Technology and World Change Lesson 3

This week's lesson is best summarized by a certain Edward O. Wilson who once said, "Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.” 

The theme of this week's lesson was technology and industrial change and how we can move towards sustainable development. This centered around the idea of companies and countries realizing that the idea of non-sustainable industrial development was no longer tenable and moving towards the idea of industrial development based on sustainability. Also, this model could not only be limited to the developed countries who had industrialized and could afford to take the time to think about sustainability but it also had to be adopted by the less developing countries who were also moving into heavy industrialization especially because our world is a shared world and the problems are not limited but pervasive. 

So here we have two main ideas, one that sustainability should now be the real-world view and that our world is a shared world and hence we have a common responsibility to one another to be sustainable in our practices.

Then we have the problems in achieving this. These include whether it is the government's or the people's responsibility to push for the sustainable agenda and how difficult it is to implement it with the current infrastructure and mindsets that we have now.

Interesting Observations & Ideas

A talk about our mindsets
Prof conducted an experiment with our class to test how much value we put on using environmentally friendly products by posing us a question.

"If a non-environmentally friendly laptop cost $1000 and an environmentally friendly laptop with its recycled metal body and organically produced keys were to cost $1100 would you be willing to buy it?"

A quick poll of my class revealed that they would not be willing to buy it if it was $1100. In fact, we were only willing to buy it if it was $1050 which meant that the value that we placed on environmental friendliness was about 5 percent.

With this mentality, consumers would be unlikely to purchase an item that cost more due to the environmentally-friendly process used to produce it. Hence, a key idea needed to move towards more sustainability would be either be to reduce the cost of products produced using an environmentally friendly process or to better communicate to consumers the importance of being environmentally friendly.

Next, I was interested to find out why having an environmental process is more expensive in certain cases such as when we buy environmentally friendly toliet paper and why on the other hand, companies such as H&M can afford to give vouchers to encourage people to recycle their clothes.

After some research, I found out that it was because of demand and supply.As the environmentally friendly products required some research and development to come up with an environmentally friendly method of producing them, they had higher cost, which drove down demand. This meant they could not be mass produced which again pushed up cost. On the other hand, H&M were paying people to give them free raw material.

Hence, I feel that these two processes should work hand in hand and companies should set up a small fund to provide an incentive for people to provide them with recyclable material and the costs saved on purchasing raw materials could be used to defray the cost of the research and development needed to come up with environmentally friendly methods of production.

Also, in one of the presentations, Joseph raised the idea of alternative energy solutions in which he proposed that the best alternative energy source would be that of solar energy. Sylvester countered this idea because he suggested that the solar panels would require much care and would have to be constantly cleaned causing the energy production to be more costly.

However, I raised an alternative point of view which was that there could be solar energy captured by algae which would produce energy when it photosynthesized using the carbon dioxide in the air. This would require relatively low maintenance as the algae could grow and hence be self-sustaining.  I did further research in this area and found that this idea was being developed by a person called Jonathan Trent who gave a TED talk on it.

You can read the article here.

This is completely sustainable with even the plastic containers used to hold the algae made out of recyclable material and I believe that this is the way forward for Singapore. My hope is that next time, the top of every HDB block can be equipped with such an algae tank which will be able to generate electricity for the whole block.

Key Take-Away Points
I learnt about the Valley and Summit model where the Prof explained how everyone was at the valley or the summit as according to their level of success. Sometimes for example during a recession we might be at a valley or our idea might be well received and we would be on the summit. However, whether we were at a summit or a valley, the important thing was to take advantage of cloud opportunities, which were unrealised opportunities that we had to explore to develop ourselves from valley to summit or to keep ourselves at the summit.

I also learnt about the shift from the linear method of production to the cyclical method of production. Previously companies thought that production was just extraction of raw materials, manufacturing goods and then selling them without having to think about where the final product ended up. Now however, there is a paradigm shift in which the manufacturers understand that they have to take into account the disposal of their good and ensure that even if the good cannot be recycled or disposed in an environmentally friendly manner, they should take the responsibility to find a proper method of disposal of the product such that the Earth is not recklessly stripped of its resources.

Responses to the presentations
"It is estimated that one pair of jeans requires more than 2,500 gallons of water, nearly a pound of chemicals and vast amounts of energy." was the shocking statistic that Prashant revealed to us in his presentation. This really surprised me as while I knew that there were a lot of resources that went into producing goods, I had no idea that it was to such an extent and this was a truly sobering fact.(Not to mention that I own quite a few pairs of jeans.)

This made me feel that it is really the job of the consumers to show by their power to purchase or not to purchase in indicating their support of products that a environmentally friendly rather than the government who can only control the companies to a limited extent. The economy is run by consumers and the market is fueled by consumer purchases and it is only by taking a stand against purchasing can we stop the perpetration of this unsustainable production methods.

Issues for further discussion
1. One of the issues I would have liked to discuss would be that of how we can reduce costs of the environmentally friendly production methods such that it would be more affordable for the public, increasing public adoption of such products.

2. Benedict brought up the idea of the Hitachi bulb which costs significantly more than a normal bulb but as it is energy saving and more durable, it can last for up to 10 years. However, it does not have significant adoption because people are under the impression that it is more expensive without taking into account the long term benefit of using such bulbs. Hence, another issue I would have liked to discuss would be how to better communicate the importance of sustainability in our consumeristic habits to the consumer such that he will be able to appreciate the long term effects of sustainable products.

Personal ratings for the session
I enjoyed the presentations especially Prashant's presentation on the impact of technology on fashion as each of them gave me a lot to think about. I also found the prof's overview really helped to set the world context such that we could understand the current world sustainability standards and where we should go from here.

I would give this lesson an 8/10.

Can't wait for the next lesson to listen to more interesting presentations! :)

By the way, “This book(blogpost) was written using 100% recycled words.” -Terry Pratchet, Wyrd Sisters.

Cheers,
Amanda Tan