Socio-Economic Aspects of Sustainable Development on Global and Local Level

The article presents selected issues of the problems connected with the sustainable development within the global and local perspective. It summarizes the economic aspects of the broadly understood growth process and the socio-economic development. It discusses the possibility of reaching the harmony between the economical activity of the man, the consumption and the ability of the natural environment to exist and restore itself. One of the ways to reach the balance between the production, consumption and the natural environment is recycling, treated as an essential element of the mutual dependencies of dynamic relation between theses spheres, and thus at the same time an important condition of the human society existence, both in the global and the local dimension. The article emphasizes the need to understand recycling not only in the technical-organizing aspects, but also in the broader perspective – linking the economical and social aspects. Acquiring the secondary resources in the recycling process lowers the negative loads of the natural environment, being one of the important aspects of the sustainable development, based on the constant balance between the three capitals: economical, human, and environmental. The summary of the selected issues connected with the socio-economic aspects of the sustainable development shows that the broadly understood ecological problems should be discussed within a profounder human, social and philosophical perspective, and thus it should cover the spheres of: values, attitudes, behaviors, as well the ecological consciousness