Sustainability Vocabulary

Ecological footprint

• Impact a person/ community has on the environment; resources required to sustain

• A trail left behind in the forest in national parks across Europe

• the ratio of the resources used by a human versus the resources available for use

• what a human leaves behind if walking barefoot in the mud

Sustainability

• Having enough resources for all human beings.

• Protecting the planet by giving up plastic water bottles.

• meeting the needs of the present and securing the possible needs of future generations

• Protecting endangered species and planting personal gardens.

Consumption

• using more resources than the planet can provide in a maintainable way.

• eating too much food.

• deforesting a country by cutting down too many trees.

• the using up of a resource

perceived obsolescence

• when something dies just after the warrantee expires

• when a person is persuaded into replacing a product before the old one has lost its functionality.

• the process of becoming obsolete or outdated and no longer used

• where a customer believes they need an updated version of a product even though theirs is working just fine

global commons

• the parts of our Earth that are accesable to everyone

• the area of land in the center of a big city

• areas of land controlled by individual countries

• a no-fly zone over government lands

distribution

• how much of an item someone has

• giving things away

• the way something is shared

• getting a bill asking for money

waste management

• another name for a garbage truck

• only applies to items that can't be recycled

• the way recyclable items are handled

• the methods to handle all forms of waste

extraction

• the action of taking something out

• when your dentist fills a cavity

• cutting down trees in the Amazon

• a mixture of a chemical compound

stewardship

• the person who works on a cruise ship

• supervising or taking care of something

• a person who loves their planet

• a prize winning category

population growth

• how countries get bigger

• the increase in the number of people in a specific area

• an area of the biome where people live

• the measurement of how big a city is