Recession = sustainable development Boom?

Due to the current economic recession, thousands have lost there jobs and many businesses have gone bust. Therefore people spend less, travel less, consume less and the production of goods has decreased with factory's closing etc. This blog is asking the question whether the global recession could have an positive impact on sustainable development.

People are spending less money, people cannot afford to buy unnecessary goods or waste 5p on a plastic carrier bag. This is a good example of how it will help people become more sustainable, its 5p per plastic bag so most people will therefore save their bags and reuse them, recycling the bags. The fact that the world is spending less on goods means that the production of many goods has fallen, and the prices are dropping to get them of the shelves. Some company's fore example Honda have closed some factory's because they are losing money on producing cars when they cant sell them. This could be a great time to redesign these factory's making them more energy efficient and increase the amount of waste that is recycled. This would in the long run be very beneficial to company's, using Honda as an example. They would save money and become more sustainable.

During this global recession people are expected to travel less as it is quite expensive. This in the short term would be beneficial due to the amount of fuel planes and cars use, and how it is an limited resource. Making it more sustainable, but this will last for the recession but when the recession is over there might be a massive increase in the amount of traveling people make, or at least it will just return to normal. There is also the question that because of the recession airlines have to decrease there prices, so there might not be so much of a difference to the amount of people traveling. Car wise the recession might have a positive impact in the fact that it could encourage people to use public transport to work or around. Petrol is already an expensive resource and this is just another way of how people could save money.

I believe that a recession does have a positive impact on sustainable development, but it still requires people to make the effort to recycle and become more energy efficient. The recession is a good way of making people realise that being sustainable can save you allot of money. The only question i ask is that in this recession can people and businesses afford to spend money on insulation, solar panels etc. To become sustainable in big impact ways its expensive, which in a recession i think is the last thing on peoples minds.