Back to School

Three years ago, I was introduced to sustainability by Jonathan T. Scott, a teacher at Kozminski University in Warsaw, Poland. Ever since, I have been fascinated by the business facets of the subject: the waste minimization and cost reductions it incurs, the job creation benefits, and the minimization of environmental degradation. One of Scott’s contributions to the field of sustainability is the observance that almost everyone focuses on and discusses the symptoms of waste (resource depletion, environmental degradation, CO2 emissions, job loss, etc) rather than the causes, and that if you want to attract the attention of the business community you have to speak its language (e.g finance) and focus on the cost of the causes.

With this in mind, I decided to join Mr. Scott as well as the person who helped him learn about sustainability, Walter R. Stahel, to help communicate the message of sustainability in a business context (long-term wealth generation, job creation, and resource maximization). To this end, I built a website called Sustainable Business Performance (www.susbusperformance.com) and joined in the promotion of Managing the New Frontiers (2008) and The Sustainable Business (2010), two highly-acclaimed and award-winning books about sustainability that Scott placed on the internet (for free) in a PDF format.

A few weeks ago, Scott published a third free resource (edited by Walter Stahel), New Standards for Long-Term Business Survival. This 30-page guide, which contains a 10-page check list to help businesses pinpoint their sustainability weaknesses, is now being distributed by over 20 international organizations and numerous environmental champions worldwide.  The information in this booklet has been used by students at Kozminski University over the past several years to help them show over 100 small businesses how they could save millions of Euros in annual costs.

I would now like to take things to a whole new level by encouraging the world’s business schools and education accreditation organizations to follow the example being set by one of Jonathan Scott’s working partners, the European Foundation for Management and Development (EFMD), to help spread the message that sustainability is a viable business subject and should be a part of every business school’s maintsream curriculum.

To make this happen on a world-wide scale, my colleagues and I need your support. Together we can show that students want to learn more about sustainability and that every business school should include the basics of waste minimization and resource maximization (closed-loop economics) in their curricula.

Please relay your support for this idea by signing the petition below and by joining the Sustainable Business Performance Facebook page.

Thank you.

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3. New U.S. Green Chamber of Commerce Gives the Old One a Run for the Money

Images via thatautguy ; Lyndi&Jason