Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
2. Planet (environmental well-being): Efficient use of energy and material
in the production of goods and services. Replenishing resources used,
end-of-life waste treatment, designing for reuse, and sustaining
biodiversity. Minimizing pollution and toxicity associated with the
products and process
3. Profit (fiscal well-being): Long-term profitability, competitive
advantage, efficient processes, creativity and innovation, global
expansion of business, multinational collaborations, and attracting
capital investments
The “triple bottom line” requires the performance of a business be assessed
on all three sets of objective and not in terms of profit alone. Though
attractive in principle, there is no accepted methodology as yet that allows
this metric to be widely used in practice. Present accounting practices are
adequate only for calculating economic indicators of a business. A main
difficulty is that the yield in each bottom line is expressed in a different
currency. Monetizing all impacts is an attempt in finding a common metric,
but not a satisfactory one because of the many intangible impacts involved.
Though attempts at developing sustainability indices (Cabezas-Basurko,
2010; Missimer et al., 2010) are emerging, these are not as yet developed
enough to be used in corporate planning.
2.2 MICROECONOMICS OF SUSTAINABILITY: THE
BUSINESS ENTERPRISE
Businesses do not exist to ensure environmental well-being; they exist to
create financial capital for their owners. In the process, they may perhaps
enrich the community through job creation or human development and in
some instances, incidentally, have a positive impact on the environment.
However, the consumers are no longer passive receivers of goods and
services. Increasingly, they engage with the business to actively demand
and shape the products they consume. Ideally, guiding a business toward
sustainability is therefore best achieved via market forces, which in turn can
only be realized with a change in consumer thinking. Product design and
operational aspects of a business, presently focused exclusively on profit,
just one of the Ps in the pyramidal model, will no longer be sustainable.
This present corporate practice is illustrated in the qualitative emphasis
map in
Figure 2.3
(
left
) where the focus is almost exclusively on profit.
