The last 50 years have taught us that the introduction of new approaches can only be accelerated if supported from the top and treated by captains of industry as strategic, so that projects with sufficient resources and priority are put in place. 

I have been developing Industrial Environmental Management as a part of Sustainable Development.  One of the most relevant concepts to this field is Cleaner Production, even more so than Industrial Ecology,  introduced by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in 1989. It is the continuous application of an integrated preventive environmental strategy applied to processes, products and services to reduce risks for humans and the environment.

It applies to:

- production processes: conserving raw materials and energy eliminating toxic raw materials and reducing the quantity and toxicity of all emissions and wastes

- products: reducing negative impacts along the life cycle of a product from raw materials extraction to its ultimate disposal

- services: incorporating environmental concerns into designing and delivering services

My research suggests environmental problems may be traced to modern science and applied technology; clearly the effects of manufacturing processes and manufactured products on eco-systems are hugely significant. In future there will be significant new technologies invented which will lead to improvements in Environmental Management in industry, however, in working with major manufacturers I found there are already a sufficient number of concepts, systems and technologies which are capable of being rapidly deployed in an economic manner.

Sustainability and Cleaner Production will continue to evolve and gain strategic importance with operations management, engineers and environmental specialists. The last 50 years have taught us, however, that the introduction of new approaches can only be accelerated if supported from the top and treated by captains of industry as strategic so that projects with sufficient resources and priority are put in place. 

Major improvements can be achieved provided the will exists.

A voluntary group of IT companies have launched a free computer take-back program to help people dispose of unwanted computer equipment responsibly.

When it comes to responding to climate change there's only one way to go about it: with passion!

The challenge is that we'll need to change just about every aspect of the way we do business, and while the changes aren't necessarily difficult, they take a bit of getting used to.

And that's where the passion comes into it. For a company like Lenovo, whose business is making and shipping computer hardware all over the world, it's important for us to embrace the changes at every level.

The challenge is we need to adopt green practices internally, in terms of our staff and business practices, externally in terms of our role as a supplier of technology to the broader community, and more broadly in terms of our participation with environment and industry level groups and organisations. 

It involves everything from a shift from plastic to ceramic cups in the kitchen, to participation in social initiatives like Earth Hour, through participation in fundamentally important industry initiatives like ByteBack.

Organised along with a number of other leading IT companies, the ByteBack initiative is at this stage a voluntary group of IT companies looking to ensure that their assets are re-used and recycled where possible, so as not to end up in landfill.

In Victoria the program has already resulted in a number of drop-off depots where small businesses and individuals can bring their once-loved hardware, and dispose of it in an environmentally responsible way.

It's a great way for IT companies to take responsibility for the waste they create, however, at this stage the program is entirely voluntary, and while participating companies are taking an active interest in the whole lifecycle of their products, there remain dozens of companies who are simply not getting involved.

Until we change our values, we will continue to make our planet less and less able to support life, including our own and those who follow us.

Underlying the multitude of decisions that face us daily, including especially those that we tend to postpone making, is the root-level question, "are you willing and ready to support life?" This comprises the life of yourself and your family, your species (across the planet, and into the future), the biosphere (all of life: biodiversity conservation), and its ecosphere (life's supportive environments: habitat conservation).

Recognising this question as being concerned with the ‘real' bottom line, for which all other ‘bottom lines' must serve, requires levels of personal empowerment, awareness, vision, and clarity of values that most of us, deep down, wish we had, but know that we don't.

Key stepping stones towards being able to answer this question are the many small meaningful expressions of personal daring in each of these areas that all of us have experienced, both in ourselves and others. By recognising these expressions as the foundations for the emergence of a genuine sustainable culture, and building on them, we can, I believe, advance to the next stage in our species' psychosocial evolution: from manipulative, fearful, patterned, distracted and compensatory cultures to ones that are enabling of life, love, spontaneity and presence.

These are core qualities that all of our institutional structures and processes (our political, economic, business, learning, health and social systems) need to be designed and managed to enable.