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.

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.

This is the first blog in a ‘Sustainability Insight' online series created by the Society for Sustainable Business - a group of business and academic professionals motivated to provide leadership to accelerate the change to an economically viable, environmentally sustainable and socially healthy society.

As the pressure to be green and to do green heats up, we run into two major questions: what criteria do we use to choose the route we follow, and how do we know that we are successful?

Let's deal with the criteria. Any green measures may have pluses and minuses. We are working with a system that is not just the region, the state or the nation, but one that is ultimately global. How can we get to a level where the decisions we take are in the best interests of people everywhere and the environment?

There is only one way that I have found, and that is to define an Ideal Vision for the world that we and our grandchildren's children would be happy to live in. This was the idea of Professor Emeritus Roger Kaufman of Florida State University in 1992. Kaufman has tested this proposition on five continents with different political systems, different religions and different races, and has found an amazing degree of unanimity about the future that people really want.

So what do they agree on? They agree on: no war, no disease, no crime, no accidents, and they want health, happiness and a chance to live out their potential. There is also a growing concern for the environment.