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home. There is more of an apparent relationship between producing and
consuming. Environmentally, the ultimate source will not run out and does
not degrade, so the proposal meets standards for economic stability. Socially,
any community would take pride in the jobs provided by such a manufac-
turing plant, whether the product is installed locally or exported. Local
installation, to the degree that happens, would not only create jobs and a
sense of interdependency among local producers and consumers but also
self-sufficiency in meeting our own needs as a community or region.
Economically, photovoltaic electricity is presently more expensive than
that generated by coal, and a hard-headed capitalist would be quick to
point that out. This leads to a fundamentally important point. The pro-
cess of promoting socioeconomic sustainability must allow for the positive
benefits of the social and environmental spheres to comfortably offset the
economic drawbacks. The three must work as a system, which is exactly
how the triple bottom-line must work. We leave this example with a hypo-
thetical question: What would the decision-making process in your com-
munity have to look like if such a proposal were to be readily accepted as
the best alternative?
Locating a “Big Box” Department Store in a Community
Communities everywhere have gone through similar debates about the
pros and cons of locating a retail outlet of a major national or multina-
tional chain in their town (can we say “Walmart?”) Local issues concerning
land-use planning (traffic, etc.) always come up, and occasionally even the
broader economic implications of such planning. What can we learn from
the triple bottom-line concept about such a situation, and in turn, what does
such a situation teach us about the practical use of these tests for assessing
sustainability?
Such stores are clearly profitable and therefore almost automatically receive
the stamp of approval of mainstream economic thinking. The consumerist
paradigm views superabundant availability of all goods as a positive thing,
as well as the jobs in the retail outlet—despite their low pay and poor work-
ing conditions. Deeper reflection reveals some problems, however. First, the
typical range of products caters more to desires than to basic necessities.
Second, pride is taken by such companies in offering whatever is sold at the
lowest possible price, with little regard for quality. Third, these corporations
are noted for paying their workforce as little as possible so that prices can be
held to a minimum. People make sacrifices in their producer lives in order
to emphasize their consumer lives. This is not balanced, and it ignores eco-
nomic interdependency. Finally, production of the goods in question occurs
on a mass-industrial scale at some point—normally outsourced to a foreign
nation—far away from the point of actual final use.
Turning to the pillar of ecological integrity, the impacts of the production
methods are difficult to ascertain, although major multinational corporations
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