
This Is What Sustainability Really Means
We use the word sustainability to describe so many things from energy through investing to development, business plans and even relationships. And yet, if you Google the word, the vast majority of the links ask; what is sustainability? Its an incredibly simple and fiendishly complicated answer. In its purest terms, were describing the ability to withstand, to be supported, to maintain and to survive but for Positive Luxury that doesn’t go far enough. PROGRESS – NOT PERFECTION Positive Luxury applies the definition proposed by Gro Harlem Brundtland in WCEDs 1987 Report Our Common Future describing “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” In the early days – as we started to realise our planet, our health and our survival were under threat from our own activities we struggled to even find the vocabulary to solve our problems. Googles Ngram viewer records the mentions of individual words in as many books as possible stretching back to the 1800s. Sustainability is almost entirely absent until the late 1970s when it starts to soar by 2008 the use of the word had multiplied by an astonishing 70 times. The problem was, the early dream of a sustainable future was about...