My envision for the future is a world with “environment credit”, an approach with more specific criteria to evaluate the levels of environmental-friendly. Currently, we are being told what is environmental-friendly and what is not, however, we are not being told in detail about how much we could save by turning to a certain product or to what extent we need to do to achieve a better status of sustainability.
For most of the time, it seems that the only thing we need to do for the environment is to pay more and there is no sufficient approach to determine on what level we are protecting the environment, so as the large corporations.
Therefore, I hold the view that we could develop criteria called “environment credit” to help achieve the ultimate goal of sustainable development. Products are detailed with their environmental consumption for producing and individuals and corporations have a certain quota for consuming the environment annually. If the consumption goes beyond the quota, individuals and corporations would be fined for their externalities and reward those who manage to consume less than the given quota.
I really like your idea of ENVIRONMENT CREDIT, it's refreshing to me. Like you said, we are not being told how much we can save through material transformation, just like we are not being told a lot of things, we are getting this information in bits and pieces through social media and other means, we need more knowledge that is correct and can be digested quickly to learn more about this.
Quantifying the products for their eco-friendliness is definitely an interesting idea! I think you could possibly extend this criteria to the consumers as well: the more transparent/clear the consumers are able to determine if a product is environmental friendly or not, the more pressure could be placed on corporations to care about reducing the environmental pollution that come with production.
Interesting post! I think credit systems hold a lot of potential if legislated/managed correctly. it would be interesting trying to figure out how to allocate these credits - ex in terms of deciding which corporations are more necessary and therefore more deserving of credits than others.
This is a perfect idea; if companies don't follow the rules, their credit will be reduced or even to 0. So they can't produce anything anymore, which will touch their interests. To produce sustainably, the company would have to meet this environmental credit to keep it sustainable so that they can urge themselves.
Hi Zhaochen
I think you raise a very interesting point in your post! I completely agree with you that it's so hard as a consumer to know what is truly good for the environment and what is just green washing. I hope that companies can become more environmentally friendly and transparent about their attempts at sustainability. Your idea for "environmental credit" is great and I'd love to see how it would work in practice!
Hi Zhaochen, that's a great idea! It would be really helpful to measure the consumption for each individual and corporation, but I just feel like it might be hard to practically decide the quota across individuals in different areas and corporations in different sizes
It's a great idea, and I really support it, because environmental credit can certainly solve a lot of problems in terms of policy and law rather than a lot of empty policies that many companies and companies don't implement.
Hey Zhaochen, this idea is super thoughtful and needs more recognition. I definitely and environmental credit system is a way to limit large corps from exploiting non eco friendly acts. I think this method could work really well if there was some sort of risk reward mechanism put in place. Specifically, if companies meet the quota or stay below the quota they are rewarded for their action. Then if they go beyond the said quota they are fined substantially.