Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. It is an alternative to "conventional" waste disposal that can save material and help lower greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling can prevent the waste of potentially useful materials and reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, thereby reducing: energy usage, air pollution, and water pollution.
Overconsumption is a situation where resource use has outpaced the sustainable capacity of the ecosystem. A prolonged pattern of overconsumption leads to environmental degradation and the eventual loss of resource bases.
Sustainable living describes a lifestyle that attempts to reduce an individual's or society's use of the Earth's natural resources, and one's personal resources. Its practitioners often attempt to reduce their carbon footprint by altering their methods of transportation, energy consumption, and/or diet. Its proponents aim to conduct their lives in ways that are consistent with sustainability, naturally balanced, and respectful of humanity's symbiotic relationship with the Earth's natural ecology. The practice and general philosophy of ecological living closely follows the overall principles of sustainable development.
Minamata is a city located in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. It is on the west coast of Kyūshū and faces Amakusa islands. Minamata was established as a village in 1889, re-designated as a town in 1912 and grew into a city in 1949.
World Environment Day (WED) is celebrated on the 5th of June every year, and is the United Nation's principal vehicle for encouraging awareness and action for the protection of our environment. First held in 1974, it has been a flagship campaign for raising awareness on emerging environmental issues from marine pollution, human overpopulation, and global warming, to sustainable consumption and wildlife crime. WED has grown to become a global platform for public outreach, with participation from over 143 countries annually. Each year, WED has a new theme that major corporations, NGOs, communities, governments and celebrities worldwide adopt to advocate environmental causes.
Ecotivity is an abbreviation, or blend, of the term, ecological activity. An ecotivity is any activity that promotes the conservation or sustainability of ecosystems and bio-diversity.
Ecodesign is an approach to designing products with special consideration for the environmental impacts of the product during its whole lifecycle. In a life cycle assessment, the life cycle of a product is usually divided into procurement, manufacture, use, and disposal.
Green marketing is the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe. It incorporates a broad range of activities, including product modification, changes to the production process, sustainable packaging, as well as modifying advertising. Yet defining green marketing is not a simple task where several meanings intersect and contradict each other; an example of this will be the existence of varying social, environmental and retail definitions attached to this term. Other similar terms used are environmental marketing and ecological marketing.
Precycling is the practice of reducing waste by attempting to avoid bringing items which will generate waste into home or business. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also cites that precycling is the preferred method of integrated solid waste management because it cuts waste at its source and therefore trash is eliminated before it is created. According to the EPA, precycling is also characterized as a decision-making process on the behalf of the consumer because it involves making informed judgments regarding a product’s waste implications. The implications that are taken into consideration by the consumer include: whether a product is reusable, durable, or repairable; made from renewable or non-renewable resources; over-packaged; and whether or not the container is reusable.
Ecological design is defined by Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan as "any form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes." Ecological design is an integrative ecologically responsible design discipline.
This is a glossary of environmental science.
Sustainable metrics and indices are measures of sustainability, and attempt to quantify beyond the generic concept. Though there are disagreements among those from different disciplines, these disciplines and international organizations have each offered measures or indicators of how to measure the concept.
The natural environment, commonly referred to simply as the environment, includes all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth.
The Supernatural Festival is an ecology & music open-air festival held annually in April, located at the park-forest Košutnjak, in Belgrade capitol of Serbia. Supernatural Festival has the aim to raise ecological awareness about the importance of nature, ecology, natural way of life and proper behavior towards Planet. Also, apart from being a festival is also an ecological movement that uses art, media and event as the means to promote ecology and educate people about importance of this subject. Festival celebrates the Day of The Planet Earth, 22 April. Every year the festival takes place at Košutnjak, one of the most popular recreational places in Belgrade located 6 km southwest from the city downtown. Settled in beautiful natural landscape, just next to the national historic landmark Hajdučka Česma. The festival makes place for 20,000 visitors every year with growing support. Supernatural festival takes place during the day, in the sunshine, thus making point about the energy efficiency issue. All of the festival stages use the biodiesel fuel as main power supply, and visitors are constantly encouraged to recycle their waste throughout the festival. The event usually starts early in the morning with children program including numerous workshops all concerning human environment and recycling techniques.
Sustainability organizations are (1) organized groups of people that aim to advance sustainability and/or (2) those actions of organizing something sustainably. Unlike many business organizations, sustainability organizations are not limited to implementing sustainability strategies which provide them with economic and cultural benefits attained through environmental responsibility. For sustainability organizations, sustainability can also be an end in itself without further justifications.
Making various personal choices has been advocated as a means of fighting climate change.
The Ecology Center is a non-profit organization based in Berkeley, California to provide environmental education and reduce the ecological footprint of urban residents.
Sustainable consumer behavior is consumers’ behaviors that improve social and environmental performance as well as meet their needs. It studies why and how consumers do or do not incorporate sustainability issues into their consumption behavior. Also, it studies what products consumers do or do not buy, how they use them and what they do with them afterwards. One mechanism to spread information about sustainable consumer behavior is word of mouth.
Customer cost refers not only to the price of a product, but it also encompasses the purchase costs, use costs and the post-use costs. Purchase costs consist of the cost of searching for a product, gathering information about the product and the cost of obtaining that information. Usually, the highest use costs arise for durable goods that have a high demand on resources, such as energy or water, or those with high maintenance costs. Post-use costs encompass the costs for collecting, storing and disposing of the product once the item has been discarded.
Conscious business enterprises and people are those that choose to follow a business strategy, in which they seek to benefit both human beings and the environment. The Conscious Business movement in the US emerged from the theory of corporate social responsibility, which pushes for a "values-based" approach where values represent social and environmental concerns both locally and globally. This effort is related to not-just-for-profit business models, conscious consumerism, and socially responsible investing.
