On October 7th, I issued a challenge: coin the one rule of sustainability, i.e. express in five words of less the irreducible essence of sustainability as a simple principle. My plan was to collect a dozen or so responses and create a poll. I tweeted the challenge a couple of times and posted it in 12 LinkedIn Groups related to sustainability.
What happened next exceeded my expectations. The challenge really took off: thanks to the LinkedIn postings, the original post garnered 19 23 unique comments , and the LinkedIn discussions generated 70 172 unique comments there, from the U.S. and other countries (see the links below; some of the comments discuss other comments).
Which means I won’t be creating a poll, after all. All the entries were unique and valuable, and most expressed sustainability in their own way. A few themes did emerge:
- time, e.g. “Sustainability = longevity”
- input-output, e.g. ““Give back what you take.â€
- triple bottom line, e.g. “Good for profits, people, planet.”
- waste, e.g. “Waste less”
- limits, e.g. “Live within the Planet’s limits”
- impact, e.g. “Do no harm”
Judging by the range of responses, my rule of sustainability would have to be, “Foster diversity” – in inputs and outputs, in the triple bottom line, and in ways to reduce waste, minimize impact and live within our natural limits.
In a true postmodern fashion, there is no single truth, no single definition, no single rule. What do you think? What would you do with all the responses?
Read the blog post comments.
Read the comments on the LinkedIn Groups:
- 3BL Media – CSR, Sustainability & Cause Marketing Communications
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Green
- Green Advertising & Marketing
- GreenBiz.com – Green Business Professionals
- The-Green-Group.com
- Green Marketing
- Sustainability
- Sustainability Practitioners
- Sustainability Professionals
- Sustainability Working Group
- Sustainable Brands
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Update 10/21/09: Tim Davies has created a Wordle of all the submissions on the LinkedIn Sustainability Professionals Group.
Wordle of all the submissions:
Update 12/16/09: The one rule of sustainability page has all the contributions and Wordles related to the challenge.
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“Foster diversity” = Huh?
Without the follow-up these two words are meaningless; or, at best, must have a social relationship context. There is no [sustainable] goal.
@Bruce: I agree that concepts like diversity should be clarified because everyone has their own interpretation. The post does follow up with areas where I recommend diversity should be fostered: see after the dash.