When some people hear the word sustainability, their minds conjure up images of aging hippies puttering around organic French intensive gardens. Or they may think of retrograde farmers in overalls plowing their ten acres with draft horses.
These images no longer do justice to the idea. In a recent speech, Jim Fittering, CEO of Dow Chemical (not exactly the flower child of major corporations), said he now spends 25 percent of his time on sustainability issues—more time than on “just about anything else.”
Dow has issued a list of sustainability goals that include providing “safe materials for a sustainable planet” and “valuing nature.”
Not so long ago, sustainability was equated with environmental concerns, but recently the concept has acquired a much broader meaning.
Today it has to do with communities and infrastructure as well as with ecology. A company not only has to show its products are high quality, and above all, safe, but that it’s taking care of its workers and the communities in which it functions.
At the same time, it has to be sustainable in a narrower sense—it has to stay in business. As a result, sustainability now means “triple bottom line” sustainability, focusing on the three Ps—people, planet, and profits.
Like practically everything these days, triple bottom line sustainability has its own acronym: TBL.
This is multi-part feature on sustainability adapted from the Nogales supplement in the January/February 2020 issue of Produce Blueprints.
