- Bridgetine Roundtable holds discussion on environmental sustainability
The St. Bridget’s Convent Past Pupils’ Association (PPA) hosted an online discussion on environmental sustainability on 23 August, looking at ways through which environmental issues can be mitigated through mindful personal action on the part of the general public and small businesses.
The Bridgetine Roundtable for Environmental Sustainability featured a panel of Bridgetine past pupils across various industries and disciplines, who came together to share their views and suggestions. The panel was moderated by MAS Holdings Deputy General Manager (DGM) of Strategic Sustainability Amanthi Perera and included Jetwing Travels Chairman and Managing Director (MD) Shiromal Cooray, Biodiversity Sri Lanka (BSL) Programme Manager and Wildlife and Nature Protection Society (WNPS) member Harshini de Silva Pandithasekera, UN Environment Programme and World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) member Amayaa Wijesinghe, and MAS Holdings Director of Environmental Sustainability Sharika Senanayake.
MAS Holdings DGM of Strategic Sustainability Perera, the moderator of the panel, opened the discussion, noting that against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, society as a whole has been given some much-needed time to reflect on how we choose to live our lives and the legacy we want to leave behind. “We all have a responsibility to leave a better planet behind than what we inherited.”
Jetwing Travels Chairman/MD Cooray commented on the tourism industry and its dependency on the natural environment and its resources, sharing that the most common adverse impacts tourism has is through the overconsumption of resources – both in natural senses through the over visiting of parks and the construction of unsustainable hotels and reclamation natural habitat for farming and hotels, as well as in the man-made sense through the use of plastics, other pollution, and waste.
There are also sensible ways to fix many of these issues, Cooray noted, adding that in the case of plastic water bottles, for instance, Jetwing Hotels now use glass and ask guests to refill these bottles as opposed to providing new plastic bottles every day. This move alone has made a great impact on reducing plastic consumption across Jetwing Hotels in addition to significant cost-savings.
Another adverse impact, as shared by Cooray, is the human-animal conflict, a very complex issue that requires a great deal of attention. In terms of tourism, Cooray explained that in the cases of some hotels like Jewting Yala, active efforts are made for co-existence. However, the issue becomes less easy when it comes to farming, with farmers often needing to use reclaimed land for their livelihoods and often coming into conflict with animals that traverse through the land. Cooray also noted that ecotourism, which rests on tourists buying local produce and interacting with loal communities, sometimes only serves to exacerbate the problem, as farmers and tourism business reclaim more land to meet increased demand, thus reducing natural habitats and increasing human-animal confilict further.
BSL Programme Manager and WNPS member de Silva Pandithasekera discussed how Sri Lanka can tackle climate change and global warming, explaining that one of the biggest problems Sri Lanka has is the open dumping and burning of garbage which contributes greatly to global warming. De Silva Panduthasekera stressed the importance of taking control as individuals, learning where our garbage goes, and taking steps to reduce, reuse, and recycle our waste on an individual basis.
She also addressed the issue of deforestation, sharing that deforestation isn’t simply the destruction of rainforests like Wilpattu, but also includes filling up marshlands and clearing mangroves, where both biological communities play important roles in our ecosystem. De Silva Pandithasekera encouraged the public to be aware of where they choose to build homes and other enterprises, and also to pay attention to legal provisions, particularly from an environmental standpoint, and to take the effort to find out why these provisions are in place and what situation they are trying to avoid.
Another simple step de Silva Pandithasekera discussed for minimising environmental impacts was the adoption of natural systems when dealing with pests as supposed to using pesticides.
Senanayake, the Director of Environmental Sustainability at MAS Holdings, stressed the importance of businesses getting involved in environmental sustainability, regardless of the size whether it’s a one-man home business or a medium-scale organisation. Senanayake also explained that there was a misconception between coproposrte social responsibility (making donations to charities, driving development programmes, etc.) and sustainability, leaving small businesses assume that sustainability is something only large companies can afford to practise. But this is not the case, it was noted.
“Sustainability is looking at how you make your product or service and seeing how you can differentiate it to build in sustainability from the point of manufacture,” Senanayake said, explaining that small companies can look at things like how they use water and how much energy they use, and also taking active steps to reduce this and looking at innovative ways of repurposing their own waste, using the example of MAS converting discarded PET bottles into yarn for high-performance sportswear that is now worn by the national cricket team.
Senanayake explained that it is the responsibility of businesses to look at their systems, processes, and products in order to understand what waster they’re generating and how much energy they’re using as well as to find ways to make even a small effort in mitigating the impact their footprint leaves behind.
UNEP-WCMC member Wijesinghe spoke about how youth have the power to make a difference even from the school level, explaining how her interest in the natural world let her to biosciences at the University of Colombo before going to study at the University of Oxford, joining multiple research teams around the world following her graduation. Wijesinghe explained that there were lots of scholarship opportunities afforded to those with the passion and perseverance to make a change.
Wijesinghe also shared that pursuing education in the fields of environmental sciences and biosciences is not essential to making a difference and did not need to become a career, explaining that many organisation committed to making a difference in the field have volunteering opportunities available for those who want to effect positive change.
In closing, the panel recommended mindful change on an individual level, from being mindful of personal waste and visiting less popular natural tourism sites to ease overcrowding to spying attention to what is happening around you and taking that personal step to make a change.