Framing Sustainability Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Completion requirements
Even as humans have sought to dominate nature, the reality is that business systems and the economy are subsystems of the biosphere. Read this chapter to discover the four key "meta-concepts": sustainable development, environmental justice, earth systems engineering and management, and sustainability science. You will also find practical frameworks and tools businesses can apply to develop sustainable innovation.
What is the difference between eco-efficiency and ecosystem solutions? How can the meta-concepts, frameworks, and tools be applied to identify sustainable business practices?
3.4 Practical Frameworks and Tools
Exercises
- Select a product you use frequently. Describe its current life cycle and component and material composition based on what you know and can determine from a short search for information. Then describe how this same product would be designed, used, and handled through the end of its life if the product's designers used the ideas introduced in this chapter. Be specific about what concepts and tools you are applying to your analysis.
- Explain what is meant by this quotation from Chapter 3 "Framing Sustainability Innovation and Entrepreneurship", Section 3.4 "Practical Frameworks and Tools": "Eco-efficiency, an increasingly popular concept used by business to describe incremental improvements in material use and environmental impact, is only one small part of a richer and more complex web of ideas and solutions.…more efficient production by itself could become not the servant but the enemy of a durable economy".
- Describe the ramifications when a company's activities are not all at the same location along the continuum of sustainability.
- Where have you seen the sustainability design ideas discussed in this chapter applied? Write a paragraph describing your observations. What new insights have you gained through exposure to these ideas?