Micro-sustainability

Micro-sustainability is the portion of sustainability centered around small scale environmental measures that ultimately affect the environment through a larger cumulative impact. Micro-sustainability centers on individual efforts, behavior modification, education and creating attitudinal changes, which result in an environmentally conscious individual. Micro-sustainability encourages sustainable changes through "change agents"—individuals who foster positive environmental action locally and inside their sphere of influence. Examples of micro-sustainability include recycling, power saving by turning off unused lights, programming thermostats for efficient use of energy, reducing water usage, changing commuting habits to use less fossil fuels or modifying buying habits to reduce consumption and waste. The emphasis of micro-sustainability is on an individual's actions, rather than organizational or institutional practices at the systemic level. These small local level actions have immediate community benefits if undertaken on a widespread scale and if imitated, they can have a cumulative broad impact.
* 2007 - The transition town network was formed to reduce dependency on oil in the United Kingdom.
* 2007 - The United Nations published Sustainable Consumption Patterns, which outlined small scale sustainability actions.
* 2009 - Jesse Stallone coined the term micro and macro sustainability based on the ideas of microeconomics and macroeconomics. Within an individual household, this can include reducing the water footprint and domestic energy consumption of the building.
Water footprint
Like the common concept of the carbon footprint, people can also have a water footprint. Water footprint helps with determining how much fresh water is used and polluted by a given person. With a typical American single-family home using 70 US gallons (260 L) per person per day indoors, household appliances such as toilets, showers, dishwashers, and washing machines can be upgraded to reduce water usage.
Energy consumption
The residential sector accounts of 21% of total U.S. energy usage, with approximately 40% of the energy used in homes being used for heating. Individuals can reduce their heating loads by improving their building insulation, improving building airtightness and installing smart thermostat. Other measures outside of reducing the heating load include purchasing energy-efficient appliances and recycling energy intensive materials. In a study that looked at consumer preferences for sustainability with respect to mobile phones, it found that consumers are not only interested in the physical product but also raw material sourcing and end of life product disposal. One study found that consumers who spent more time looking at the sustainability labels were individuals who cared more about sustainably sourced food, and who were more likely to select products with this labeling. Another study showed that not only does sustainable labeling cause consumers to look at the product for longer, but that the consumer choices as a result of that labeling is significant and positive. This means that if consumers value sustainable products that are verified through labeling and are more likely to purchase these products, then food producers and marketers can use this information to provide products that consumer is interested in.
Group and community actions
A community in the context of micro-sustainability is a group of people in the same geographic location that interact with one another. These can range from rural communities with low population density to highly dense urban communities.
Especially with transition towns and low carbon communities, the goal is to see if fundamental changes to society in these niches can lead to a wider acceptance of the innovation.
Transportation
The amount of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere due to the number of cars on the roads can be minimized by increasing the number of safe bike lanes and pedestrian walkways, and making public transportation easily accessible. Additionally, due to its complex nature, it is almost impossible to model or keep track of all aspects of sustainability, and studies that do attempt to model this found that successful situations at a micro level will either not work, or will worsen environmental impacts at a larger scale.
Additionally, some raise questions about the magnitude of change that needs to occur. In the book Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air authored by British physicist and mathematician David J.C. MacKay, MacKay advocates against small changes with respect to sustainability and gives the example that if everyone unplugged their chargers from the outlet, this would save enough energy to power 66,000 homes for one year. MacKay warns that these types of statements can be misleading, as 66,000 homes out of approximately 25 million homes participating in this action is a quarter of one percent. Macro-sustainability is a large systematic addressing of sustainability in most cases by the United Nations, governments, multi-national corporations or smaller companies. They discuss global issues including climate change, and reliance upon fossil fuel hydrocarbon based energy sources. Global organizations like the United Nations have included sustainable development goals (SDGs) to set a standard of 17 goals for countries around the world to take action on climate change and other related issues. Businesses primarily focus on the return of investment of changes such as their source of energy, consumption patterns or how they transport or manufacture products. Governments confront these larger issues through regulation of natural resources, improved practices, providing subsidies and directly investing in new technologies and renewable energy sources.
Fashion Industry
The fashion sector is a major contributor to air, land, and water pollution. This industry accounts for 10% of carbon emissions. In textile production, there is a high use of chemicals and water, which then find their way back into waterways. In the US, over 85% of discarded clothes end up in landfills.
The industry's main goal is obsolescence: new trends are constantly being put out to encourage consumption. Fast fashion has become increasingly popular, as it allows consumers to keep up with and then discard these trends at a low cost.
Companies often outsource their manufacturing to less developed countries to further reduce costs for consumers, which has led to the exploitation of workers, a complex supply chain, and pollution due to transportation. Insourcing products to their own facilities that they can maintain a strict standard over would lessen these issues.
Textile waste can be reduced by making higher quality garments that are built to last. A general rule of thumb for fast fashion companies is a "10 wash mark", in which clothes are made to last about ten cycles through a washer and dryer. By extending the practical life of a garment, people can use their clothes for longer periods of time before having to discard them, and thus consume and waste less. Textile waste may also be reduced through recycling and upcycling textile initiatives.
Research and development can also be invested into more eco-friendly dyeing methods. ColorZen, for example, has developed a process of dyeing cotton using 75% less energy and 90% less water.
Agricultural Sector
The agricultural sector is a major source of food waste, and also contributes to air, land, and water pollution. Food waste is a major component of landfills, which are in turn a major source of methane (a major global warming contributor).
Implementing a variety of sustainability measures would allow for the redistribution of edible food that would have otherwise been wasted, the reduction of competition for limited resources, and the reduction of pollution.
Crop diversification and crop rotation are more sustainable farming practices. They allow for healthier soil, which in turn reduces the need for fertilizers, which then reduces the amount of fertilizer runoff. It also helps in reducing the amount of insects and weeds, which would reduce the use of pesticides. Fertilizer runoff and pesticides both have the potential to disrupt and harm ecosystems. Having multiple crops, as opposed to monoculture, reduces the potential of entire crop yields failing- particularly in a time of climate change.
Alternative forms of pesticides also contribute to sustainability. Birds, for example, play an important ecological role in the reduction of insect populations; using birds as a natural way of getting rid of insects could decrease the amount of pesticides used.
Water usage in agriculture can also be reduced, which would allow for the resource to be redistributed elsewhere. One method of this is drip irrigation, in which water is delivered directly to the roots of crops. This allows for less water to be used, since less water is lost to evaporation.
Although some food waste is unavoidable, such as bones or peels, there is a large component of avoidable waste. This is due to issues with over purchasing, poor preparation, and inadequate storage. In the US, "10.1 million tons are left unused on farms and in packing facilities each year." Implementing government tax deductions may provide an incentive for those in the agricultural sector to donate food that would have otherwise been wasted.

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