Foreword
There is no question that the progressive decline in the environmental conditions of the planet makes it clear that humanity is currently unable to embark upon a policy to invert current trends.
No action has been taken that has the potential to curb the environmental deterioration taking place. This despite the fact that there is widespread awareness and in-depth scientific knowledge of how humankind alters the environment and of how these variations have a negative, immediate and long-lasting impact on it; and despite the fact that we have all the technical tools necessary to change the causes of this impact.
The term “sustainability” has been part of everyday language for some decades now. It indicates the research into and practising of solutions which successfully avoid aggravating the state of our planet. Therefore, while definitions of the term may seem uncertain, it has been acknowledged that truly feasible choices are a real possibility.
If we were to take stock of what has been done in this field over the past thirty years in dozens of countries and almost all the international organisations which tackle the issue of sustainability, we might conclude that the model implemented by them has significantly worsened an already grave situation.
This, despite the way in which the term “sustainability” has become rarefied over time; despite the enormous terminological confusion deliberately created by professionals to cast a shroud of mystery over their actions and present them as environmentally worthy. The successes which have been achieved have been partial, specific and local. All they prove is that other paths are open to us, and that they are not widely followed, even though they could be.
The guilty conscience of this model of intervention is illustrated by the great confusion surrounding how the adjective “sustainable” or “environmental” is used to describe projects, goods and products. It’s the guilty conscience of knowing perfectly well that a sustainable approach causes profound changes to the cultural, social and productive structure of a society; and of not wanting to change it at all, even though the health of the world’s entire population is at risk.
Sustainability is not compatible with this model; it is an alternative to it. It even speaks a different language. If we are to adapt to it, first of all we cannot speak of growth; quantities must be reduced, wealth must be redistributed to allow the wellbeing of many to be improved; we must eliminate the waste which is the reason for the pursuit of prosperity; we must eliminate accumulation; we must increase the autonomy and awareness of communities.
If we are to halt the continuous decline in the conditions of the planet, the faltering steps made by governments are not enough. We need to set up a widespread process of environmental recovery and conservation. This must limit the interests of the main allies of the model described above; it must reduce profits and change the mentality of defending the minuscule advantages of a society that is damaging to the environment and harmful to people.
In order to do this, we believe that individual and collective behaviours must be learnt which will allow us to escape from the lethal trap of daily living; from the slavery of commodities; from the subjection to incongruous habits; from the authoritarianism of decisions; from the decision-making influence of the economic powers.
This can only be achieved within a libertarian culture.
Below, we outline a few considerations aimed at identifying what is unsustainable in the current model; how important it is to shed light on seemingly sustainable behaviours; and how easy it would be to put into practice other forms of living as a society on this planet.

Living
Contemporary culture has taken apart the meaning of this word by dividing up the activities that make up a typical day: one area to sleep in, one to work in, one where you have fun, and so on. The unitariness of living has been lost in the process of manufacturing or commercial activities (buying and consuming).
Local regions are unknown. There is no relationship with them, nor is there a knowledge of their environment and society. Not even that simple yet effective knowledge so typical of traditional culture.
Places are pre-formed by economic interests (such as shopping centres, hypermarkets, multiplex cinemas etc.). They are standardised to meet the commercial image of contemporary life. Inside these places, the sole function of individuals is as buyers of commodities – but they cannot contribute to how the places are defined and used.
In this way, places are no longer inhabited, because there is no longer any relationship with them.
Active participation in defining spaces inhabited by people; endorsement of criticism of shopping centres, hypermarkets, production and distribution chains which standardise food, furnishings and physical space.

Demolition
The demolition of buildings is an increasingly common practice in real estate. Buildings are demolished even when in a good condition, and are replaced with new ones.
This practice helps to give a contemporary look to buildings; it increases their economic value, boosts their surface area and leads to profits. While this makes good business sense in financial terms, it is a serious burden on the environment.
Building work requires energy to produce and transport materials and for construction. This energy is then stored by the building itself. When it is demolished, the energy is lost. Added to that is the energy used for the demolition, that used for clearing and disposal, and that required to build the new building. This deeply unsustainable practice also has detrimental social effects: the new residents are rarely the same as those who previously lived in the housing. After all, the increase in property value requires higher rent or sale prices. And if they were the same residents, they would find themselves living in a different context to the one they were familiar with.
There are plenty of ways to improve the quality of buildings. Demolition is not one of them.

Climate adaptation
The climate changes taking place lead to profound changes in the natural system. Being aware of this has underlined the need to adapt how we use the natural system, as conditions continue to change.
Acknowledging these changes and the anthropic cause behind them should mean a change in methods rather than identifying systems to allow the same level of productivity. Forcing the logics of natural systems goes hand in hand with a state of imbalance in the system, and thus an increased risk of collapse.
Adaptations, meaning actions taken to reduce the effects of climate change, may be constructive if they include a reconsideration of the mistakes made in the past; and if they are not a substitute for removing the causes which led to climate change in the first place.

Adapting spaces
Inhabitants adapt the space they inhabit, and should have the right to adapt the spaces of their settlements to suit their way of life.
Currently, inhabitants are subjected to the urban layout defined by property speculation and, in rare cases, by town planning in which there is no space for the active, direct action of the citizen.
Reclaiming the power given to the technical experts – first by industrialised society and later by the consumer society – and thus allowing the citizen and the community the chance to intervene without damaging the environment or disturbing people seems to be a positive aspect of a society’s culture.

Environment (nature and society)
The state of the environment depends closely on the social organisation of the communities that live in it. Hunter gatherer communities have a very low-impact relationship with the eco-system: they do not push its productivity to a state of collapse, they maintain a low population and do not accumulate possessions.
A society which glorifies state-owned and private property finds it very difficult to manage to guarantee a common use of assets and a non-exploitative relationship with ecosystems.
A mercantile, authoritarian, artificial and alienated global society, like that defined by the most widespread economic model, builds a relationship with nature that it has invented itself. In doing so, it reconstructs fragments of nature, promoting its image but making it ever-dependent on human activity, considering it in economic terms only.

Travelling Salespeople
The most ecological way of enabling goods to be distributed: a limited number of commodities in a vehicle goes to a community which does not move. The amount shifted is two tons. The shopping centre model is based around individuals moving, in other words around a ton per head (in addition to the transportation of goods to the shopping centre). This is clearly a model that consumes vast amounts of energy as well as being socially selective (those who don’t have a car, who don’t wish to travel or can’t travel are excluded).
Encouraging travelling salespeople is an environmentally qualifying characteristic.

Craftwork
Handicrafts allow the individual to manage the production process in an aware manner. It is also how technical skills are kept alive in a community, allowing it to make and maintain products autonomously.
Handicrafts differ according to the place and hence to the local resources and culture, adapting to the changes in local character.
The spread of craftwork allows the penetration of global goods to be reduced.

Self-production of energy
Large-scale power plants, even those using renewable sources, concentrate production and profit in one place. They deprive the local community of the possibility of managing a fundamental aspect of its existence. They allow a monopoly and set prices, but most of all they involve a vast waste of energy due to distribution and excess production (which exists, even if it is put back into the grid).
Local, even individual power plants (mini-hydro power, mini-wind power, biomass, solar, thermal and so on) can be set up to help reduce environmental impact and allow communities to control the plants and directly manage costs and consumption.

Self-production of food
Producing one’s own food or buying it from those who produce it locally reduces the industrialised food market; it allows the food autonomy of local regions and communities; it increases the possibility of directly controlling the quality of products, and creates employment.
It creates a strong link between communities and places, and helps us understand the importance of the balance between using and conserving natural resources.
Support autonomous farming, take part in and use self-managed trading circuits.

Self-building
Humankind has an innate ability to build and adapt spaces to live in. Our inbuilt potential and our quality of life are compromised if we totally delegate this task to third parties, and do not take part in building and maintaining our own living space.
Individuals can contribute, directly or indirectly, to defining the physical space in which they live. That is, if they are aware of the need to work so as to reduce the negative impact and lighten the environmental burden of transforming and using that space.
Take part in self-building processes, build your own house or better still, re-use existing constructions in self-building.

Cars
Every day, most of the world’s citizens are faced with an onslaught of insistent advertising for private cars.
If we weren’t faced with this constant advertising, it is almost certain that far fewer cars would be sold. Our society would not be car-centric, we would not have problems of pollution in cities, and so on.
In the current model, individual mobility by car seems to be indispensable and irreplaceable in many areas (just think of the many settlements of individual houses scattered across the region). But that’s simply not true. Many other modes of transport can be organised, starting with individual motorized transport (a low-powered motorbike), bicycles or other vehicles which can cover shorter distances. Alternatively, multi-use cars can be employed, which are nevertheless smaller and less powerful.
This can be done now, without too many sacrifices and without changing existing rules. Those who choose not to go down this path, those who choose to own recently manufactured, outsized, large displacement vehicles implicitly represent an authoritarian, polluting, socially damaging culture.

Meat and combustibles
It is a well-known fact that in each step of the food chain, most of the energy is not passed on to the next link in the chain: for example, every cow produces fifty kilograms of protein by consuming seven hundred and fifty kilograms of plant-based proteins.
In short, in order to use the amounts of meat currently consumed we use an amount of plant-based foods which in itself far exceeds the food requirements of everyone on the entire planet.
Therefore, the rise in meat consumption has not only led to changes in the agricultural, forestry and social structure of entire nations; it has also wasted enormous amounts of potential food.
The recent development of producing plant-based fuels is going down the same road: in addition to increasing the price of cereals in every market, creating difficulty for poorer consumers and benefiting the richest producers, it also involves using food for fuel. A vast amount of energy is lost in this transformation.
Using agricultural products for the purposes of food, reducing the protein chain, guarantees the maximising of the potential of the natural system and the energy it contains.

Living out of town
This is a housing model in which people live in a low-population area in a house which is bigger than they need, with a garden and all the facilities that they can afford, and go to work in the city. It is a shocking environmental waste in terms of consumption of resources and of energy for commuting. People travel thousands of kilometres in order to breathe fresh air, creating pollution and becoming a direct cause of the climate change which has led people to leave cities in the first place.
Often it is not a choice (houses cost less the further they are from the centre). However, if it were a choice, it would be environmentally and socially damaging.
People should work in the place and in the community in which they live, and become settled.

Cause/effect
The current economic and social model acts upon the effects. This way, by not criticising or changing ingrained behaviour, it adds commodities and expands the market. Acting upon the causes would, on the other hand, involve changing common practices and reducing commodities.
Any effective action aimed at sustainability works on the causes and, sometimes, on reducing the effects at the same time.

Community
Recreating direct relations between individuals and local resources is the way to rebalance the relationship between population and environment. Individuals are not aware of the negative effects that their behaviour has on other places. Nor do they understand the importance of properly managing the resources in their own region.
One way of reconstructing relations is to support local economies. These local economies are enslaved to the global market, and allow space for the technical and creative abilities of individuals.
The social place in which this can happen is communities of individuals. This means geographical or a-geographical communities which are self-managed; culturally defined but not closed; economically and socially autonomous. In other words, they manage their resources and environment directly, unanimously and sustainably.

Open communities and identity
In its attempt to spread standardised goods, the contemporary economic model has broken down the culture of local communities.
Local culture is closely linked to places. It develops from the close relationship between the individual and the surrounding environment.
Distancing ourselves from this relationship increases the environmental impact of the community on the place it inhabits.
Maintaining a local culture safeguards the identity of communities and the relations between them and the environment.
This does not mean that we have to recreate closed communities or reapply the social limitations found in them. It just means the chance to rediscover a local equilibrium; to leave behind the market and its cultural impositions; to preserve an identity. All of this is possible in an ongoing, positive but egalitarian exchange with the outside world.

Competition/free market
An environmental disaster has been triggered by over-production, which seeks to cut costs and occupy sections of the market by taking them away from other manufacturers. In this way, unnecessary goods are produced (such as most of those in the consumer society), goods which do not provide pleasure (such as most of those of the consumer society), in quantities many times greater than those of the already inflated market, according to the number of manufacturers.
This condition is aberrant in the global market, but might not be so at local level, where producers generally produce goods for the community in which they live, according to demand (thus limiting energy wastage for manufacturing, distribution and disposal).

Consumers
The difference between an individual and a consumer is defined by the level of criticism expressed towards commercial promotions, and by the quantity of goods purchased.
In contemporary society it is very difficult not be a consumer. However, a change in behaviour is a step towards limiting the global market and reducing the “environmental burden” of our presence on earth.

Consumption
In the consumer society, goods are not used up: they are reduced to rubbish without being used completely. It is therefore a society of waste, of a rapid estrangement from objects, of an emotional disaffection towards the tools we use. Objects are all different but all indifferent for those using them. They are quickly replaced without leaving a memory. They leave only a profound physical trace (in the amount of rubbish produced).
Reducing purchases, reducing goods, looking after objects, reusing them, “consuming them” and repairing them is indispensable in order to slow down a productivity which does not lead to wellbeing.

Land use
Settlements and infrastructures are expanding, occupying more land. The areas used lose any ecological potential. They are not biologically productive. Areas covered in housing are deserts brought into natural systems which have much greater potential. They are areas which are difficult to regenerate in terms of nature and wildlife. They remain over time and actively contribute to raising temperatures. This condition becomes even more serious as they are placed in areas with high agricultural production (the same areas which guarantee optimum conditions for building).
The large amounts of land used should lead us to consider the need to contain towns and cities. Not so much by building upwards, but rather by salvaging spaces that are unused or underused, such as second and third homes, excessively large surface areas per head, abandoned or oversized warehouses or barns. These all derive from the instrumental use of construction (investments and income), allowed by the economic model (lower costs, speculation), and supported by culture (size is everything); all of which are the principle causes behind the expansion of built-up areas.

Growth
The objective of growth is an important one for the present cultural and economic model. The wellbeing of countries and companies is measured by the amount of product and the capacity to increase it year after year.
However, the same criteria apply to the lives of individuals. Individual satisfaction is attained when the next state of living is quantitatively superior to the previous one. When people have the financial means, they replace material goods with other, bigger ones. For example, a bigger home, a more powerful car, a computer with more memory, and so on.
Yet despite all the technological efforts made, unlimited material growth is not practicable, because resources are indeed limited.
In addition to the obvious pointlessness of quantitative growth, it is time to consider that the growth objective is impossible to pursue. There is a limit. However far off we want to claim that limit is (although it is thought to be very close indeed), it is there, and on reaching it, growth will grind to a halt.
So it is crucial to change cultural attitudes by rearranging not just individual lives, but also the life of manufacturing. The latter should rediscover its advantages in terms of quality of production and not quantity, in the continuity of activities, in maintaining quantities that are linked to the real needs of the community for which they are intended.

Distribution
The mobility of goods is a typical feature of the global market model.
Production is concentrated in one place, replacing local production. It can count on lower costs, made possible by the increase in quantities and the geographical location of production units in areas where there are less environmental controls and lower labour costs.
The environmental and social costs that ensue are vast, due to the energy and emissions related to hyper-production and transportation, and the breakdown of the local manufacturing fabric. This condition worsens still when it is applied to the agricultural and food sector.
Eating food produced in nearby areas not only avoids the transportation of goods and lowers energy consumption, it also provides financial support to the local community.

Efficiency Increase
This is a term created by the industrial sector, based on society’s need to reduce the negative effects of production, in relation to the oil crisis in the seventies and the subsequent need to reduce energy consumption.
Efficiency requires goods to be replaced by goods in a constant improvement of efficiency (also required by voluntary regulations on the quality of products). In this way, “new” goods replace “old” goods which have the same function and still work.
The instrumental use of this concept has led to new areas of the market expanding (people buy the same product several times over, at increasing levels of efficiency). However, this requires vast amounts of energy and produces vast amounts of rejects and waste.
Given that efficiency increase is measured by units produced, the advantage of greater efficiency achieved by improving the product itself is absorbed and exceeded by the disadvantage resulting from the increase in the amount of products.
Do not fall into the trap of efficiency or of passing judgement on goods or buying them. Keep items for as long as possible, checking that they are in proper working condition. The best form of efficiency is reduction.

Equilibrium
Almost all settlements or towns are not in equilibrium with their surrounding environment. They consume more energy than is locally available; they emit pollutants that, due to their type and quantity, are much greater than the ecosystem’s capacity to regenerate itself.
All of the planet’s settlements and activities consume resources and produce emissions in quantities much greater than the planet can bear.
The overall situation, locally and globally, is therefore imbalanced.
The future of natural systems is under threat. But so is that of the human systems which live in, and thanks to, nature. As the current economic and social model continues with exponential growth, the risk of collapse increases over time.
A crucial element if we are to imagine a decent future is to recreate a balance between settlements and resources, starting on a local scale. Consumption should once again be linked to the actual resources available, and diversified according to the features and productivity of individual places.

Renewable sources
The use of renewable energy sources should go hand-in-hand with the disuse of equivalent non-renewable sources, and with a significant cutback in energy use.

Global
Global is the mechanism invented and supported by the largest economic players in order to increase exchanges, concentrate production and management of the market, and enable profits to grow exponentially.
Global is supported by intellectuals who are unaware of the situation described above, and believe it to be the right model of cultural and social growth for the planet.
Global is a non-place, in which the individual is of no importance, in which the individual is standardized and becomes the role which he or she carries out, in which the community does not exist, and in which there is an economic government dictating the rules of society.
Do not buy global products. Do not use global solutions. Pay attention to the potential for local production, to the social nature of commodities, to communities.

Lighting
The planet has too much artificial lighting. Night has disappeared.
Reduce lighting; darken.

Industrial
A production system which requires a total environmental and social overhaul. Starting with defining the need for goods, the geographical relation between places of production and use, and reducing the mobility of goods.
Industry is a production method that we do not have to give up, provided that its purposes are transferred from economic targets to social and environmental ends.

Industrialisation
The objective of industrialisation is not to produce goods, but to generate profit: the goods are in excess; production processes are polluting and socially fragmented; the quality of products is lowered; their predefined duration is limited. Industrialisation is the founding principle of the global market, and produces waste which is described as “goods”.
The industrialisation of society has led to people organising life according to the criteria of industry, dividing it into stages and fragmenting individual contributions. This means a lack of awareness of the end product, with sector-specific, self-referential quality controls.
Let’s de-industrialise our minds and use those industrial products which serve and safeguard the environmental and social qualities we want, without being enslaved to the industrial culture.

Infrastructures
If we want to increase the mobility of goods and people, with the emphasis on private travel, there’s no doubt that infrastructures are required.
There is no set limit to satisfaction, neither with regard to the duration of journeys nor the amount of trips made. It is therefore evident that infrastructures will never suffice if we continue to pursue this model.
The constant growth of infrastructures will go hand-in-hand with ever-growing dependency on them. For example, building more roads will make it easier for the carriers using them. This will then lead to a constant growth in road travel (private or goods), in emissions, in energy consumption, in changes to the environment and damage to citizens’ health. It will encourage the fragmentation of settlements and the concentration of production, both of which are made easier by the ease of transporting people and goods.
The current excessive mobility is caused by two things: the land and property market (which force people on lower incomes to move away from the cities), and the movement of goods (which, as production is concentrated, requires products to be taken to places in which concentrated production has caused local producers to shut down).
Opposing certain types of infrastructure (particularly roads and airports, as well as high-speed railways) means opposing the economic, productive and housing model, limiting its development.

Innovation/the new
“The new” has taken on a totally positive value. In product marketing terms, it corresponds to a favourable judgement, quite apart from the actual quality of the product. This positive consideration of newness is applied indistinctly to all the actions and products of contemporary society, so much so that innovation has become one of the main topics of interest.
Useful innovation is innovation which improves the environmental and social quality of actions, processes and products. It should enhance not the effects of the individual action, but all actions as a whole.
The theme of innovation should be considered from a critical viewpoint. This way we can assess the true advantages brought by an innovation, without getting carried away by novelty as an end in itself. We should be well aware that behind this induced enthusiasm hide the problems that innovation itself can bring.

Slowness
Doing less and slowing down can help us become more aware of what it is we are doing.
In all likelihood, it increases the possibility of shared decision-making processes. It definitely reduces the consumption of resources and the amount of emissions.

Luxury
The consumer society already encourages people to buy useless items, of which the negative environmental effects are worsened by the fact that they are unnecessary.
Luxury is a deterioration of this already unbearable condition. Luxury is vulgar. Because it is pointless. Luxury is vulgar as it brings about environmentally negative effects which degrade ecosystems and weigh heavily on the health of the people. Luxury is vulgar because it demonstrates, shamefully for those who take part in it, how the market is able to make a profit from anything: if rich people did not have luxury, how would they manage to spend their money?

Market
The market of small-scale producers, craftspeople, local technical skills.
The low cost of industrialised products can have a very high price in social and environmental terms.
The market weighs up how much people can spend from the moment they are born. It creates products that are able to take everything people possess, giving them goods, which may be indispensable, necessary, useless, oversized or superfluous.
Global companies have understood that perhaps they will never manage to sell a car or a domestic appliance to everyone on the planet. They therefore work to sell raw materials (water, grain, etc.), thus extending the market of products and of industrialised, monopolistic processes to the poor too.
Try to remain outside the market, as far as possible.

Mobility
This is one of the sectors which contributes most to climate change and conditions the health of citizens.
Mobility, presented as a crucial element of individual freedom, is in fact the greatest limit to that freedom.
The growth of mobility leads to low-density settlements being built. It also leads to an increase in the distance between the places where people live, work, socialise and go on holiday.
Freedom becomes a duty: it is not possible to use services without travelling from one place to another. Mobility is an obligation.
Start travelling less when you can choose (holidays), travelling rarely for work (reducing trips by combining work commitments), finding housing solutions that are connected to the places in which you work and socialise.

The Disposable
This is one of the greatest aberrations of contemporary life, unjustified, and incomprehensible. What advantage does a disposable product give us as individuals? Not having to wash dishes or napkins? What about razors or lighters? Does it make the activity any simpler? How hard is it to refill a lighter? What’s so difficult about going to the market with your own canvas bag?
It is precisely this striving after disaffection with the object and diminishment of its specific identity which underlies the consumer society. All objects must be equivalent to each other so that they can be thrown away and bought again, sometimes exactly the same, so as to boost the market.
The vast environmental and economic cost of disposing of these materials does not justify the very slight advantages they offer.
Do not use disposable products.

Standards
Standards do not always help reduce people’s environmental impact. Indeed, as they are often motivated by production theories, they recommend behaviour that is totally opposed to environmental quality objectives.
Attempts have been made to reduce packaging for several years now. However, strict standards exist which mean that the sugar at the café comes in a packet, sandwiches wrapped in plastic, supermarket products are over-packaged. And on the same theme, a European standard was nearly passed requiring water glasses to be replaced with a single-use package.
Standards help the spread of disposable products, without charging them with the social and environmental costs of disposal. Standards facilitate industrialisation by defining procedures for controlling the quality and type of product; such standards would be impossible for craftspeople to adhere to. Standards define financing for atypical crop-growing, for aeroplane fuel concessions, for private transport subsidies, for lifting systems and so on.
In the market society, standards are not decided by citizens or by their representatives. They are drawn up by the major interests, whose requests are less and less attenuated by the conciliatory attitude brought about by market expansion twenty years ago (Eastern Europe, liberalisation, privatisation of energy and water, etc).
Examine standards with critical attention.

GMOs
GMOs were created with the justification of providing an answer to food emergencies. In actual fact they answer the manufacturers’ need to increase productivity per hectare, and penetrate the grain market, which is currently managed directly by farmers for the most part.
It is well known that an increase in productivity per hectare does not improve the food conditions of the whole planet. As has already been proven by the constant increases in productivity, from the post-war period to the last decade, the food problem is connected to other things: the distribution of products (many countries produce excess amounts which they throw away), competition (many countries regulate the price of food and agricultural resources with their producers),and the social structure with regard to land use and hence local productivity (large urban settlements make populations dependent when it comes to food).
GMOs are not useful. They can be harmful to the environment and are damaging to local communities and natural biodiversity.

Plastic
No material can be demonized, but there are some materials which are used dangerously, from a social and environmental perspective. Plastic is one of these.
Plastic is derived from oil. Oil is undoubtedly the resource the control of which has led to the greatest number of armed conflicts in recent decades. It is a disappearing resource which is extremely polluting. It is therefore a very negative resource, environmentally and socially speaking.
Plastic is used very widely due to features which make it simple to produce and sell. Low production costs mean it can be made for vast profits, while the production systems for plastic are simple and accessible.
Plastic is abused: in construction, in décor, in objects and tools. Plastic is everywhere in a vast number of different compositions. It contains all kinds of additives, so many that it is impossible to recognise the cocktail of substances it contains. This leads to significant problems when it is used (the release of toxic substances, the risk of dangerous emissions when it is burnt or in other conditions) and disposed of.
Plastic also enables much of the disposable manufacturing which exponentially increases the amount of waste, which is difficult to recycle.
Reducing the use of plastic, as with any polluting material, to specific, indispensable uses leads to our liberation from a dependency, to an upturn in local technical solutions, and the elimination of a large proportion of waste products.

Population
The number of people on Earth is growing constantly. Population growth changes our relationship with resources. Even today, in many areas of the world the number of inhabitants far exceeds the potential of the places. The limits of food production of cultivable land can already be seen.
Density is increasing, individual space is decreasing; natural spaces become marginal waste areas, in terms of both quality and quantity; behaviours are more and more regulated, production is industrialised.
Widespread demagoguery encourages people to reproduce, without reason, given the existing population levels. It also changes the relationship between individual choices, pleasure, wellbeing and collective awareness. There are certain sources which promote the numerical increase of the species: the economic model, which expands the market; religions, which increase their followers; and nations, which become powerful with a large number of inhabitants.
Interests, dogmas and fears, but none of this is connected with the individual and common good.

Quality/quantity
For years now, the idea of sustainability has been reduced to simply increasing the efficiency of our actions. The reasoning is that, if a car made nowadays pollutes significantly less than a car from forty years ago, the conditions of the planet are improving.
However, a car from forty years ago travelled far fewer kilometres than today’s cars. It had a much longer lifespan (and thus used up much of the energy stored in the process of making it), and was part of a much tinier pool of cars than exists nowadays.
Improving the quality of goods is a condition which is necessary, but not sufficient to solve our problems. We also need to combine it with a significant reduction in quantity.

Research
Most research is carried out by private bodies which have a specific interest in finding new merchandise. From medicine to military equipment (some of the sectors which spend most on research), to cosmetics, transport, chemicals and construction, organisations with the most funds available invest them, without answering clear needs, but instead responding to the specific interests of the financier.
The results of the research do not provide answers to the population’s needs. Instead, the results are oriented towards the maximum market obtainable by the party promoting the research. This is partly due to the fact that research is carried out according to the same economic criteria which regulate the current model and which define all of its limits.
This research is socially and environmentally useful to a very small extent. If research is aimed at solving problems, it cannot ignore the fact that the solutions to many problems lie in changing social systems, rather than inventing new products. Ideally research is connected to society and looks after its interests. It should focus not only on its specific theme, but on the interaction between that theme and the ways in which society itself works.

Resources
Although the term “resources” indicates a vision of the environment which is aimed at transforming it or using it, because the term regards the environment from a utilitarian point of view for the human race, it is possible to use resources in a way that does not compromise and degrade the environment.
The contemporary model uses resources for as long as they produce economic advantage. In other words, much farther beyond the limit of use needed to maintain the potential of the resources themselves.
This situation is helped by the fact that local communities have no control over their own land and resources, or over the business-oriented management of them.
Managing resources in today’s world is a very delicate matter. They are diminishing constantly, in a state of flux, and insufficient to guarantee the consumption of the affluent and the survival of a world population that is growing relentlessly.
Putting local communities directly in touch with resources, initiating a collective management of them, defining consumption in relation to availability: these would be ways of maintaining cultural and environmental diversity, as well as of allowing resources to be used according to availability.

Financial savings
Accumulated money has a lower environmental impact than the impact of accumulated goods. Before the consumer society, the economy was based on savings. Contemporary society, however, is based on channelling all of an individual’s means into purchasing goods, even at the cost of future debt, and even when the goods are not necessary.
On one hand, goods are a tool for using up wealth, and on the other, for accumulating it. Both uses are frighteningly extravagant for the environment.

Reusing/ Salvaging
The current model has used commercial, technical and scientific communication to give new objects a higher status than used ones. This has allowed a market share to be maintained which is pointless and over-inflated in relation to actual necessity.
Used objects and materials have been attributed a lower value, as “second best”. They are soon considered obsolete and tend to be turned into waste. This is an incredible loss of wealth and energy. It also creates a problem – that of waste disposal – which would otherwise be much more limited.
Whether we’re talking about furnishings, apartments, clothing, cars or tools, objects respond to an abstract image which is stimulated by the market.
Reusing and salvaging means adapting a design to suit that which already exists. It means building the future with the present, with all the imprecision that this involves. But it also means taking back possession of the design, without tying it purely to the purchasing of goods.

Sectors
Learning, skills, the organisation of work; all of contemporary culture is divided into sectors.
However, information, knowledge and the ability to act are not connected. The environmental regeneration intervention needed works across sectors. Often, it does not require detailed knowledge. Instead, what’s needed is great awareness and the courage to change behaviour and decisions, even through simple solutions.
Much of this informed, in-depth, detailed sector-based culture is useless to the wellbeing of the community, as it does not back up consistent action.
Vision and intervention in the environmental and social system is cross-sector, and often does not require detailed scientific knowledge.

Waste disposal
The amount of waste to be disposed of should be minimal.
Objects should be used, salvaged, reused, salvaged and reused again until they are recycled. The amount of objects should be reduced to meet actual needs (and therefore considerably less than half of current quantities). Only a small part of them should be a waste product, and only that small part should be disposed of.

Technical solutions
Choose technical solutions which are directly manageable and which can be repaired by local technicians. Avoid being forced to go to the manufacturer for maintenance and repairs. Use solutions which save energy and materials and do not guarantee efficient functioning alone. Use instruments which do not substitute simple human actions (squeezing a lemon, lifting a blind, switching on a light).

Sustainability
Environmental changes have been widely acknowledged since the early seventies at least. For at least twenty years, international, E.U. and often national policies have indicated that they are a priority issue. The term “sustainability” is constantly used to support the idea of change. However, the state of the environment has worsened exponentially.
Thus, the environmental and social problems of our planet do not lead us to believe that the current model is able to solve these problems.
Sustainable actions are ones which conserve and regenerate the environment, reduce the squandering and use of resources, and reduce waste products.
Anything else is simply justifying guilty consciences.

Specialisation of regions
The various regions of the world are used to produce food. They are managed by large, specialist food and agriculture production and distribution companies. Prawns are farmed in one place, maize in another.
Mono-crop farming enslaves local communities to a market that they do not control. It limits their agricultural independence and impoverishes them technically and culturally. It gives them a reason to exist only as part of the global distribution process.
Refusing to specialise can safeguard the autonomy of local communities. Multi-crop farming, the retaining of technical skills and different crops not only help society, but also preserve biological diversity and the quality of the environment.

Supermarkets – Hypermarkets – Shopping Centres
These are the tool for selling useless things at low cost. In some cases, the products are so shoddy (furniture, tools and even food) that they should pay the customers for the cost of disposing of the rubbish, rather than making them pay the price of the goods.
The concentration of sales is linked to the concentration of distribution and production. These are tools for focusing wealth and increasing the power of individuals over the communities in which their businesses are based.
This also breaks down the local social fabric. It makes it dependent on the vast investments of traders.
True savings lie not in buying lots of shoddy products, but in buying less, buying from people you know, from people who have the technical knowledge to produce those goods; people who work nearby.

Development
The only development possible is cultural. It is not connected to quantity or to commodities.

Technology
Technology is the chosen means of solving environmental problems. Almost like a deus ex machina, the world awaits the new device, the new material, the new fuel that will change our lives and return the planet to a good condition.
This expectation is supported by those who want to leave the current global model unchanged: let people continue consuming in the same way; let manufacturers become more concentrated; let cities grow; let communities’ social and cultural independence wane. The underlying axiom is that this model is imperfect (and, in bad faith, “all other options” are described as imperfect too); but that technological innovation will allow us to move forward, improving its performance.
This set-up is not just wrong. It is dangerous for the entire human race. Technology can only help if it is used as part of a profound reconsideration of behaviour: reduction of consumption, environmental awareness in all activities, reduction of mobility and of demographic growth.
If technology is not used with this framework in mind, it is only destined to produce new goods for the very market which has caused severe environmental and social changes to this planet and its inhabitants.

Tourism
Environmentally and socially responsible tourism is that which is carried out using low-impact means of transport, over a long period, with short distances covered, without contributing to the breakdown of local communities, without becoming the ambassadors of a global culture by choosing standardised, universal services and products.
Sustainable tourism consists of short distances travelled, long periods spent in one place, preferably moving without the use of an engine.

Urbanizations
Large settlements are dependent on outside regions, on manufacturers; autonomous communities are not created within them. The inhabitants are at the mercy of the large distribution companies; they do not control the production systems or the origin of materials.
Metropolises are authoritarian settlement structures in which the citizens are crushed and captive: they do not directly manage production, nor food supplies, nor distribution, as they do not have their own land available.
Large contemporary urban settlements embody the model of the concentration of wealth and power, the model of the unequal distribution of wellbeing, the dependency of settled communities and the expropriation of the individual’s right to live on the land.
Any action which tends to encourage the strengthening of such settlements reduces the population’s chances of autonomy. Limit settlements, connect them with places once again, to increase their autonomy and identifiability.

Free use
This was an experiment carried out in the 1970s whereby individuals made various goods or services available free, from everyday objects to a certain amount of their own work to meet the needs of others.
It is a way of redistributing excess, without profit; of strengthening social relations; of recuperating energy used, without charity or financial profit.

Speed
Quality is often measured by the speed with which activities are carried out; by the rapidity with which a practice is defined, or with which houses are built, journeys are made, services are acquired.
Speed of activities means that they are carried out in less time, so profits rise (by making more things, more of them can be sold), and production costs are reduced (margins increase on each unit manufactured).
The time which is freed up in this way is occupied by other activities. The end result is that the amount of energy (human and otherwise) used increases exponentially. Emissions increase, as do the materials used. This has unsustainable negative effects on the environment and on societies.
Allocate the right amount of time to activities, starting from daily activities, so as to rediscover the awareness and pleasure of them, and avoid being swallowed up by the constant quest for action.

Conclusions
For some time now, the world has been aware of how individual behaviour can improve the state of the environment. Shopping for goods of a better ecological quality, reducing energy consumption by carefully managing systems and domestic appliances, reducing emissions by using alternative and innovative vehicles and replacing fossil fuels with energy from renewable sources in private homes and businesses.
However, many people’s commitment to environmentally and socially commendable behaviour is undermined by the cheapness of goods of a lower environmental quality (lower quality goods which often come from stigmatized processes), and by the promotion of highly polluting goods.
How many incandescent light bulbs do we have to change to make up the difference in energy between building and using a low-powered car and an SUV? How many Euro classes (we’re now at Euro 4) do we have to get through to make up for the average increase in horsepower that manufacturers have made in the last two decades?
Does the (debatable) difference in quality between coffee from a normal coffee machine and a professional-style “pod” coffee machine justify the squandering of energy needed to make and manage the two pieces of equipment, and the inevitable increase in waste of the pod system (even if they really are “recyclable”, “biodegradable”, “eco-compatible”, “natural” and so on)?
These products do not have the purposes of reducing our species’ environmental impact. They operate separately from the interests of humanity, according to their own rules and criteria: they increase profits for manufacturers, expand the market, invent goods aimed at specific categories of consumers.
Manufacturers have a vested interest in creating large objects. Through them they can manage to justify high costs in relation to function, and objects which complicate function, because they maintain that they are useful. These large, complex, short-lived objects are pushed by manufacturers more than other products (which have the same function but are simple and of normal size). They base all their communication around them, and support sales using emotional motivations.
The world population is subjected to a constant bombardment of appealing, enticing advertisements which offer attractive solutions to non-existent problems. They are designed by specialists, made by skilled engineers, and can channel people’s desires towards a certain area of the market, thereby fulfilling those desires.
Individuals are overcome by this glut of pleasure. Most people respond by spending more than they have, working all hours to be able to obtain the satisfaction of buying products. It’s a fact that most shopping centres are full to bursting on Saturdays and Sundays, days on which shopping has replaced other forms of leisure for most people in the world who are not poor.
Ecological behaviour is therefore very difficult as it is hard to practice within a model which encourages the opposite. It is hard to find low-impact goods, to contact and deal with craftspeople and self-producers; to involve others in this choice; to bridge the vast gap separating these behaviours from more widespread habits.
Manufacturing floods the market with products that render our existence more and more artificial. Products which concentrate profit, support monopolies, rob communities of their culture, define and impose new lifestyles. Business motives have structured society. They have defined a new way of living and have changed relationships and behaviour before the eyes of all governments, wasting a vast creative and cultural heritage.
So it becomes a struggle to avoid the free supplements with the newspapers (with as much advertising, which is the real reason for printing the publication, as there is paper). It’s a struggle not to buy the plastic-wrapped twin-pack at the supermarket. Carrying your shopping in a reusable bag or driving an old car are political choices.
Not using a credit card is seen as a rather “third-world” choice. But we already pay for a piece of paper called money, so why pay for a piece of plastic too? Ecological behaviour becomes “anachronistic”, traditionalist, something for those who pine for “a past that will never return”.
It’s not like that. People who think from an environmental perspective think neither in the past nor in the future, but in the present. And they think about the potential of communities and of individuals to choose, independently of commercial pressures.
The individual’s consistency is crucial in all this. Without being cloaked in “heroism” or “fundamentalism”, it is the only way to defend ourselves from a self-serving antagonism which undermines our critical capacity. Consistency is contagious.
However, in addition to individual choices, what is needed is a strategy to unmask the misdeeds and praise the laudable actions of others. Many people, due to lack of self-criticism or out of self-interest, pursue goals that are harmful to everyone.
This strategy could begin by drawing attention to the sometimes involuntary collusion of those who behave in ways that support a model which is harmful to most of the human race and is unable to improve the state of the environment. It could extend as far as the choices made by nations, which are so often aimed at supporting economic interests, even at the expense of common interests.
Calmly, without resentment, but with an awareness that there is space to build on a critical, libertarian impulse which is already widespread in the world.
Sustainable actions can be identified by checking whether they are at least capable of:

• Reducing consumption;
• Reducing demographic growth;
• Reducing land use deriving from infrastructures and urban expansion;
• Regenerating and conserving nature;
• Maintaining natural and cultural diversity;
• Salvaging, reusing and recycling goods and objects;
• Supporting all forms of production and exchange that lie outside the global market;
• Supporting global deindustrialisation, giving space to handicrafts, small businesses and local production;
• Supporting the settlement-resources balance at local level, closing cycles and striving after the economic independence of communities;
• Supporting the identity of geographical and a-geographical communities, local cultures, languages and technical skills. Not traditionalism, but open communities which have a strong identity, as they are closely related to places;
• Supporting alternative mobility and energy production methods which are non-centralised, non-monopolistic, non-oversized, but necessary and from renewable sources.

Adriano Paolella
Zelinda Carloni