What is sustainability?

Over the past few years, interest in issues related to sustainability has grown exponentially. People around the world are talking about sustainability, recently published studies show the consumers’ willingness to give preference to sustainable foods and products, and businesses across all sectors have realised that adopting sustainable practices is not just an increasingly efficient marketing tool, but can also help to gain competitive advantage, increase a company’s market share, and boost shareholder value.

But what is sustainability? In the following, we will briefly explain what sustainability means to us, and how we interpret the term in our daily (business) life.

The term “sustainability” is derived from the Latin word “sustinere”, (tenere) which means to “hold”. However, a few more meanings of the word can be found in dictionaries, the main ones being to “maintain", to "support", or to "endure”. The most famous and probably up to now most commonly used definition of sustainability was introduced by the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations in 1987:
”sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

Currently, we are living on credit without knowing the interest rate. In 2007 already, humanity’s footprint exceeded the earth’s bio capacity by 50%. It is predicted that we will need the equivalent of 2 planets to sustain the consumption patterns of global citizens by 2025. Mismanagement and exploitation of our environment and natural resources have intensified the development of some frightening trends, as for instance the loss of arable land, the extinction of populations on earth, water and food scarcity, poverty, and climate change.
Having said that, the need for more sustainable solutions becomes obvious: We urgently have to reconsider and rethink the way we are conducting business in order to stop, or ideally even reverse above mentioned trends. We need to reduce negative anthropogenic impact on our environment and manage the consumption of our natural resources more efficiently.

And that is what sustainability means to us: Not only sustaining the status quo, (meaning to prevent more damage to be made), but also to reverse the trend. We believe that this can be done by adapting innovative, sustainable solutions to tackle current social and environmental challenges.