Most recently in class we talked about social entrepreneurship and sustainability. And it just happened that while browsing through Ted Talk Youth videos, I came across a video of a student from my old high school, Jacqueline Shen, who shares her passion and perception on sustainability. Jacqueline talks about how in the fast pacing world today, we conveniently judge whether an object is useful or not and if it’s not we discard it as trash. Her theory on why we “throw away” things is all based on our mentality. We throw away things because they become imperfect items that no longer solve any of our problems. However, Jacqueline believes that there is always a solution to every problem out there. Jacqueline puts emphasis on the idea of redefining our trash; giving these trashes another purpose. As goes the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” Jacqueline proposes that “we make our trash our treasure.” Tying in Jacqueline’s sustainability idea and the class on CSR and sustainability, I observed a connection between them. If businesses can reexamine their value proposition and redefine their products in a more ecofriendly term, maybe there is some hope in reducing the speed our waste is accumulating around the world.

Watch the Jacqueline’s sustainability video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ3XMLSCxjw