"To hell with good intentions" was an address given in 1968 by the Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich. In it he chastises a well-meaning group of American students in their overseas volunteering initiatives. Blinded by their privilege and unconscious actors in a greater economic play, he argues their earnest activities are hypocritical and offensive.
The parallels of this argument with horticulture in 2023 are strangely apt. There is an acknowledged dirty laundry problem within the industry and some efforts to redress embedded issues such as:
plastic waste
peat in compost
poor pay across the industry
lack of socio-economic diversity / over-representation by white middle classes (yes that's me)
Alongside these problems the word 'sustainability' has steadily crept up the agenda. A quick reveal on Google Trends shows its rise over the past five years, apparently up 25% in search term popularity. We can now find myriad ways to up the sustainability value of our gardens, garden designs, plant choices and landscaping materials. And just like any buzzword it quickly becomes misappropriated which is not helped by its vagueness. My sustainable looks very different to an Inuit who has grown up being self-sufficient. I think we intuitively understand what genuine sustainability looks like and unfortunately there remain many areas of the gardening world that lag far behind. It is laughable to see organisations like the RHS glibly use the word at its flower shows while back stage skip after skip is being sent to landfill from the show gardens.
And so to the crux: the accepted definition brings together environmental, social and economic goals within the broad aim of not upsetting the apple cart (global economy) too much so the next generation can enjoy an equal/better standard of living. Given the clear failure of the current system to deliver this it is fantastical to expect a different outcome using the same tools. To paraphrase Einstein, we need a different model of thinking about these problems which is untethered from the economic paradigm. To hell with sustainability! We can and must do better.
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