As the school year begins, all families are busy with preparations, including the infamous and scary back to school shopping. With lists of school materials remind us that learning has a cost. A cost that continues to rise according to a recent study on the costs of school indicating an increase of 43.5%. Faced with this inevitable exercise, we can ask ourselves about the relevance of this extreme capitalism. How can we revise this great expense and try to minimize our environmental footprint in passing?
Ecological debt has obtained alarming growth
According to the Global Footprint Network, August 8 was the Earth Overshoot Day. This is the day when the earth’s inhabitants have begun to borrow from the future what nature could provide in a year to feed and meet the needs of humans. Tallying financially to live is in itself a difficult problem and has unfortunate consequences, but getting into debt with our natural resources is a collective suicide. It seems that we start living resources of credit to more and earlier in the year. In 1971, we began to live in the ecological red from December 24, a 7 days loan has now become a 145 days of borrowing and the continuous spiral. In 45 years, we have reached a worrying decline. How could we manage a company that would do this? She would be forced into bankruptcy at very short notice. Generations to come will undoubtedly need lessons of economy to learn but especially to teach us because the awakening will be brutal. It is already 1.6 of the Earths present capacity to supply world demand, imagine that some countries such as Australia, consume proportionately more than 5.4 times the available natural resources.
Natural capitalism becomes an emergency
We must therefore now change textbooks and revise our view of the economy. Natural capitalism is a form of happy mix between environmental and economic priorities, some call it ecocapitalism and others green economy. There are essentially four foundations to be used to create a natural capitalism:
- Increase dramatically the productivity of raw materials. A company like ours promotes a second life, and often more, to the production of cardboard. We need to encourage those companies that allow such ecological gains.
- Practice Biomimicry: it is somehow to achieve zero waste by ensuring a virtuous cycle to all waste. We have good prospects at this level with biogas and other municipal initiatives in management of household waste.
- Promote and rental of economy: in other words promote the collective use of goods and services instead of promoting the growth of purchases. The economies of collaboration and sharing are already two beautiful breakthroughs that offer hope.
- Investing in natural capital: this is to promote the funding of all solutions that improve or restore ecosystems of the planet. It is imperative to prioritize these projects for the survival of our species.
It is the responsibility of everyone to practice daily best environmental actions. Your children are the best breeding grounds for changing the world. Teach them the virtues of the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle and recover), and here are some ideas from our previous articles:
- A well-organized classroom with the use of cardboard and creativity.
- Have fun the whole family with cardboard boxes in summer
- Utopian life with zero waste?
Let us try not forget the amount invested to be well dressed and equip our children to make a difference in school if we do not have a healthy planet to bequeath to them. Join our beliefs and teach children about natural capitalism, it is a matter of survival.
Have a great back to schook and a good school year!
Cartonnerie Montréal™ Team
