What is a ‘Sustainable Business’?

I’m really starting to get tired of the term ‘Sustainability’. It’s like when you used to study for exams and you’d stare at a word for so long, that it no longer looked like a word. What does it actually mean? How do we achieve it? Is it even possible in today’s world to achieve true sustainability?

Okay, so let’s start with the definition. The closest we’ve come to an agreed upon definition was for the term ‘Sustainable Development’, which was coined as part of the Brundtland Report back in 1987. It was written by Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland as Chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development (United Nations) and it looks like this….

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

When you begin to look at that definition through a business lens, you can see that the general idea is to build a profitable business that preserves the environment for future generations, as opposed to draining it of resources.

The ‘Triple Bottom Line’ is a term used to describe the three categories to account for in any sustainably run business. These include Environmental, Social & Economic.

Environmental

• Supply chain footprint.