Jeremy Caradonna wrote a history of sustainability in his book, Sustainability. (I read the revised edition from 2022). This work draws linkages from early ideas of sustainability and looks at where we are now. Things have moved forward, and back, on the sustainability front. There is some interesting history. As someone who lives in Georgia,…
Category: Sustainability
Eliminating The Concept Of Waste
In their book Cradle to Cradle, sustainability writers William (Bill) McDonough and Michael Braungart argued that we should be thinking not in terms of Cradle to Grave — birth to death — for products. Instead, we should be thinking of reuse. Their second book along those lines, Upcycle, goes further. Their basic argument is that…
The Path To 2050
How can the world get to carbon neutral by 2050? This is the date the Paris Agreement specified for getting away from the activities that produce greenhouse gasses (see here). Many would argue that that the Paris agreement was not ambitious enough. Still, we don’t currently have a clear plan to reach carbon neutral by…
Triple Bottom Line
John Elkington gave us the idea of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) in 1994. In 2018 he proposed that the idea be recalled for a retooling. Things hadn’t worked out as he hoped. The Triple Bottom Line The idea behind the Triple Bottom Line is simple. Rather than fixating on financial performance alone, the bottom…
Competitive Advantage And Social Purpose
How should firms approach competing using their commitment to social and environmental purpose? This was the challenge tackled by Omar Rodríguez-Vilá and Sundar Bharadwaj in their 2017 article published in the Harvard Business Review. (Sundar is a colleague of mine at the University of Georgia). The approach they outline seeks to show a clear way…
What Has Been Studied In Academic Sustainable Marketing Research?
It is (almost) always interesting to go back and discover what has been studied in the past. Academic journals in the marketing field have been with us for many generations so we have a large sample to look at. Brian Chabowski and colleagues in 2011 reviewed what had been studied in academic sustainable marketing research….
The Environmental Impacts Of Foods
There are many things that can impact a person’s, and a community’s, impact upon the environment. Some things we might be able to stop doing. That is not the case with eating food. We have a large number of people on the planet and we all have to eat. As such, an important question is…
Working In the Doughnut
Kate Raworth has a popular book on sustainability and economics. In it, she argues that economics needs an overhaul. It is an admirably ambitious book with some flaws but with excellent parts to more than makeup for them. What does Raworth say about working in the doughnut? How To Understand Working In the Doughnut Raworth…
Finance For The Long-Term
Stephen Davis, Jon Lukomnik and David Pitt-Watson have a book that focuses on problems in finance. This includes the critical question, why does your pension fund charge such high fees? The authors have advice how we could recreate finance for the long-term. We need a financial system that has at its center a purpose that…
Branding For A Purpose
David Aaker’s The Future Of Purpose-Driven Branding is written by a true legend in the field of branding. What is more, his message is a good one. Branding for a purpose is on the up. It has a great future. The Two Jobs Of Purpose-Driven Branding Purpose-driven branding has a great future because branding expertise…
