SOS: State of Sustainability
SOS: State of Sustainability
Jun 04I am in between a good run of strategic sustainability planning sessions for a few companies. They range from super small to super big. Planning for the sessions I decided to think about the SOS – State of Sustainability. So, I just made it up to a list of 38 trends that fall under the topic of Sustainability…..38….really? It was a bit stream of consciousness. I know this list isn’t parallel, and there are some things on this list that need to get fixed in the next few years or the others really won’t matter….So, this list is not IPO–that is In Priority Order (something my mentor taught me years ago. A good list should always be IPO. Feel free to send me your top 5. I promise I will make a frequency diagram. ) My SOS list:
- Widening gap between rich and poor
- Population growth
- Speed of communication and social media
- Hunger and malnutrition
- E-waste
- Child & forced labor (slavery)
- Urbanization
- Resource depletion
- Overfishing
- Fossil fuel depletion
- Climate change
- Deforestation
- Loss of biodiversity
- Plastics in the ocean
- Air pollution
- Light pollution
- Declining soil quality
- Green brands/green marketing
- Labeling
- Certifications
- Transparency
- Obesity
- Food availability
- War
- Socially responsible investing
- Corporate governance
- NGO/ENGO
- Persistent chemicals
- Extended Producer Responsibility (Take-Back)
- Recycling
- Overconsumption
- Water quality and availability
- Catastrophic weather trends
- GMO
- Corporate Personhood
- Re-shoring (on-shoring)
- Renewable Energy
- Biomimicry
Should I round it up to 40? I prefer prime numbers so if I have missed something, please by all means, let me know so we can get to 43.
I am trying to figure out why I am not depressed writing this list. There were no surprises. Maybe I am not depressed because I think because we are now becoming more and more aware of the current state of our world, and that is when we can truly imagine and work towards a future state of sustainability versus minimizing the unsustainability.
Not everything on my SOS list is negative; there are some positive trends and movement towards change. Realistically, we need to create a hell of a lot more movement– make hard decisions, create new markets, new business models, new products, new systems and understand that we do have some work to do–really we have a chance to reinvent everything. It won’t be easy, but it sure will be exciting.