The Complicity of Corporate Sustainability

We believed that the salvation of the world, the cure for climate change, and the end of pollution and waste, all of it, would be driven through business profits and strategic motivation. Doing good by the environment—cutting energy use with better light bulbs and boilers, reducing inefficiency through design and engineering, and adding renewable energy supply—was not only environmentally responsible, it was good for the bottom line. Win-win: green both ways.

Corporate sustainability does have value: good design can, at no cost, accomplish great things. Take your cup of Starbucks: If you add cream second, you need a stir stick—a piece of wood harvested from forests, manufactured and transported, packaged and distributed. But if you add cream before you pour in the coffee (a design solution) you suddenly don’t need a stir stick at all. You’ve replaced a material thing with intelligence; you’ve eliminated waste through thought. What an unbelievably compelling way to view our problems!