Happy New Year.
Over Christmas I read up on a number of books explaining the Business Case for Sustainability including:
The Sustainability Advantage, by Bob Willard
Sustainable Leadership: Honeybee & Locust Approaches, by Gayle Avery and Harald Bergsteiner
Making Sustainability Work, by Marc Epstein
I enjoyed all three books – Avery & Bergsteiner’s had many interesting research links and corporate examples, as did Epstein’s – but I particularly liked Bob Willard’s book, which outlines a number of the “yes, buts” and importantly, provides responses to a number of them. The key, he says, is to reinforce the “both and” – acknowledging that managers can have both profits and sustainability, can be both hard nosed business people and socially, environmentally aware.
Next month, I will be adapting Willard’s Sustainability Business Case spreadsheet to provide local examples. In the meantime, the DECCW site has a number of case studies of sustainability in NSW, as do most of the other State Government sites.