The Volkswagen scandal could be a powerful tool to destroy public trust to some extent, making people no longer believe in Volkswagen, which reminds me that the similar incident could also take place in other industries of pollution control and environmental protection. As a matter of fact, it is hard to gain profits or even get feedbacks in a short term from investing to the environment. Therefore, it would be hard to engage individuals to donate or invest their earnings in this field that cannot get the results in a rather short period, which might create a gap between the public and the practitioners. In my vision, we need to fill in this gap if we want to engage more people into the field of environmental protection and sustainable development. In other words, we need to create space for transparency, in technologies and the policies.
Education and exhibition about the applied pollution control industries should be open to the public more often to let the public know what the practitioners have done. We could accept the unobvious feedback, but we have to make sure that people are working on the project and pursuing our sustainable future.
Excellent values. I totally agree education is the key to raise public awareness of environmental consequences. People need to know the consequences of their behaviour in order to receive the incentive for changes.
You're right, and I think companies should be more open and transparent while people can monitor what companies are doing. Companies should not do things that damage the environment behind the scenes to maximize profits. They should think about and fulfill sustainable development.
Great post! You've made a very interesting point about public trust. Especially with organizations often going after actors that are not perfect, but still good, it can be easy to lose trust in environmental initiatives that large companies start. I hadn't thought about this aspect. Thanks for sharing!
I think you make a really good point on the lack of motivations towards sustainable investments due to the absence of short-term profits. Increasing the transparency and essentially letting the public to monitor what the industries are doing regarding their pollutions is definitely a good idea, as the corporations would be pressured in this case to actually take sustainable options now that their actions can be seen by everybody.
Hi! I agree with your thoughts! After hearing about the VW scandal and owning a car that was affected by the emissions scandal, I will have a really hard time trusting VW in the future and would most likely never purchase a car from them.
I totally agree with your idea! A strong sustainability proposition can help a company explore new markets and expand into existing ones, and not having a sustainability strategy means losing a lot of good employees.