At the Degrowth 2014 Conference in Leipzig, we were discussing the issue of postgrowth practices in production and consumption, how those are developing within business and consumer contexts and transform each other. Production and consumption appears to coevolve in front of a degrowth, postgrowth or “transitions” reference frame, with emerging concepts like the sharing of products, collaboration for producing and distributing energy and food, subsistence work and subsistence tools in Fabrication Laboratories, the rise of commons-based thinking and so forth.… Read more
Ecological Allowance – Accounting for the Triple Bottom Line
When John Elkington popularized the triple bottom line concept for accounting companies’ performance more holistically, the notion of people, planet and profit – or the ecological, economic and social dimensions of sustainability – immediately caught the attention of business people, consultants and researchers. The only problem was: there is no tripple bottom line. With a bottom line you draw the net value of a balance sheet of whatever kind. You add and subtract the ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ and arrive at a bottom line value that tells you if there is more ‘good’ than ‘bad’ in your balance.… Read more
Lessons from Gothenburg
After returning from the 6th Lifecycle Management Conference in Gothenburg, where I delivered one of the keynotes dedicated to “Sustainability Beyond Growth”, I noticed that some of the talks and topics really stuck with me. Especially two presentations remain notable. One was from Danone and their new tools for calculating their Carbon Footprint in the supply chain. With their yoghurts they can now see perfectly clear that the “original producers” aka “the cows” are responsible for most of it.… Read more