ABSTRACT
The maintenance of superior living standards and qualitative lives without degrading the environment has become the largest challenge the world is facing nowadays. There are finite natural resources on the Earth and the waste resulted from the production and the consumption can be coped in a finite capacity by the biosphere. In recent decades, these issues have been addressed increasingly by the introduction of sustainable development or the concept of sustainability. Several major bodies, such as the European Union, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the United Nations, have adopted the concept of sustainability. In this chapter, we have covered the introduction, concept, and history of sustainability in a detailed manner. Sustainable logistics as a factor of modern economies and metrics for sustainability have been addressed to cover the sustainability framework. The applications of sustainability of materials have also been included along with future prospects and challenges.
