Adios Sustainababble. Welcome Flourishing and Restoration

Go Green. Do Good and Do Well. Recycle, upcycle, fair trade, organic, carbon credits, conscious capitalism, slow living, the triple bottom line and corporate social responsibility. We’ve all heard these slogans, phrases and trendy words. They could all be summed up into one word: sustainababble. Sustainababble, according to Robert Engelman, President of the Worldwatch Institute, is defined as “a cacophonous profusion of uses of the word sustainable to mean anything from environmentally better to cool.”

Have we truly lost value in the way we talk about sustainability in business? What is all this sustainababble worth? How can those of us in the business of sustainability truly accomplish any of this jargon if we don’t agree about what any of it means? We have defined the word, ‘sustainability’ and what it means to operationalize sustainability in business in thousands of ways. So, the more important question is this: if we lack global unanimity about what it means to live in a sustainable world, how then, will we ever live in one? These are the questions with which so many of us, including forerunners like Donella Meadows, Joanna Macy, Thomas Berry, and Miriam MacGillis have struggled. Cary Gaunt, Bill Baue and Mark McElroy, “restoration professionals,” expert sustainability consultants and professors in the MBA in Managing Sustainability program at Marlboro College Graduate School have decided it’s time for clarity.

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Julie is passionate about telling the story of where business meets good. She is the Founder of B Storytelling, a content development company specifically designed to help popularize the good happening through business. They do this by helping Benefit Corporations and other social enterprises identify, build and leverage their brands. Julie has an MBA in Managing for Sustainability from Marlboro Graduate School. She lives in West Palm Beach, Florida with her husband, Thomas.