VIEWS: Defining Sustainability
Friday, July 3, 2009;)
Dispatch from SSC Intern Stephanie Castellano
A recent article from greenbiz.com touches upon how a roundtable discussion of business professionals in Pennsylvania, concerning life cycle assessment standards, led to a bigger discussion on sustainability. One topic addressed during the conversation dealt with how sustainable companies are often faced with consumers that are confused about terms such as sustainability, green, natural, and organic. However, during the meeting, one roundtable member confessed that even he, as a sustainability professional, is confused about those terms.
This article got me thinking. We throw around these terms of sustainability, but yet how do we define these terms in order to make more sense of their broad definitions? What expectations do we have from consumers in recognizing what Green means, if we don't know ourselves? So I wanted to pose this broader question to all organizations going through a green transition:
As a company interested in “going green” and becoming a sustainable business, what environmental terms does your company define as part of your “greener”model? How do you define such words as green, natural, sustainable or organic?
Read more about the roundtable discussions here.
Reader Comments (1)
I certainly agree. Having an interest in the sustainability sector, even I find it difficult to understand half of the terminology that is constantly changing in the field. It seems like more environmentalists and other in the environmental field are more concerned with copyrighting their new terms and overusing them more than they are concerned in getting the general public interested. If they can't understand what you're talking about, it is highly unlikely they're going to be interested in joining up in your cause.