A half-eroded aluminum can sits quietly in a landfill until it is pushed aside by a child, desperate for anything to eat. A plastic water bottle, sitting amid a thriving reef, is examined by a scuba diver off the coast of Mexico. These are the images that ASU lecturer Dr. Rebekka Goodman instantaneously sees when she watches someone throw a plastic water bottle or aluminum can in the trash.
Dr. Goodman spoke to a room of ASU students Tuesday night about sustainability and the impact one person’s conscious decisions can have.
“What I think gets to me about the idea of sustainability is we see it as something so much bigger than it actually is, and we look at it from these big theoretical perspectives and it’s all too much and all too big,” Goodman said.
“What frustrates me is how little students see what they can do every single day, or they feel un-empowered, uninspired, they don’t know that they can make a change.”
Sustainability isn’t something that is just instantly achievable; according to Goodman, sustainability is a trade-off.
Goodman said many people don’t realize the impact they have, and how they can do small things to be more aware of their impact, such as inspecting where their clothes and food come from or noticing if the products they buy are manufactured in a way that aligns with their personal beliefs.
“How could I make it so that young people saw that every single thing they do, from the moment they wake up in the morning to the moment they go to bed at night, has an impact,” said Goodman.
Everyone has their own limitations in regards to what they are capable of or willing to do to be sustainable. Goodman said there is no blanket solution for everyone, but people should start with small sustainable changes. When a person is in a position to make bigger changes, they can make those changes.
“We each have constraints, but if we perpetually try to do better every day, we get there,” Goodman said.
According to Jackson Dangremond, president of USGD, which hosted the event, the student government body is aiming to make the downtown campus operate more sustainably. The organization is currently looking into adopting a ban on the use of student fees for purchasing Styrofoam, something which the Tempe campus has already done.
USGD is also looking into sustainable marketing and “utilizing a non-wasteful form of marketing that doesn’t impact the earth in a negative way,” Dangremond said.
“I think that as students, we get wrapped up with our day-to-day activity, classes, work, trying to balance extracurricular that we forget about how to be sustainable, or sometimes we don’t know what it means to be sustainable,” said Martin Cordova, USGD senator for the College of Public Service and Community Solutions. “Having educational events like this is a great way to start.”
Contact the reporter at Nathaniel.Thrash@asu.edu.
