We keep hearing and talking about sustainability in a very fluid manner. Most often than not, we contradict ourselves when we talk about sustainability. Some of the questions that keep coming up in my mind include:
- Do we understand what sustainability is?
- Is there a clear definition of it?
- Is there a defined way by which you can design for sustainability?
- Are certifications the way to go forward to establish sustainable designs are practiced
If you ask me, I would philosophically define sustainability thus – designing to the best of your ability that:
- does not adversely affect the environment in which your sustainable design is going to work
- does not alter the social fabric of the locality where you employ local resources and infrastructure
- does not pinch you economically
- keeps in mind the cultural aspects of the locality
Keeping aside my definition of Sustainability, let us look at some of the commonly known definitions.
Sustainability definitions
The Cambridge dictionary defines sustainability as the ability to continue at a particular level for a period of time.
Bruntland Report, published in 1987 by the world commission on Environment and Development defined sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
The reason why sustainability has gained so much importance is nature can operate without humans, whereas humans cannot operate without the ecosystem services that nature provides.
Triple Bottom Line
John Elkington, in 1994 coined the phrase ‘Triple Bottom Line’ (TBL) and helped us understand not only what we should measure but how we should measure it.
All of us are aware of the financial bottom line, which talks about the profit or loss as the last line of the statement. TBL talks about the environmental bottom line or the social bottom line. TBL can be represented by the three P’s – People, Planet and Prosperity, which forms the essence of sustainable designs.
The three pillars of sustainability – Environment, Society, and Economy are the common way to show the three P’s of TBL and they need to work together to support the goals of sustainability. However, we have to be aware that no sustainable design is a perfect solution.
We have to make a conscious decision and ensure that there are more gains than losses when we do a sustainable design. Scoring on all the three pillars is going to be tough – make sure that you score on at least two of the pillars advantageously.
A case in point
In our case, when we were doing Grenville, we had to spend considerable amounts of time and money in training the local resources and we were sourcing materials locally. This put a lot of stress on the economics and viability of the project, however, we scored on the other two pillars of the environment and society.
There were a lot of expenses in the beginning, but with time things have started looking better even economically.
This stresses the fact that sustainability is an opportunity for continual improvement over time.
