Sustainability Cheat Sheet
Business in Vancouver May 18-24, issue 1073 – Sustainability Column
I recently helped a friend prepare for a course in carbon accounting (see below) and realized how fast the lexicon of sustainability is evolving. Considering that just about every facet of business needs some adjustment if we’re to figure out how to live within our planetary means and still eke out a living, it’s no wonder. Still, it can be a challenge to keep up with. So here’s a cheat sheet of a few quickly-becoming-mainstream terms and concepts – if you haven’t heard of them yet, you likely will soon. And if I’ve missed one you think should be included, email me and I’ll get it in a future column.
Cradle to cradle (C2C)
A design principle aligned with nature in that nothing is waste – every end product should be capable of being used as an input to another process. Materials used in manufacture are either “technical nutrients” – non-harmful synthetics that can be used over and over without losing value, or “biological nutrients” – able to be returned to the soil for use by healthy micro-critters. (There’s no “grave” in this thinking – just an elegant ongoing loop of materials.) Read the book by this name by McDonough and Braungart for more.
Product take-back
Producers take responsibility for their products by accepting them back at end-of-life (by regulatory requirement in some cases). This encourages design that allows easy disassembly and recycling of components (including packaging), and discourages hard-to-dispose of toxics.
Design for the Environment (DfE)
An umbrella term that encompasses a variety of design approaches aimed at considering the environmental impact of goods or services over their entire life cycle, including extraction, production, transport and disposal. The US EPA has a DfE standard that helps minimize waste and pollution and allows a DfE label on qualified goods. See their webpage (easy to Google) for more.
Smart Growth
Basically an anti-sprawl urban planning concept, aimed at concentrating growth in cities, retaining green space, providing high quality transit and walkable communities. Lots of case studies and examples at smartgrowth.org.
Five R’s
Most of us grew up with just three “R’s” – reduce, reuse, recycle. Now there are two more lower down in the hierarchy – “recovery,” which usually means some sort of energy from waste system, and “residuals,” which is what’s left for the landfill after every other attempt is made to deal with our waste stream. (“Zero waste” means getting that last R down to nothing.) Despite increasingly sexy and attention-getting technologies for recycling and recovery, the real answer in garbage still lies in the first two R’s – reduce and reuse.
Life cycle analysis
Used two ways – as a design question and a purchasing framework. For design, see DfE and C2C. In purchasing, this invites a robust consideration of all the impacts a product has while in your hands, such as energy use and end-of-life disposal. If a new piece of equipment comes with a low sticker price, check that it’s not an energy hog or a toxic waste problem – and factor those costs into the equation. The higher-priced purchase may be less costly in the long run.
Eco-efficiency
Coined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, this basically means producing more with less – more durable goods produced more efficiently with fewer resources. Within companies or economies, it can provide competitive advantage. As one sustainability speaker I heard said, “It’s never been a bad thing to reduce waste in a business.”
Carbon accounting
Basically, a method for measuring carbon dioxide equivalents emitted by a process or within an enterprise (also known as your “carbon footprint”). As cap-and-trade systems emerge and markets start to handle carbon trading, accounting for carbon will become necessary. Standards have evolved quickly – if you want to calculate your carbon footprint, use an on-line calculator for a rough estimate, or get someone immersed in this stuff to give you some guidance.
Carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e)
There are a variety of gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect, the increasing layer of insulating gases that are causing global warming by trapping heat at the earth’s surface. Some, such as methane, have a much higher heat-trapping effect than others (such as carbon dioxide). A “carbon dioxide equivalent” is a unit of measure that allows all gases to be compared on a standardized basis commensurate with their relative damaging impact. You can read the math and jargon at Wikipedia.
Sustainability innovation
Not so much a new term as an emerging discussion. Two authors at Harvard Business Review argue that sustainability is the key driver of innovation today (search hbr.org for those terms and you’ll find it). If crisis tends to beget either failure or innovation, it stands to reason that the hard-edged realities of our limited planetary resources and growing global population are positioning us for some major creative outbursts (and unfortunately, some failures). Getting your business in the game is the only way to see the opportunities, and, some would argue, to survive the shift. The good news: the Harvard folks say it is “simply not true” that sustainability represents a net cost – their study of 30 companies yields bottom and top-line returns.
Nina Winham (nina@newclimate.ca) is principal of New Climate Strategies, helping clients build value through sustainability and communications strategy.
