Objective 12: Responsible production and consumption

Sustainable production and consumption consist in fomenting efficient use of resources and energy, building infrastructures which do not damage the environment and improving access to basic services and creating ecological, fairly-paid employment in good working conditions. The aim is to make more and better things with fewer resources, which essentially means detaching economic growth from the use of natural resources. The concept we need to assimilate and put into practice is the circular economy.

The photos shown ere illustrate two models of production: above, industrial farming, with a high yield but intensive in terms of use of machinery and chemicals, polluting, generating little employment and carried out over large areas devoted to monocultures (often for feeding livestock); below, a family plot, over a small area, without machinery and chemicals, non-polluting, generating more part-time employment, and providing for local seasonal trade.

Air, land and water pollution, and exposure to toxic chemicals are precisely the problems arising from production processes and some of the goals of SDO 12 (Guaranteeing sustainable modalities of consumption and production) for 20230 are to achieve sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources, reducing food waste, from harvesting or fishing to the final consumption, considerably reducing waste generation by means of prevention, reduction, recycling and reusing, or the rationalisation of inefficient subsidies to fossil fuels which increase consumption.