Sustainability is important because it guides us to solutions that will work over a very long period of time (i.e., generations) and will allow future generations of human beings to inherit the resources to meet their food, energy, and product needs and to live in a healthy environment.
Making something we do “Sustainable” also requires that we take time to innovate methods for the efficient and caring treatment of all the living and non-living components of Earth.
Sustainability is a gift to ourselves and also a gift to the future. Long-term solutions are especially important when we look at energy and product consumption.
For example, each day, we consume large quantities of important resources that required millions of years to form on Earth: petroleum, coal, minerals, and water.
Petroleum and petroleum products are a vital part of the way our world functions today. Petroleum fuels our electric power, transportation, heats our homes, and provides many other products (plastics, paints, industrial chemicals, etc.)
What would happen to the way our world functions if we were to run out of petroleum?
Today we still have important natural resources in hand like fossil fuels. Now is a good time to begin designing more sustainable ways of producing energy and products for future generations.
The BBEP workshops and materials include the over-arching theme of SUSTAINABILITY. A chapter in the primer is dedicated to sustainability along with several activities and videos that can be used in the classroom are provided for educators. The workshop primer and lab workbook are available to our workshop participants.