Sustainability in Practice

Sustainability is the ability to endure. A sustainable system operates without need to draw on another system. Examples include healthy wetlands and forests.

For human culture, sustainability means the potential for long-term support of people and their lifestyles. This has impact on environmental, economic, and social dimensions, which affect choices, behaviors, and costs.

Sustainable environments are built on healthy ecosystems. An ecosystem is a interconnection of producers and consumers of a material or resource. We learn about sustainability by studying earth systems and conservation biology. To create a sustainable world we must adjust human consumption of resources, by applying principles of economics.

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Comment by Grant Ricketts on March 5, 2012 at 3:06pm: Speaking of putting sustainability in practice, here's a link to getting hundreds, even thousands more people engaged in company sustainability initiatives. With the CSO role being highly matrixed as it is, a critical consideration is to be thinking about how to scale, and get more people engaged in helping do the work. www.SustainabilityInPractice.com

Comment by William Cassius on September 16, 2011 at 4:16am: I have often wondered if American dependence on water filtration systems has made natural sources of water more dangerous to our systems which may not be used to natural bacteria found in water that is more stagnant. Do our boadies have the potential to lose natural immunity when chemicals from filtration systems enter our bodies for long periods of time?

Comment by Ursula Syrova on September 1, 2011 at 1:23pm: One woman's real-life experience trying out some of the most talked about "sustainaibilty in practice" projects finds that greywater is a big win, ditto solar panels, gardening--not so much (from a purely practical/economical angle). Susan Carpenter reports on her findings in the LA Times.

Comment by Jeannice Fairrer Samani on July 29, 2011 at 3:03am: As I begin to research this topic, Boyd Cohen, Ph.D., CO2 IMPACT and Co-Author, Climate Capitalism on Triple Pundit website have posted the Global Ranking of 10 Top Resilient Cities. The transformation of Cities to become resilient, the focus is the Carbon Dioxide Emissions (CO2), which has had a negative impact on the climate changing. Governments around the world are reforming through policy and services to their residents and businesses. Cities account for more then 80% of Green House Gases (GHG). There is a chain reaction into "buckets effect" from GHG impact the warming of the earths body of water and causes an imbalance to the ecosystem. I recently attended a conference on Corporate Social Responsibility where Hunter Lovins the notable sustainability scholar spoke about climate capitalism which wrote about in her recent book with Cohen. Sustainable Silicon Valley-Sustainable 101 session III is on that very topic of regenerating capitalism and considering what needs to change to achieve sustainability. Are there common traits in these cities.

http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/06/top-10-globally-resilient-cities/

Comment by Jeannice Fairrer Samani on July 24, 2011 at 3:22pm: What are the characteristics that make a resilient community that evolves into a resilient city?

Comment by Roshini Varma on May 23, 2011 at 9:21pm: A very nice article for a basic understanding of Sustainability:

http://www.rodomotion.com/2010/08/20/52/

Comment by Jim Davis on November 9, 2010 at 3:57pm: To view a best practice on-line sustainability report, visit: www.sapsustainabilityreport.com