Corporate social responsibility to reduce urban emissions

I was sitting in an urban comfort university complex in Montreal, Canada, while drinking coffee from a recycled cup  wrapped by recycled sleeve (Figure 1). I thought, if most of the materials that we use are recycled, there will be more reductions in carbon emissions. This would reduce the impacts of the extremes of climate change such as heatwaves, floods and other air and water related storms. So, I appreciated the business model, which gives attention to recycling.  More than 50% emissions reductions are expected by mid- 21st century. Therefore, there should be continuous recycling as can be seen from Figure 1 where the sleeve is made from 100% recycled material and then near the bottom it redirects the consumer to put it in a recycling trash box so that it will be reused. This continuous reusing reduces the new materials  (e.g., forest products, chemicals, etc) required to make the sleeves and the coffee cups and the environmental benefit cannot be underestimated. In a modern urban consumerism, where the natural weather and climate properties are modified to suit human comfort, such business models should be encouraged. This is how environmental and economic sustainability can be achieved.

Urban environments are the most modified because more people live in urban than rural and projections estimate that in the mid- 21st century, more than 2/3 of the world population will live in urban. The amount of pressure from high population under climate change on urban air, water and energy is expected to be higher.  After the industrial revolution, the urban weather/climate and air quality has been modified at an unprecedented level. For example, heating and air conditions require higher energy consumption. The energies were generated from coal or natural gas which has seriously polluted  urban air. The heat generated from such heating and air conditioning systems, in turn, created a hotter urban micro-climate known as the urban heat island.  One can also imagine, the pressure on water from such higher urban populations. Therefore, the modern urban consumerism can seriously alter the natural environment and may lead to dangerous situations (e.g., Figure 2).
The undesired urban pollution (Figure 1) can be alleviated by taking actions such as recycling the materials, reducing the amount of energy consumption, diverting to renewable energy resources, and so forth.

                                                           

Figure 1. Recycling can reduce the amount of carbon released in to the atmosphere.  

Figure 2. Reducing air pollution requires careful planning and execution before it is too late.

In the old days, urban density is assumed to be directly proportional to carbon emission. Because it was assumed that more people consume more energy, which results in more emissions - energy and emission are highly related. After the invention of renewable energy resources, this never holds true. Some larger cities emit the same or even less than the smaller ones.  Some cities took relatively better initiatives that could reduce urban emissions. So, relating population with emission is an old school economy, i.e., economy is not related to rate of emission. If cities take actions that minimize carbon emissions by adopting newer technological innovations that increases efficiency, which leads to alternative renewable energy consumption, then higher economic growth with lower emissions is possible. But for the cities that remain to use fossil fuels, economic growth is not possible without higher emissions. Therefore, emission is highly dependent on the economic, environmental and energy policy a country follows.