ABSTRACT
Until you know where you are going, it will be very difficult to get there. Once you have established the business case for pursuing sustainability, you need to create the vision of what a sustainable version of your organization will look like. The problem is that sustainability can be a confusing and ambiguous term. It seems that the more commonly it is bantered about, the more open to interpretation it becomes. While the most widely accepted definition from the Brundtland report makes intuitive sense to people, there seems to be general confusion when it comes to applying it to individual organizations (WCED, 1987). The Brundtland Commission definition of sustainability
The Brundtland Commission, officially known as the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), but more commonly referred to by the name of its chair, Gro Harlem Brundtland, was convened by the United Nations in 1983. The commission was created to address a growing concern about the accelerating deterioration of the environment and the consequences of that deterioration on economic and social development. The report generated by the commission contains the most frequently quoted definition of sustainability: ‘Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’ (WCED, 1987).
