07. Some ESG thoughts valid in current times

I was walking through the city for my morning walk and was observing the loading/unloading of cartons from the semis in front of various shops at the city centre. If this is the buzz of activities in a relatively small town, It stuck me like a thunder, when I understood what it means to feel the integrated buzz of activities on a global scale.

No wonder, the global packaging industry is a mammoth on its own right!

https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/sustainable-packaging-market

The below italicized extract is from the above link:

The Sustainable Packaging Market size is estimated at USD 292.71 billion in 2024, and is expected to reach USD 423.56 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 7.67% during the forecast period (2024-2029). Sustainable packaging is the creation and use of packaging that improves sustainability.

I found a decent definition of environmental sustainability at Environmental Sustainability: What Is It & Why It Matters | Perch Energy

Environmental sustainability is the practice of interacting with the planet responsibly to maintain an ecological balance and conserve natural resources. It involves preserving natural resources so that future generations can enjoy the benefits they bring. Sustainability is about saving ourselves and ensuring that our species can survive and prosper long into the future.

Before the rampant consumerism results in the belting by mother earth, we should get serious about sustainability and more importantly on recycling resources. I thought about 3 of the niche areas where recycling should be promoted in an aggressive way. There may be many other areas that needs a mention. But I am listing 3 of the many that is close to my heart:

1.      DEEP - CONTAINERIZATION:

We should take the container revolution to the next stage – deep containerization where only standard sized pallets on a global scale are used for packing goods and products. This should be enforced by regulations applied on a global scale. Special permission should be mandated to deviate from this standard packaging sizes coupled with some environmental tax. Every truck that unloads packaged products should also load the used packaging and bring it to the recycling facility.

There is a large-scale trend among consumers to adopt sustainable packaging which his adequately captured in the below report:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-data-reveals-consumers-increasingly-choose-products-in-sustainable-packaging-globally-despite-rising-prices-301804273.html

Not only that, smart AI technologies can be deployed during the loading of goods inside the truck. When we input the ‘package design IDs’ along with the number of such boxes into the truck’s computer, the truck floor should be lit up with stack plan showing the contours of the boxes guiding the loader to pack in the most efficient manner. This will also result in increased sustainability.

2.      ADDRESSING THE SPACE-DEBRIS PROBLEM

Next is on what we throw up in the sky that results in space debris! I found a decent report covering this topic of ‘Sustainability in Space’ –

Publication_Final_English_June2021.pdf (unoosa.org) and at NASA’s Space Sustainability Strategy - NASA

We have to sink into the fact that what we throw up is not going to come back to us if we stick to our old ways of working. We are talking about special materials used in costly technologies that go into our satellite building routines. Please look at the above image showing the tracked space debris – it seems to me that we are administering an unwanted and cruel acupuncture therapy on mother earth!

Our earth is limited in its capacity to give us resources – but our capacity to use and deplete is limitless. Without sustainability we may eventually be looking at a grotesque earth gouged out all over by our recklessness!

Thus, we should aim to build only recyclable satellites and similar other space systems!

3.      ON PRE-OWNED DRESS MATERIALS

I am glad to see how dress materials are being used in a sustainable way in certain countries like UK. Organizations like British Hearth Foundation, Cancer Research UK etc., re-sell dress materials pre-owned by people and there seems to be good market for the pre-owned dress materials. These organizations also give wonderful volunteering opportunities with rich meaningful outcomes to the local community.

Besides the profits are pressed into noble causes!

I think public should extend their large-scale support to such organizations. I am glad that not just dresses but books, furniture and other household goods are also getting similar attention.

I hope I can write more on other sustainable concepts and business models in future blog posts.