Sustainability in everyday life

Our daily lives offer many opportunities to leave an intact world for future generations. This relates above all to our (consumer) behavior in the following areas:

• Building and living
• Education
• Economy
• Financial services
• Energy (electricity consumption and electrical appliances)
• Food and nutrition
• Mobility and transport
• Textiles and clothing
• Tourism and travel

Questions and answers: How can sustainability be lived?

A number of fundamental questions arise from the definition of sustainability in everyday life. They can all be subsumed under two initial questions:

1. What does the concept of sustainability mean in concrete terms for the individual areas of our everyday lives?
2. How sustainably can we actually live?

What does sustainable consumption mean?

Sustainable consumers are ecologically and socially responsible people. After all, consumption is sustainable if it enables future generations to meet their own needs and choose their own lifestyles.

It is important to note: Each individual’s consumption impacts not only locally on the ground, but also on the environment and people all over the world due to production processes and supply chains that take place globally.

You cannot not consume. That’s why it’s important to consume consciously: look closely and consider your overall personal balance.

Specifically, consuming sustainably means:

• The use and consumption of goods and services,
• that satisfy the needs of the consumer
• conserve the environment and resources, and
• socially acceptable
• as well as economically viable.

What does sustainability mean in business?

Companies play a particularly important role in the implementation of sustainable development. This is due, among other things, to their innovative strength.

In the United Nations 2030 Agenda, Goals 7, 8, 9 and 12 in particular deal with the economic development aspects:

Goal 7: Affordable and clean energy.

Energy is a fundamental prerequisite for economic and social development. Clean energy sources are as much a key factor in this as increasing energy efficiency.

Goal 8: Sustainable development as an opportunity for all

Globalization offers many opportunities for greater prosperity. However, not everyone benefits in the same way. When it comes to good work with minimum social standards and adequate wages, many countries still have a need for development.

Goal 9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

The sustainability of economic growth, production, cities, and education and healthcare systems – all important sustainability goals – are inconceivable without intelligent innovations, modern infrastructures and a high-performance industry.

Goal 12: Sustainable production and consumption

The earth has its limits. In order to continue to live well, we must not only adapt our consumption, but also our production techniques. This also applies to the use of resources as well as occupational safety, health and environmental protection.

Not sustainable = not fit for the future

In this context, sustainability for business is not just a question of production adaptation, workers’ rights and resource use. Many companies have understood that they are not considered fit for the future if they do not take into account the consequences of their actions for the environment, people and politics.

How sustainable can we invest money?

Sustainable investments have been an important topic for some years now. In terms of total invested assets, they are still in the single-digit percentage range. But the number of providers of sustainable financial services is growing.

The easiest way to evaluate investments under sustainability criteria is to invest in companies, funds or indices that pay as much attention to environmental protection and production conditions as they do to fair corporate governance. By contrast, companies that permit child or forced labor, produce alcohol or tobacco, weapons or genetically modified food are excluded.

To identify companies that operate within these sustainable guidelines, investment funds often employ analysts or even research institutes.

They evaluate them according to so-called ESG criteria and corporate governance criteria. The abbreviation ESG stands for Environment, Social and Governance.

How can I build and live sustainably?

The construction, expansion, use, modernization and maintenance of buildings and infrastructure consume a large amount of land, energy and raw materials. But the use of raw materials is also limited.

No matter whether wood, crude oil or other products: The amount that can be extracted or mined will constantly decrease if demand continues to grow strongly and thus exceeds supply. Therefore, we have to say goodbye to the previous construction methods, techniques and behavior patterns of the so-called fossil age.

In doing so, there is great scope to satisfy our housing needs at a high level with a significantly lower consumption of natural resources.

There are intelligent alternatives to the usual forms of construction and living:

• renewable building materials,
• energy-efficient household appliances,
• saving electricity,
• proper heating,
• sustainable furniture,
• ecological cleaning,
• saving water

What is meant by sustainable education?

Sustainable education enables people to think and act in a future

1. think and
2. to act in a way that is fit for the future.

In doing so, some key questions are particularly important:

• How do my choices and consumption today affect the lives of subsequent generations around the world?
• What impact do the means of transportation or the energy I use have?
• What can we do about poverty?
• What leads to conflicts, terror and flight?

Consciously dealing with these issues is the result of sustainable education. It makes it possible to understand the effects of our actions on the world – and to make responsible decisions.

When are foods sustainable?

Sustainable living includes sustainable nutrition. The most important basic rule is to throw away as little food as possible. Many products are still good to eat even though they have passed their best-before date.

To protect the environment, it is important to check the ecological footprint of food: Often the transport of regional products has less impact on nature than fruit, milk and vegetables that have traveled a long way to our supermarkets.

Tropical, but fair

When buying tropical fruits such as pineapples, bananas and mangoes, look to see if they are certified:

1. Were they grown in an environmentally friendly way?
2. Were the local farmers paid appropriately?

Seals from the EU, Fairtrade or other organizations provide straightforward information on this.

Meat and fish – enjoy consciously

Meat and fish lovers in particular should reduce their consumption. After all, farming, catching, transporting and slaughtering all drive up CO2 emissions considerably.

If meat is to be consumed, then it is best to buy it from animal-friendly and domestic sources. Fish should always come from certified sustainable fisheries.

Packaging? Recycle or avoid!

Whether plastic, glass, cardboard or Tetrapaks: food is rarely available without packaging. The production and disposal of packaging consumes raw materials and energy.

Much of it can be recycled. But it is much more sustainable to avoid waste. In addition, reusable packaging and carrier bags save a lot.

What’s more, many foods don’t need packaging. More and more packaging-free supermarkets are proving that shopping can be much more sustainable, for example with Tupperware.

More and more investors not only want to generate returns with their money – they also want to do good at the same time. But is that even possible? 4 important facts about sustainable investments.

Fact 1: Interest in sustainable investments is exploding.

The idea of sustainable business has already caught on with many people – paying attention to ethical, social and ecological aspects is becoming increasingly important. Thinking about tomorrow today, shaping the future actively and responsibly: These goals are simply important to many people – also when it comes to their financial investments.

Fact 2: ESG criteria play a major role in sustainability.

What does sustainability mean anyway? And who decides what is sustainable – and what is not? Difficult questions that have not (yet) been conclusively clarified. Basically, however, experts agree: Sustainable products are first and foremost products that are not only tailored to the needs of the present – but also take into account the needs of future generations. As a result of climate change, the ecological aspect in particular is currently coming into focus. The most important points: Conserve resources and reduce greenhouse gases.

How sustainable funds are selected

When selecting sustainable funds, fund managers take into account so-called ESG criteria. ESG stands for Environment, Social and Governance. This means:

• Environment: A company’s energy and water consumption, pollution or waste production, for example, are evaluated.
• Social: This criterion assesses compliance with human rights or working conditions, as well as innovative strength and supply chain management.
• Government: The activities of the management and supervisory board and dealings with shareholders are put to the test.

There is no standard definition of what constitutes a sustainable investment. It is therefore important to find out whether the fund reflects your own priorities in terms of sustainability.

Some funds exclude companies in certain industries – such as weapons of war, alcohol and tobacco, pornography or gambling. Other funds focus on the companies that are most sustainable in an industry – without excluding individual industries. This is the so-called “best-in-class approach.” And still other funds select according to positive criteria – so the money flows into renewable energies, for example.

Fact 3: Sustainable companies are successful.

Companies that focus on long-term, sustainable goals have numerous advantages:

• Economic advantages: Environmentally friendly and efficient use of resources saves costs.
• Satisfied and committed employees: A sustainable business strategy ensures a high level of identification and long-term loyalty.
• Good market prospects: Companies that recognize the dangers of climate change and address the challenges early on will benefit from long-term structural growth in the future.
• Particular innovative capability: Research into and development of environmentally friendly products ensures that innovation potential increases.

Fact 4: Sustainability can help reduce risks.

Compared to conventional investments, sustainable investments generally do not perform worse. According to experts, sustainable investments are even somewhat less risky than conventional investments. The reason: companies that pay attention to sustainability often also act with more foresight in general.

So investors who pay attention to sustainability at companies do so in order to avoid risks and achieve higher returns. However, as with other investments, there are no guarantees. For this reason, you should always consider the risks associated with investment funds. After all, currency and value fluctuations caused by the capital market can have a negative impact on the investment.

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In craps, there is one shooter in each round. This person first sets a bet, after which all other players also make corresponding bets. After that, the shooter rolls two dice simultaneously.

The shooter’s goal is to score 7 or 11 points. This result is called a natural, and the shooter wins immediately. If the Shooter rolls a 2, 3 or 12, this is a Crap and he/she loses immediately. If any other number is rolled, this eye total is the Point. The shooter can now continue to roll the dice, hoping to roll the same eye total again. However, if he rolls a 7 on the second roll, he loses. The dice continue to be rolled for every other point total.

The other players watch the shooter and bet either for or against him – the latter, however, is pretty much frowned upon, especially in land casinos where players sit face to face.

Of course, like any other game of chance, craps has a lot of betting options. Therefore, be sure to read the game rules of the craps version you want to test and start with the basic bets before slowly increasing. In general, the rules of craps are relatively easy to learn, which is why you will surely become a craps pro soon.

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Meta was silent on the location or cost of the AI Research Supercluster (RSC). Instead, the company announced impressive technical details. The supercomputer will have about 16,000 Nvidia graphics processors, 175 petabytes of storage and a network speed of 200 gigabits per second. The speed in certain computing processes: almost five exaflops, ten times faster than the most powerful supercomputer to date.

With the computer, Facebook wants to advance its own research in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The goal is to “develop entirely new AI systems that, for example, enable real-time translations for large groups of people who all speak different languages,” according to a blog post from the group. The technology could enable those people to collaborate on a research project or play a game together without communication problems, it said.

The computer is expected to pay dividends on the group’s key project for the future.

Meta raises the bar for innovation

But to enable such experiences with the new computer will take several years, experts say.

They’ll have their work cut out for them, though. For example, he said, Meta is working on AI that pays attention not only to spoken language, but at the same time to body posture, lip movement and other factors – to enable real-time, accurate translations into other languages. “With the computer, Meta is raising the bar for innovation,” Dekate says.

Some applications are much closer: reviewing the posts and comments on Facebook or Instagram. Much like a human, the new supercomputer should be able to build meaningful context from multiple input sources such as language and images.

That would be a great help for the company, which has come under heavy criticism in recent months. For example, the AI repeatedly confused car accidents with cockfights, to the amazement of employees, the Wall Street Journal reported. According to whistleblower documents, the AI detects only three to five percent of inflammatory posts and 0.6 percent of violence and sedition.

But this task is central to Facebook’s business model; the quality of the network and user trust are essential. Then there are the costs. According to internal documents, Facebook spent more than $100 million in 2019 to vet content through employees and surveys.

Artificial intelligence is greatly changing the demands on computers. They have to perform many calculations simultaneously, but less accurately than before – for example, to correctly classify an object in a photo, but not details such as color or the like.

The Group has recognized the importance of hardware

Graphics processors are ideal for this purpose. A graphic processing unit (GPU) is otherwise used for video games, for example, to put as many pixels per second as possible on the screen.

The fact that Meta is developing its own supercomputer probably has another reason as well. The company has learned from the past that it is dangerous to rely only on software development in the competition between the world’s most powerful companies.

Meta is therefore also putting a lot of resources into developing its own glasses for VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented or augmented reality). The big challenge at the moment is to make the devices smaller, lighter and thus suitable for everyday use.