Credit Crunch bites!

I believe that global economic downturn will be a positive thing in terms of the sustainable development goals in that people will consume less, waste less and use less of our non renewable natural resources. However I think sustainable issues will be the least of peoples worries at the moment due to other factors such as employment and financial concerns. Although I think people will not be too concerned about "saving the environment" at a time like this. I think people will start to make an unconscious effort to be more sustainable such as buying second hand goods such as furniture and cars.

If we look at the car industry we know that as a whole they are really struggling at the moment. This is quite good for sustainability in that the demand for raw goods in less, this has various implications. By not requiring as many raw goods we save energy or fossils fuels and require less lorries on the road transporting the goods to the car factories. Also with less cars coming onto the market there are less vehicles requiring fuel and emitting carbon emissions into the atmosphere. However this means that people are put out of work, have wages docked and businesses of any size go under.

Environmentalists and other campaigners fear that sustainability and wider
corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues are falling off the boardroom
agenda as businesses tighten their belts in the face of turbulent stockmarkets,
the credit crunch and a looming economic slowdown.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/mar/06/greenbusiness.creditcrunch

I think the main good thing to come out of this economic downturn is that as a whole people will consume less and waste less. This will ultimately cause people to make use of what they have and not consume goods or even services.

However sustainability issues should not be ignored at a time like this. Companies and the public should be thinking about the wider picture and thinking about how being sustainable can help them during this period.

But it’s not going to go away – awareness of climate change is
high, and if you look beyond the short-term economic downturn and the difficult
period it has brought, you’ll find the environment will once again become a
major public focus.

http://www.endsdirectory.com/index.cfm?action=articles.view&articleID=200904

Travel Plan

Last Thursday we completed our research between 12:30 and 1:30. During this time we split our group into two halves, one completed the traffic count standing at the barrier and the other stood outside the Senate building asking for people to fill in questionnaires.

The data collection at the barrier was quite easy to collect as all the cars had to stop at the barrier so it was easy to count the number of people in each car. The results were quite variable throughout the hour with the majority of cars appearing in the first half an hour and only having one person in them. We didn't find it too surprising how many people travelled alone compared to those who had car occupants.

The questionnaire collection was quite hard as people weren't keen to stop no matter how polite we were. Also because of the time of day and the weather there were not many people around to ask. We were quite surprised by the number of people who lived more than 15miles away and commuted daily. Often these people travelled alone with no other car occupants. Also not many people were concerned about their effects upon the environment.

If we were to carry out this sort of research again we would choose a better time of the day, where there would be more people about to question, such as morning rush hour. It would also have been good to cover more days so as to get a more representative view of the weeks car useage.

By Emma and Cat