7gen Bloc

We talk about sustainability all the time, but I suspect we all have different ideas as to what the term actually means. The concept is simple enough -- at a fundamental level, it's about not taking more than our fair share, so that future generations can have their fair share. ...

I recently finished reading a remarkable book by Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. It makes an unusually tough-minded assertion: I am immoral. ...

Our financial system is beset by a whole host of chronic illnesses, chief among them gluttony, amorality, and opacity. Band-aids won't mend it; the patient requires immediate surgery. Unfortunately, we can't apply the scalpel until we X-ray these ailing financial institutions and deeply understand the source of their sickness. In other words, we must apply one of corporate responsibility's core principles: radical transparency. ...

"Mother Nature doesn't do bailouts." -Glenn Prickett, senior vice president at Conservation International. Thomas Friedman began a recent New York Times column by quoting from a brilliantly insightful, fake 2005 story from the Onion. The article cited an employee of "Fenghua Ningbo Plastic Works Ltd.," expressing his disbelief over the "sheer amount of [garbage] Americans will buy" and the "contemptible" fact that when we no longer want an item we "simply throw it away." ...

This is a long but critically important post that's based on a brilliant paper from the Sustainable Development Commission. It's written by Herman Daly, an ecological economist who pioneered sustainable development guidelines for the World Bank. The paper was adapted and posted by Nate Hagens on May 5, 2008. ...

In February of 2008, on a trip to London for the Natural & Organic Products Exhibition, I stopped by to visit John Elkington, the founder of SustainAbility and an old friend. John has worked in the environmental and sustainable development fields since 1972. In 2004, BusinessWeek called him, "a dean of the corporate responsibility movement for three decades," an apt description. ...

"Judge King wrote that Ms. Braun had recounted the humiliating experience of soiling herself while at work because she had not been permitted time to use the restroom." I'm hoping that the recent ruling by a Minnesota state judge, who found that Wal-Mart violated state laws on wages more than two million times, marks the end of a culture that put profits ahead of people. ...

Over the years, I have frequently spoken out against companies that preach a "we're-all-in-this-together" ethos while tolerating Austrian-Afghanistan disparities in executive-employee pay. But I have offered little in the way of a real-world solution to such hypocrisy. ...

Last year, we drank our way through three billion cases of bottled water — an increase of 14 percent over 2006, according to Beverage Digest. Most of that bottled water is treated with chlorine and shipped insanely long distances; too many of the plastic bottles end up in landfills. In most cases, the quality of the bottled water is not even better than the water flowing out of the tap. ...

We simply buy too much stuff. I have more t-shirts in my closet than I could wear in several lifetimes. Yet someone always wants to give me another one. I have an iPhone, but the newest upgrade looks almost irresistible. In fact, so does the MacBook Air. Shoes, cars, cameras, and clothes almost never wear out before we replace them. We are painfully addicted to buying new stuff. ...