Environmental Sustainability: Concepts, Practices, and UNEP's Role

This report provides a comprehensive overview of environmental sustainability, starting with its fundamental concepts and the importance of balancing resource consumption with environmental preservation. It highlights the role of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in promoting environmental sustainability, particularly in African countries, by addressing issues such as water security, sanitation, and infrastructure development. The report details UNEP's strategies, including hygiene education, technological improvements, and emergency interventions, to enhance environmental sustainability. Furthermore, it explores the impact of environmental sustainability on general purchasing practices, emphasizing the relationship between sustainability and business operations. It also discusses the benefits of sustainable business practices and outlines various environmental purchasing practices. The report concludes by emphasizing the significance of implementing these practices for environmental protection and sustainable development. The report includes discussion of the roles of various stakeholders including suppliers, buyers, and consumers in ensuring environmental sustainability.

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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction...................................................................................................................................3
2.0 Concept of environmental sustainability.....................................................................................4
3.0 How environmental sustainability can be achieved (case of UNEP)..........................................7
3.1 UNEP responds to enhance environmental sustainability......................................................9
3.11UNEP help the African countries by educating on Hygiene and assisting on technology
improvement......................................................................................................................................9
3.12 Building water security for household and the community................................................10
3.13 Giving emergency intervention.............................................................................................10
3.14 Building robust infrastructure, encourage sustainable and inclusive industrialization and
innovations.....................................................................................................................................10
3.15 Ensuring accessibility to reliable, sustainable and affordable modern energy sources....11
3.16 Need for a robust collaboration among sectors...................................................................11
3.17 Development of policy operations.........................................................................................11
3.18 Hosting recycling drive..........................................................................................................12
3.19 Minimize or inhibiting usage of disposable plastics............................................................12
4.0 IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY ON GENERAL PURCHASING
PRACTICES......................................................................................................................................13
4.1 Meaning of general purchasing practices..............................................................................13
4.2 Relationship between environmental sustainability and purchasing practices...................13
4.3 Purchasing practices supported by UNEP.............................................................................14
4.4 Reasons for sustainable business practices............................................................................16
Social reasons.................................................................................................................................16
5.0 Environmental purchasing practices..........................................................................................18
Implementation of purchasing practices that promote environmental sustainability..................19
6.0 Conclusion....................................................................................................................................20
References..........................................................................................................................................21

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1.0 Introduction
The main purpose of writing this paper is to give the concept of environmental sustainability
and how it can be achieved. Since the issue of environment is the crucial element that
determine our future resources it is important to define environmental sustainability in a way
that is understandable, helpful and logic to facilitate understanding, effective communication
and actual operation by all the key players including the government, communicators,
innovators business and many more (Tilman & Clark, 2014).
The paper will also give analysis of the general purchasing practices and how it relates to
environmental sustainability.

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2.0 Concept of environmental sustainability
To define the term environmental sustainability I must first of all define the term
sustainability. Sustainability can be define as the ability to endure a define behaviour for the
foreseeable future (Costanza et.2015). Environmental sustainability is the process of
production with the environmental condition in mind by ensuring that the activities involved
in production by the present generation does not affect the environment hence affecting the
production for the future generation. The activities involved by businesses should have less
impact to the environment as the adverse impacts such as global warming has a long impact
affecting even the future generation hence the need for environmental sustainability. This is
one of the key areas that enhances the well-being of mankind on planet earth. Sustainability
should exist in the environment for the achievement of various objectives in the society.
Environmental sustainability is defined as the ability to make the efficient use of the available
resources within the environmental setting in a balanced manner in such a way that the rate of
resources consumption does not exceed the available resources. Environmental sustainability
can only be achieved when the amount of solid wastes cannot exceed what the environmental
is capable of holding.
The research done has indicated that most of the pollution in the environment is caused by
industries and various businesses established in various localities. Industries result to both
solid and air pollution to the environment. The wastes from the industries may lead to water
pollution from the chemical discharged to the water bodies from the industries. Businesses
are also causing a lot of pollutions experienced in major towns in various countries which has
raised an alarm for environmental agencies such as UNEP to come up with various policies to
enhance the achievement of sustainable business environment to facilitate a conducive
environment for the members in the society.

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Environmental sustainability can be achieved when various parties in the field of
production play various roles. The parties involved include the suppliers, buyers and the
producers or the manufacturers. The suppliers ensure that they adhere to environmental
sustainability practices in the supply of goods and services. Some of the suppliers of products
such as oil suppliers use pipelines to transport the products to the consumers. This is
important because it reduces the impact that would have been caused by the tankers where
they emit carbon monoxide to the environment resulting to air pollution which is hazardous
to both plants and animals. Pipeline transport is also efficient as minimizes accidents caused
by tankers that result to oil spillage which may have an adverse effect to the environment.
The producers (the industries) engage in the production of bio-degradable products which
enhance the regulation of solid waste in the environment. Most of the industries are engaging
in reverse logistics where the suppliers return the packages which have been used for
recycling. This facilitate the reduction of solid waste in the environment.
The consumers for various products have their unique roles in ensuring environmental
sustainability through their consumption behaviour. The consumers have a role in ensuring
proper disposal of wastes to control the pollution to the environment. They consumers can
have collection points in their various estates where they dispose some of the waste materials
which are collected by the organizations agents for recycling which promotes environmental
sustainability.

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Herman Daly was among the earliest forerunners of ecological sustainability, Herman viewed
the problem from the perspective of natural capital maintenance, and he suggested that:
I. For any renewable resource, the rate at which the resource is harvested must not
surpass the regeneration rate.
II. For pollution, the rate of waste products generation from ventures must not exceed the
environment assimilative capacity.
III. For non-renewable resources, the exhaustion of non-renewable resources must have
comparable creation of renewable resource substitute.
The list above is broadly accepted and therefore environmental sustainability as seen
from the list can be define as ‘’ the rates of renewable resources harvest, pollution,
creation and non-renewable resource depletion that can be continued indefinitely and
if they cannot be continued indefinitely then they are not sustainable’’ (Riikkinen,
Kauppi, Salmi, 2017)

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3.0 How environmental sustainability can be achieved (case of UNEP)
In the year 2002 according to statistics a child passed away from diseases that come
from consumption of unclean water, poor hygiene and deplorable sanitation. As per
the statistics that was carried out in the same year, one out every six people globally
was not able to access clean water. This was a total of 1 billion people and nearly 300
million of these were young children. It was also found that most of the people did not
have latrines and many children live under congested dwellings of mud flooring.
In the sub-Sahara region more so in countries such as Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia,
80 percent of children consume surface water and others had to walk long distance in
order to find protected source of water (McKinnon et al. 2015).
Consumption of unclean water cause diseases such as diarrhoea and cholera. These
diseases kill around four million people each year and most of them are young
children. Most of the African countries suffer this kind of water related diseases. Poor
health conditions affect learning potential of children. For instance, 300 million
annually are infested by intestinal worms which affect their mental abilities (Singh,
2015).
Many young children especially girls are forced to go for long distances in search of
clean water, the children are affected so much with this at an extend that they are
barred from going to school. Unavailability of latrines affects children dignity
severely. For example, the children may have to wait till night hours to relieve
themselves. They do this in order to protect their modesty and safety. The children
household roles shows that the diseases can be spread easily to the other members of
the family if they lack safe water post-partum, sick and pregnant woman are
vulnerable too poor sanitation and they pass diseases to their children (Wong & Zhou,
2015).

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The issue is not that there is insufficient water. Lack of commitments by the
government and poor technology to that help ensure sanitation and safe water. Lack of
funds also attributes to these factors.

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3.1 UNEP responds to enhance environmental sustainability
3.11UNEP help the African countries by educating on Hygiene and assisting on technology
improvement
Policies and programmes that encourage sustainable development are very critical to
conserving water resources. With over 40 years in the field in more than 100 nations, UNEP
is a major UN agency in the countries. When local authorities are able to treat and dispose
water adequately, it causes minimal wastage of fresh water and better conservation. Utilizing
water resources cautiously prevents contamination and reduces the necessity of water
treatment (Acquaye, 2017).
In cooperation with partners for instance the EU Water Initiative, International Water
Association and the US Environmental Protection Agency, UNEP is working to obtain
government support for to achieve the goals, and help the countries to create sanitation and
water programs in low cost. It also enhances hygiene education in all the community levels.
One major component, for instance, teaching parents good hygiene which would then help
them to extend the same to their children.
Together with the WHO, UNEP has also tracks advancement on worldwide. Water and
sanitation achievement via Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP). JMP monitors changes in the
coverage and help many countries check on their own dimensions, develops questioners,
definitions and indicators, and enlighten policy makers via publications and websites (Shirazi
& Keivani, 2017).

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3.12 Building water security for household and the community
UNEP has assisted partners and government implement community based surveillance
system which screen on water quality and detect contaminants such as human faeces, nitrates
and fluoride. UNEP has also encouraged many suitable low cost sanitation and water. Many
communities are gifted with opportunities and tools which help them to choose and design
basic technologies which can be upgraded gradually, for instance a system to harvest rain
water (Song, et al. 2017).
UNEP has involved many locals in projects for instance women, the crucial shareholders in
the supply of domestic water sector and traditional leaders, sanitation and many other
community organizations.
3.13 Giving emergency intervention
UNEP is an international frontrunner in most of the emergency responses of man-made and
natural disaster, involving partners in sectors of hygiene, sanitation and supply of water.
UNEP also focus on providing seamless evolution from emergency reaction to sanitation
programme and sustainable water. In other words, UNEP may disseminate water, water
cleaning tablets and assist in constructing bit latrines.
3.14 Building robust infrastructure, encourage sustainable and inclusive
industrialization and innovations.
Through commitments, reliable digital infrastructure UNEP have exclusive opportunity to
involve many people in innovation developments. The innovative developments concentrate
on reducing wastage of resources instead of substituting the existing labour with technology.

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3.15 Ensuring accessibility to reliable, sustainable and affordable modern energy
sources
The appraisal of distributed technology in the sector of energy, maturity of fiscal tools and
great awareness among stakeholders give an opportunity to resolve global issues of accessing
energy. With the availability of technology, the serious factors which should be overcome are
the fiscal challenges- through the making bankable and scalable long term investment.
Enabling this will consent energy systems to attain affordability and sustainability
(Centobelli, Cerchione & Esposito, 2017).
3.16 Need for a robust collaboration among sectors
UNEP management has observed that there is need for collaboration among different sectors
in order to attain environmental sustainability, among the sectors are those that are
responsible for water health and sanitation programs, energy, rural and urban development in
different countries. The recent strategy on environment is an example of collaboration that is
crucial in achieving results that address basic environmental issues that are prevalent to most
of the developing countries. The strategy was created through the collaboration between
Human Development Network and Sustainable Development Network (Minten, Zeller,
2017).
3.17 Development of policy operations
The UNEP evaluations recognizes environmental related development policy operations to
support institutional reforms. It considers the policies separately since it views that the
environmental achievements of the policy may not relate directly to the disbursed amount in
basis of the investment operations. Developing environment help a country attain
sustainability.

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3.18 Hosting recycling drive
UNEP may organize rubbish collection campaigns to collect disposed, glasses, plastics, and
electronics. Old electronic material should be taken to recycling facilities to ensure that they
are handled properly and recycled safely.
According to the research that was done recently by UNEP, the US produces nearly 60
million tonnes of w-waste every year. Out of these only 25% is safely recycled. The
remaining 75% remain in landfills. Recycling of waste products helps to conserve the
environment and hence sustainability cab be achieved.
3.19 Minimize or inhibiting usage of disposable plastics
Research shows that every year over 50, 000 marine creatures and over 500’000 birds die
from choking plastic materials. UNEP has encourage on the use of reusable bottles, grocery
bags and travel bags
3.20 controlling deforestation
The major habitat where deforestation is being carried out is the tropical rainforest, which
are located around the Equator. UNEP have tried to manage the forest more so in the
developing countries, this is because most of the countries are cutting down tree at an
alarming late. The main reason why people cut down trees is to because of the demand of
wood, fuel and paper products.
Among the effects of deforestation is that it cause global warming and soil erosion.
UNEP have put down measures that discourage deforestation and encourage
afforestation.