So far I have learned that living a sustainable lifestyle is harder than it looks. With me I catch myself one a daily basis doing things that aren’t sustainable. For instance, with a meal plan here at OSU it’s very easy to just buy plastic water bottles then just throw them away whenever you’re done instead of reusing them or simply just carrying around an actual water bottle. I hope to take a stand on this idea and make sure to instead of buying a water bottle, just bring one with me that I can have all day or if I end up buying a plastic water bottle, reuse it for as long as I can before throwing it away. Not only will I be taking this initiative I hope to influence others around me on doing the same. Every little thing helps for a brighter tomorrow. However, going off of that, sustainability is a hard task to do, there are many problems that arent substainable but there’s no valid solution. During one of the assignments, we had to write about a wicked problem, the wicked problem I’ve decided to write about was the fast fashion that is happening within the fashion industry. With the fast fashion of too much waste being produced it is harming the world we live in. I connected this very well with the idea of the current state that the world is in. We’re heading towards a more sustainable planet with hope of slowing down the rate at which the clothes that are being produced which would leads to less waste being gathered from that. There is hope that many will start to thrift their clothing instead of spending money on cheaply made clothing as well as sell their clothing to thrift stores or donating them rather than throwing them away. With that it takes more than 80 years for clothing to be broken down in landfills, we hope we can lead a more sustainable, greener world. We got there by reusing clothing, using greener products while producing the clothes and slowing down the need for fast fashion. 

Continuing on with that, while reading the wicked problems website, I learned more on the true meaning of wicked problems and the social entrepreneurial side of how companies aren’t trying to fix a wicked problem, but help taking a negative consequence and stirring it in a more positive direction. For instance, there is one company in mind that I feel that does this, Glossier. This cosmetic company creates all natural, cruelty free products with a range of 19 vegan free products. Their packaging is minimalistic with the idea of when finished with the product, throwing it away it won’t harm the earth as bad. They even give out reusable makeup bags when given the product in the mail that are recyclable. I truly love how this company thought not just about what’s inside of the products but also through how people were getting the products. 

However, tying it back to the marketing reading. There’s one quote that stands out to me it states that, “Actions will have costs, and these must be compared with the costs of not acting”. I really liked this quote because it speaks volume to the idea that every action, dealing with more extreme wicked problems, will be more costly, but not doing anything at all will have a greater cost to the planet. We need to push forward and think of the future that our planet is in. For instance, with the fast fashion, there is so much waste being produced that could harm our planet, but not taking action and slowing down the development of these garments it will lead to a much greater cost of not acting on it when we were given the chance. The way the world is in 10 years from now starts with a simple act today that leads to a greater change in the future.