Sustainability vs Sustainable Business

Those who have been keeping up to date will have noticed I use two different terms when speaking about things that are sustainable: sustainability and sustainable business. They, as I learned when speaking with my professor Dr. Tueth about an upcoming lecture like volunteer speech I was to give at a local high school, are two completely different things. Until that point I had no idea.

First - sustainability!

I defined sustanibility my very first post, and I will re-post it here.

sus·tain·a·bil·i·ty

[suh-stey-nuh-bil-i-tee] -noun-

1. The ability to be sustained,  supported, upheld, or confirmed.

2. Environmental Science . the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance: The committee is developing sustainability standards for products that use energy.

 I then wrote this: Sustainability is simply the way of having an item, thing, process, whatever, being so awesome it keeps going on without the help of anything else. 

This is still true, but it is not 100% complete either. Now don't get upset. I didn't want to overwhelm you the very first day. Sustainability also includes this important fact - it (item, thing process...) does not harm others like it, where it lives, or negatively effects anywhere or anyone else in the world. There is also a continual loop cycle with nothing being waste. Everything is for a purpose to either help the current organism, its surroundings, or its future generations.

Now before you say, "Well, some animals hunt one another, and plants get eaten! And what about weird fish that sticks onto whales and other fish and suck the life out of them?" let me say this: harm is not done purposefully for the sake of being harmful. There are always reasons animal and plants do what they do as a general rule.

This is how humans become different. We do things that harm others for the sake of harm. We design products that have highly negative attributes when there could be another way, or a different product all together. For us to be sustainable there would have to be no negatives associated with any of our ways of living, products, or services.

That's pretty big to wrap your mind around, isn't it? I hope it makes you think, and as always, if you have any questions let me know!

Now for sustainable busienss, this is the easier one. It's what has been spoken about for the past few days. The three legged stool.  A sustainable business is a business model, not the whole world of sustainability. 

I know this has been mostly a repeat of what was said my first post, but it is worth repeating. The two terms are not the same and interchangeable. I learned it the hard way with my professor sternly correcting me in that 'you are being foolish, think!' voice. Trust me, you don't want to be subject to it.

Think of the two as a circle within a circle. There is the first larger circle of 'sustainability' with a smaller circle inside of it labeled 'sustainable business', as well as others like 'sust. living', 'sust. transportation', 'sust. building', etc.

Now you're thinking with circles!