What Does Sustainability Mean And How Do You Define It For Yourself?

May 20, 2022
1 min read

There is no universally agreed-upon definition of sustainability. In reality, there are many different perspectives on this subject and how it might be realised. It's a concept that's both foreign and familiar, a distant notion and a very real possibility. This does little to make it easy to understand what this word means and how we are to use it best.

What does sustainability mean?

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Sustainability is basically something that can be sustained, i.e. something that is "bearable" and capable of being perpetuated at a given level. Essentially, you can define sustainability as the processes through which something that can be used but does not run out

Unfortunately, due to the environmental and socioeconomic challenges that countries all around the world are facing, the word "sustainability" is being used in a more specific sense these days. Nowadays, sustainability is usually described as the actions we take to avoid draining our planet of its natural resources.

It's increasingly becoming an add on word for companies, politicians and influencers to use to convey some form of positive contribution towards keeping the Earth safe. The catch is that when a word is used so often it can lose its power. This is why it’s essential to be able to define it for yourself before you stake everything on someone else’s words.

How to define sustainability?

Most people are in agreement that sustainability has three fundamental pillars – sometimes called the three Ps: protecting the environment, protection of social development and protection of economic development. While most have heard of the first point, it’s important to understand all the pillars:

• Environmental sustainability: essentially keeping the earth clean and not using what you can’t put back. Thispillar is focused on reducing carbon footprints and reducing unnecessary waste.
• Social sustainability: looking after the people who work for you, and communities you operate in, paying a fair wage and treating them well. This pillar is more about ethical sustainability than anything physical.
• Economic Sustainability: all business need to be viable in the long term, so it about having a profitable business, but not at any cost. Businesses should aim to make money in a way that is consistent with other aspects of sustainable development, rather than making money at any cost.

Often businesses use the first pillars to hide their hunt for profit!

How can it be Measured?

The performance of the three basic principles as a whole, mainly a balance of all three, have been used to assess sustainability. However, there is still no worldwide method to measure sustainability. Despite the lack of an official measurement, several organisations are developing industry-specific methods and techniques to determine how social, environmental, and economic principles operate within a corporation.

The definition is not as important as the action

If you were to walk down the street and ask every other person: what does sustainability mean to you? You would probably receive different yet slightly similar responses. Some claim sustainability to be the enhancement human well-being and maintaining social fairness for current and future generations. Or it’s about keeping the Earth healthy, someone else might say that sustainability is larger than one person, company, or country.

Many would probably talk about sustaining resources to ensure we don’t use more than we can create. Others might claim it involves living in harmony with our social and natural environment.

All of the answers have a similar undertone; they incorporate the three Ps. Anything in this ballpark would be considered correct by most. Still, if the goal is to help people, the planet and regulate profit in the most ethical ways, perhaps a definition is only as good as the actions that follow.

Sustainability is nothing without action. The best way to define it for yourself might be to define it by the choices you make every day to protect the three P’s. Defining this word might make better sense when paired with something you can see and do:

• Using a reusable coffee cup made from recycled materials
• Switching to reusable shopping bags
• Using recycled toilet paper
• Enacting water-saving initiatives in your home
• Driving a hybrid/electric car OR
• Using public transport more or walking
• Switching out plastic wrap for soy wax food coverings

When asked how you define sustainability, a more accurate way to answer would be to list all the sustainable actions you take in your life. For example: “to me, sustainability means using metal straws in my iced coffees instead of plastic or paper straws and using recycled rainwater for gardening and cleaning. It means always carrying a spare reusable shopping bag, using recycled toilet paper and a clean, environmentally friendly keep cup.”

Why is sustainability important?

There are both short- and long-term advantages to sustainability. If we do not make more sustainable decisions, we won’t be able to continue to live as we do now. If damaging processes continue, we will run out of fossil fuels, a large number of animal species will die and we will harm the atmosphere in a way that can’t be undone. Clean air, more dependable resources, and the quality and cleanliness of water are all advantages of sustainability.

The future for sustainability

There is no universally accepted definition of sustainability. There are many viewpoints on this concept and how it might be realised. Overusing this term has made it even harder to us to understand it on a larger scale.

If the goal is to benefit the three pillars: people, the planet, and profit in the most ethical ways possible, perhaps a definition is only as good as what it’s followed up by. The most straightforward approach to describe it for yourself may be the choices you make every day to safeguard the three P's or the simple concept that to be sustainable is to keep something at a specific level.