Page 382 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

CHAPTER 20

Sustainability

and Resilience

In a world that is getting hot, flat, and crowded,

the task of creating the tools, systems, energy
sources, and ethics that will allow the planet to
grow in cleaner more sustainable ways is going
to be the biggest challenge of our lifetime.
thomas friedman [1]

The Outlook for Sustainable Growth
This book began with a simple premise—that environmental sus-
tainability is compatible with economic growth. Experience has
shown that environmental excellence actually can be synergistic with
corporate goals of profitability and shareholder value creation. It is
clear that the changing business landscape has made environmental
performance an important value driver, and that many companies
are retooling their business processes to incorporate life-cycle think-
ing. In particular, Design for Environment is becoming an essential
component of product and process development. It is fair to say that
environmentally sustainable business practices will increasingly
become a prerequisite for competitiveness in most industry sectors.
The positive response of the business community is encourag-
ing. In fact, if all companies around the world were to adopt current
best practices with regard to corporate sustainability, it might be
possible to gradually reduce the enormous flows of material and
energy that are required to support the expanding global economy.
However, this optimistic scenario does not seem to be unfolding.
Rather, it appears that global atmospheric concentrations of green-
house gases will continue to rise, and that environmental resources
will continue to be depleted or degraded, with potentially cata-
strophic consequences for future generations (see Chapter 3). For

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