light, whereby waste is an opportunity to create new revenue streams.

4. Plan

Having realised this from my research, these new insights and the impacts of them on all social, economic, and environmental levels will be in the back of my mind when making decisions in the buying process when I begin working in the industry after this course.

And using waste as an opportunity is definitely something I will keep with me throughout my future career and try my best to help my future employers to capitalise on resources already at hand. In my personal life, I plan to continue not consuming new clothing just because of trends and wearing what is already in my wardrobe applying new styling techniques to update my garments for specific trends.

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Bibliography:

Boylston, S. (2021). Unleashing sustainability in all its forms - Learning Design for Sustainability Video Tutorial | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com. Retrieved 10 April 2021, from https://www.linkedin.com/learning/learning-design-for-sustainability/unleashing-sustainability-in-all-its-forms?u=87471130

Elkington, J. (1999). Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business. Capstone.

Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2016). Seeing the Bigger Picture - Playlist (9 videos) [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD2C43638C526D33Fhttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD2C43638C526D33F

Home | Sustainable Development. (2021). Retrieved 12 April 2021, from https://sdgs.un.org/

MacArthur, E. (2017). What is the circular economy?. Retrieved 12 April 2021, from https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/what-is-the-circular-economy

The Global Goals. (2015). 'We The People' for The Global Goals | Global Goals [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpqVmvMCmp0

The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 (2020). Retrieved 10 April 2021, from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2020/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2020.pdf

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