Common Sustainability Terms and Definitions

Sustainability can be confusing at times. There’s always new science and cutting-edge technology being discovered every day, and in order to understand how to create a better future, we need to be familiar with the terms being used in the industry. 

Here are a few sustainability terms that have to do with trees, waste management, greenwashing and more!

6 sustainability terms you need to know

Afforestation

Planting new forests on lands that have not been recently forested

Afforestation or reforestation is just as the name suggests: it’s the process of planting new forests in areas that have previously been deforested. 

Reforestation projects are happening all over the world and at many different scales, like private citizens who plant trees on their properties, communities that work to restore local ecosystems and nonprofits that organize massive events to mend landscapes scoured by logging.

Carbon footprint

A measure of the carbon emissions that are emitted over the full lifecycle of a product or service and usually expressed as grams of CO2-e.

Carbon footprints are usually measured in large scales, such as the carbon footprint of an entire nation over the course of the year, but they can also be scaled down to individuals or a single household, too.

Basically, the carbon footprint is calculated by looking at the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with consumption — that is, the GHG emissions created from things that are consumed within the nation’s (or household’s) borders. This can include production of goods in other countries, import and transportation emissions, packaging, marketing, energy consumption, food and more.

Biodegradable

Capable of being decomposed through the action of organisms, especially bacteria.

In this case, knowing the actual definition of the term can shed a lot of light on how to properly use biodegradable items!

“Bio” is the key ingredient in biodegradable. Living organisms are a vital part in breaking down the matter, which is why biodegradable items don’t actually degrade when they get thrown in landfills. That includes biodegradable dog poop bags, paper straws and plastic bags. These objects in the landfills are so tightly compacted and drenched in chemicals that there is no chance for bacteria to exist, so make sure that you throw away all biodegradable items in the compost where they can properly break down.

Greenwashing

Companies that portray themselves as environmentally friendly when their business practices do not back this up. 

Greenwashing can happen at both a large and small scale, but it’s easiest to explain the practice by looking at something as simple as a coffee cup.

In 2018, a major corporation declared that they would be banning single-use plastic straws by 2020. The straws would be replaced by a single lid with a sippable component that would render the need for straws useless. 

Seems great, right? What a great, sustainable move!

Except for the fact that those new lids contained more plastic than the old lids and the straws, combined!

The “sustainable” switch helped portray the company as an eco-friendly corporation, but the reality is that the switch will end up harming the environment more than it would have before.

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA)

An objective process to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with a product, process, or activity.

Think of an LCA as an investigation into the scope and impact of a project that’s created before the project starts. More specifically, it looks at the potential environmental impacts of the project.

Take the life cycle of a plastic bag, for example. We know the very basic steps in how a plastic bag is made, but there is so much more that goes into the process. There’s the impact of the facility’s construction, the supplier fees and transportation, waste management, operating material production and usage, and about a million other tiny pieces of the larger puzzle that all work to create the bigger picture. 

An LCA takes all these pieces into account and assembles a report. Here’s how they work. 

Volatile Organic Compound (VOC)

Molecules containing carbon and differing proportions of other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, fluorine and chlorine.

You may have heard of VOCs in the context of paint, cleaning chemicals and even wallpaper, as these toxic chemicals can go seemingly unnoticed until the right conditions expose them to us.

VOCs react with each other and form ground-level ozone when they are exposed to sunlight and heat. If these chemicals are in an indoor space, they become that much more harmful to humans. That’s why it’s important to find eco-friendly cleaning products and VOC-free wallpaper!

Hopefully this helps you make sense of the many sustainability terms floating around out there! There are plenty more, of course, but that’s for another article!

Pin it!

Featured photo courtesy Unsplash/Andreas Gücklhorn