How do we measure sustainability before the term came along? Could sustainability mean anything in 1936?
I believe youth hostels encompassed ideas of sustainability in 1936 but, as the word hadn’t achieved its modern sense that may be tricky.
Understanding ways in which youth hostels were able to bring about change in tourism, to introduce a form of sustainable tourism ahead of their time, depends on understanding the term and how it applies to youth hostels in 1936.
My old Concise Oxford English Dictionary gives two meanings for sustainable: “able to be sustained”, and “conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources”.
The second one is the one I want. It’s the one I’ll use.
Roots
Sustainability as a concept has its roots among forestry experts in the 17th and 18th centuries, and with early political economists such as Smith, Mill, Ricardo, and Malthus. But the modern concept does not emerge until late in the 20th century.
In 1972 The Club of Rome’s ‘Limits to Growth’ argued for a “world system … that is sustainable” and in the same year the editors of The Ecologist presented proposals for the creation of a ‘sustainable society’. [1]
The one from the Ecologist is the one I remember from a little book published by them in 1972. I had a copy and I still remember being blown away but what they were writing about. But that’s another story.
Green keys
Our thinking about the term has brought about many ways of measuring sustainability today that were not available in 1936.
Any organisation wishing to demonstrate its sustainable credentials today can apply for certification. There’s about 200 awards, certifications and stamps of approval around the world to signal organisations that are sustainable.
Awards and stamps of approval include Booking.com, the EU Ecolabel scheme, Green tourism and Green Key.
The international non-profit organisation the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) runs the Green Key system. It offers criteria for hotels and hostels recognised by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC). The award had over 3200 awarded establishments in more than 65 countries in 2023.
Plans and policies
A scan through the documentation for just one, the Green Key, shows that youth hostels in 1936 would have struggled to meet modern criteria, like having a sustainability policy. They had no such policy, no sustainability objectives and no annual plan for continuous improvement., some of the criteria Green Key expects today.
Youth hostels didn’t measure their carbon footprint. They rarely had flush toilets, let alone the recommended dual flush toilets. They often had no showers and certainly none where the water flow could exceed 9 litres per minute. Chemical cleaning, dishwashers, and paper towels were unheard of in 1930s.
The Green Key criteria look good to me, the kind of thing I’d expect of tourist accommodation today, the kind of thing we were aiming for in running youth hostels 15 years ago. But not youth hostels in 1936.
Goals
Modern criteria cannot be applied to youth hostels in the 1936.
If we’re to understand ways in which youth hostels were sustainable, we’ll need some other way to examine their activity.
Fortunately the United Nations has an international system which can help. The UN adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, in 2015.
The goals are less specific than measures like the Green Key. But the very lack of specifics will be a real benefit in measuring the activities of an organisation in the past.
The goals will shed a light on the ways youth hostels balanced social, economic and environmental sustainability, if I can show that youth hostels were working towards the 17 UN goals of
no poverty;
good health and well-being;
quality education;
gender equality;
clean water and sanitation;
affordable and clean energy;
decent work and economic growth;
industry, innovation and infrastructure;
reduced inequalities;
sustainable cities and communities;
responsible consumption and production;
climate action;
life below water;
life on land;
peace and justice; and
partnerships for the goals.
These goals will make the job of measuring sustainability in 1936 a little less tricky and give us a guide for examining these ideas, now and then. With them we’ll have a way of understanding how youth hostels were sustainable in 1936 long before the term was invented.
Notes
[1] Purvis, B., Mao, Y. & Robinson, D. Three pillars of sustainability: in search of conceptual origins. Sustain Sci 14, 681–695 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0627-5.
Image courtesy of YHA Archive at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.