Glossary
- Alternative Energy: This falls into two categories: substitutes for existing petroleum liquids (e.g., ethanol, biodiesel, tar sands substitute energies) and alternatives for generating and storing electrical power (e.g., wind, solar, battery substitute energies).
- Business Model: In the context of sustainability, this refers to the way a business makes money while also considering social causes.
- Blackwater: Contaminated wastewater that must be drained from a building into separate blackwater pipes for extraction. It cannot be mixed with greywater.
- Carbon Footprint: The emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon equivalent) from an individual or organization.
- Carbon Neutral: Companies that achieve net-zero carbon emissions. They offset the amount of carbon they produce by removing carbon emissions elsewhere or purchasing carbon credits.
- Carbon Offset: Reducing carbon emissions by purchasing credits or using carbon trading schemes.
- Carbon Sequestration: The process of capturing and storing carbon to prevent it from entering the atmosphere.
- Circular Economy: An economic system aimed at minimizing waste and making the most of resources. This regenerative approach contrasts with the traditional linear economy, which has a ‘make, use, dispose’ model of production.
- 1.5°C Pathway: A pathway of greenhouse gas emissions that provides an approximately ½ or ⅓ chance, under current knowledge and modeling of the climate response, of global warming, either remaining below or returning to 1.5°C by around the year 2100 following a temperature overshoot.
- B Corp: A private certificate (run by B Lab) of for-profit companies to ensure they meet the ‘highest standards’ for their social, environmental and governance performance, public transparency and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.
- Biodegradable: An item or material that can be decomposed by bacteria or other living microorganisms, including fungi, to produce organic matter.
- Biomimicry: The design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modelled on biological entities and natural processes.
- Bioplastics: A plastic derived from biological substances/renewable biomass sources such as vegetable fats and oils, corn starch, straw, woodchips or recycled food waste, rather than from petroleum.
- BPA: A chemical compound used in the manufacturing of various plastics.
- BREEAM: Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method published by the Building Research Establishment. It’s a method of assessing, rating and certifying the sustainability of commercial buildings.
- Climate Change: A long-term shift in global or regional climate patterns. Often refers specifically to the rise in global temperatures from the mid-20th century to present.
- Climate Emergency: A situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it.
- Compostable: Refers to a product that can be placed into a composition of decaying biodegradable materials and eventually turns into a nutrient-rich material. It is a natural process that turns organic material into a nutrient-rich soil conditioner.
- Conservation: The practice of protecting wild plant and animal species and their habitats. The goal of wildlife conservation is to ensure that nature will be around for future generations to enjoy and also to recognize the importance of wildlife and wilderness for humans and other species alike.
- Eco-friendly: A term that means ‘not harmful to the environment’. This term most commonly refers to products that contribute to green living or practices that help conserve resources like water and energy.
- Electric Vehicle (EV): A vehicle that uses one or more electric motors for propulsion. EVs include road and rail vehicles, surface and underwater vessels, electric aircraft, and electric spacecraft.
- Energy Efficient: Using less energy to provide the same level of energy. It is therefore one method to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions.
- Ethical: Pertaining to or dealing with morals or the principles of morality; pertaining to right and wrong in conduct.
- Flexitarian: A person who has a primarily vegetarian diet but occasionally eats meat or fish.
- Fluff fuel: A type of fuel made from the shredded, non-metallic fractions of waste from car recycling.
- Fossil Fuels: Natural fuels such as coal or gas, formed in the geological past from the remains of living organisms.
- Geodesic Dome Construction: A type of construction that uses a network of triangles to form a roughly spherical surface.
- Geoengineering: The deliberate large-scale manipulation of an environmental process that affects the earth’s climate, in an attempt to counteract the effects of global warming.
- Geothermal Energy: Heat energy generated and stored in the Earth. Geothermal power is cost-effective, reliable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly.
- Global Warming: The long-term heating of Earth’s climate system observed since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere.
- Green Bonds and Loans: Financial instruments issued by governments, development banks, and corporations specifically to finance projects that have positive environmental or climate benefits.
- Green Building: A building that, in its design, construction or operation, reduces or eliminates negative impacts, and can create positive impacts, on our climate and natural environment.
- Green Economy: An economy that aims for sustainable development without degrading the environment.
- Greenhouse Gases: Gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide and methane.
- Greenwashing: The practice of making an unsubstantiated or misleading claim about the environmental benefits of a product, service, technology or company practice.
- Gross and Net Emissions: Gross emissions are the total emissions produced by a sector, country, or other entity. Net emissions are the gross emissions minus any carbon dioxide that is removed from the atmosphere by carbon sinks.
- Impact Investing: Investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return.
- Industrial Ecology: The study of material and energy flows through industrial systems.
- Invasive Species: A species that is non-native to the ecosystem under consideration and whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.
- Jet Stream: A narrow, variable band of very strong, predominantly westerly air currents encircling the globe several miles above the earth. There are typically two or three jet streams in each of the northern and southern hemispheres.
- Joule: A unit of work or energy, equal to the work done by a force of one newton when its point of application moves one meter in the direction of action of the force, equivalent to one 3600th of a watt-hour.
- Kilowatt-hour (kWh): A measure of electrical energy equivalent to a power consumption of 1,000 watts for 1 hour.
- Long-term: In the context of sustainability, this refers to the effects or impact of an action considered over a long period.
- Lake: A large body of water surrounded by land.
- Legume: A plant or its fruit or seed in the family Fabaceae. Legumes are grown agriculturally, primarily for their grain seed called pulse, for livestock forage and silage, and as soil-enhancing green manure.
- Marine Ecosystem: An ecosystem that occurs in or near salt water, which means that marine ecosystems can include everything from a sandy beach to the deepest layers of the ocean.
- Milieu: The physical or social setting in which something occurs or develops. In terms of sustainability, it often refers to the environmental conditions in which an organism or group operates.
- Microclimate: The climate of a very small or restricted area, especially when this differs from the climate of the surrounding area.
- Marine Ecosystems: These are among the largest of Earth’s aquatic ecosystems. They include oceans, salt marsh and intertidal ecology, estuaries and lagoons, mangroves and coral reefs, the deep sea and the sea floor.
- Natural Resources: Materials or substances such as minerals, forests, water, and fertile land that occur in nature and can be used for economic gain.
- Net-Zero Emissions: Achieving a balance between the greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere and those taken out.
- Non-Renewable Energy: A source of energy that has a finite supply capable of being exhausted.
- Ocean Acidification: A reduction in the pH of the ocean over an extended period, typically decades or longer, caused primarily by uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.
- Organic: In terms of food and agriculture, refers to foodstuffs that have been produced without the use of certain pesticides and fertilizers.
- Ozone Layer: A layer in the earth’s stratosphere at an altitude of about 10 km (6.2 miles) containing a high concentration of ozone, which absorbs most of the ultraviolet radiation reaching the earth from the sun.
- Planetary Boundaries: A concept involving nine Earth system processes which have boundaries proposed in 2009 by a group of Earth system and environmental scientists.
- Productivity: In the context of sustainability, it often refers to the efficiency of production of goods and services in an economy.
- Preservation: The act of preserving, guarding, or protecting; the keeping (of a thing) in a safe or entire state.
- Permaculture: A system of agricultural and social design principles centered on simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems.
- Pollution: The introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change.
- Recycling: The process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects.
- Resources: A source or supply from which a benefit is produced and that has some utility.
- Renewable Energy: Energy that is collected from resources which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat.
- Renewability: The ability of a resource to be able to restore itself at a rate greater than or equal to its rate of depletion.
- Sustainability: The ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level. In terms of the environment, it refers to the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance.
- Sustainable Development: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
- Solar Energy: Radiant light and heat from the Sun that is harnessed using a range of ever-evolving technologies such as solar heating, photovoltaics, solar thermal energy, solar architecture, molten salt power plants and artificial photosynthesis.
- Thermal Pollution: Degradation of water quality by any process that changes ambient water temperature.
- Transparency: In the context of sustainability, it often refers to the openness, accountability, and honesty in communication provided by institutions to their stakeholders.
- Triple Bottom Line: An accounting framework with three parts: social, environmental (or ecological) and financial. These three divisions are also called the three Ps: people, planet, and profit, or the “three pillars of sustainability”.
- Transport: The movement of humans, animals and goods from one location to another. In other words, the action of transport is defined as a particular movement of an organism or thing from a point A to a Point B.
- Tolerable: In the context of sustainability, it often refers to the capacity of ecosystems to absorb the impacts of human activities.
- United Nations (UN): An international organization formed in 1945 to increase political and economic cooperation among its member countries.
- Underpinning: In the context of sustainability, it often refers to the solid foundation laid below ground level to support or strengthen a building.
- United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP): A program of the United Nations that coordinates the organization’s environmental activities and assists developing countries in implementing environmentally sound policies and practices.
- Upcycling: The process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products perceived to be of greater quality, such as artistic value or environmental value.
- Urban Heat Island: An urban area or metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities.
- Veganism: The practice of abstaining from the use of animal products, particularly in diet, as well as following an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals.
- Vegetarianism: The practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, and the flesh of any other animal), and may also include abstention from by-products of animal slaughter.
- Virus-washing: A term used to describe companies that take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to appear more sustainable or socially responsible than they actually are.
- Waste Management: The activities and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal.
- Water Footprint: The total volume of fresh water used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business.
- Wind Energy: The use of air flow through wind turbines to provide the mechanical power to turn electric generators and traditionally to do other work, like milling or pumping.