[...]... business and economic domains, promoting the critical urgency of environmental sustainability and offering practical and sustainable strategies and systems, assessment and engagement, as well as resources and communication It is our sincere hope and prayer that you may continue to advocate this respectful approach and management by human beings as stewards of God’s creation At the Ecumenical Patriarchate,... Sustainable Energy Systems, our beloved son in the Lord: grace and peace on high It is with sincere joy that we write to congratulate you on the publication of your book Practical Sustainability Strategies: How to Gain a Competitive Advantage, coauthored with your colleague Nikos Avlonas, President of the Center for Sustainability and Excellence As you are aware, for over twenty years, we have organized... had to take the escalator to the lower level When I arrived for the first time, I was disappointed that the escalator was not operating So I did what I would normally do under such a circumstance—walk down the stationary escalator As soon as I took the first step to walk down, the escalator started and continued to operate until I reached my destination With no one else on the escalator, it stopped... sustainable strategy In addition to researching for new strategies, I was also interested in books about sustainability Over the past 10 years, I did not come across any book Preface xv that dealt with the various sustainable strategies I was teaching I am c ­ onvinced that sustainability should not be a discipline in a business school like marketing, accounting, finance, or organizational behavior, but rather... I was convinced that sustainability was very, very important During the next academic year, I introduced sustainability into the capstone course I was teaching and renamed it “Business Strategy: The Sustainable Enterprise.” Over the next few years, I introduced the sustainability concept in other courses and shortly thereafter changed the program name to MS in Environmental Management and Sustainability. .. Chemistry, Nanotechnology, and “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” ix 145 Green Chemistry 145 Nanotechnology148 “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” 153 Washing Machines 153 Toilets154 Urban Farming 155 References157 13 Sustainable Strategies and Beyond 159 PART 3 TOOLS AND METRICS 161 14 Standards and Guidelines for Managing Corporate Social Responsibility towards Sustainability 163 Need for a Sustainable Strategy... initial formation of the Earth until now, into the six days of biblical creation [2], from Monday through Saturday Practical Sustainability Strategies: How to Gain a Competitive Advantage, First Edition Nikos Avlonas and George P Nassos © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc 3 4 Urgency to Adopt Sustainability Creation of the Environment Using the compressed time scale,... of an individual or department in a company or organization Sustainability should be imbedded in the culture of the organization so everyone can work together to achieve their goal of operating as a truly sustainable company While reading many books on sustainability, one that can be considered a classic is The Limits to Growth written in 1972 by Donella H Meadows, Dennis L Meadows, and Jergen Randers... the Earth’s regenerative and absorptive capacity If we remove more from nature than can be provided indefinitely, we are on an unsustainable track An organization called Global Footprint Network [4] has been calculating and analyzing the ecological footprint of about 140 countries The footprint refers to the amount of the Earth’s carrying capacity it takes to sustain humanity’s consumption of goods and... technological changes that increased agricultural productivity, reduced pollution, and provided an increase in the available supply of natural resources Technological advancements would have a positive impact, but this alone could not avert a collapse Social and cultural changes would also be necessary to reduce consumption and stabilize population growth Since it had been 40 years since the report, data were .