How much will this hurt my pocket?
Introduction: Sustainability encompasses an extensive series of events and factors that relate to the topic at hand often bring up the problem of establishing boundaries for any works of sustainability. Thus on our project we will define sustainability as “capacity to endure” and our main demographic target will be Brooklyn College Students. When talking about the sustainability of food we acknowledge the three aspects of sustainability, which are economic, social and environmental.
Sustainability of Food acknowledges two populations when discussing the sustainability of food: 1) THE CORPORATION & 2) CONSUMERS. But in our project we focus on the sustainability of food for the consumer not the corporation.
The Corporation refers to the actual factories and companies that are invested in the food industry. When we talk about the Corporation we see it as an entity that is comprised of all its workers and resources at its disposal.
Consumers refer to the public who buy food and in this case we mainly refer Brooklyn College students.
I. Sustainability of food in the eyes of the Corporation:
The food industry has more much more to it than just food production. There are many externals costs related to the production, processing, storage, and transportation of the food that are often ignored or never made aware to the consumers when purchasing food through any distributor. Corporation views the food industry as a business, having the sole goal of making profit. Thus, the corporation is mostly concerned with the economic welfare of its own business. The social and environmental aspects of sustainability is mostly last to be considered when the food corporations take action. For instances, there are environmental concerns based on the manure and Animal Feeding Operations pollutants (AFO) that attribute to reduced biodiversity such that nitrogen and phosphorus pollution can contribute to algae blooms as shown in the website – http://www.ncifap.org/issues/environment/
In addition research has shown that the growth hormones used during food production can lead to a number of negative health effects in animals and humans. Some growth hormones release airborne emissions that have been seen to be health hazards. The residue of growth hormones also can have negative impacts on health such as cancer as shown in the website – http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/Factsheet/Diet/fs37.hormones.cfm
II. Sustainability of food in the eyes of the Consumer:
The consumer typical cares about all three aspects of sustainability but usually prioritizes economic and social sustainability over the environmental aspect of sustainability. The reason behind this claim is that in order to prepare food in any method means the use of natural resources, which is environmentally unsustainable. The consumer wants food that is sustainable in all three aspects whereas the corporation prioritizes economic well above the other two aspects of sustainability.
