Conclusions

• LCA is an effective tool to characterize environmental sustainability of a product, or a process, or an activity.
• Industrial ecology and zero discharge are key methodologies for future for many manufacturing, and chemical and allied processes. Central to an eco‐industrial parks ability to exchange wastes and materials will be conversion or separation technologies capable of preparing former wastes for other uses.
• Future concern for the environment will grow, resources will become more scarce and less reliable, and demands for quality and cost competitiveness will increase. To meet these challenges a new paradigm of business and industrial organizations ask individual communities, companies, and other constituents to consider how they might work together to use resources more wisely.
• It is hoped, perhaps demanded, that the sustainable economy of this evolving century will be characterized by a conservation and decrease in the materials and energy content of products and an increase in their knowledge content.
• The challenge for businesses and governments will be to ensure that continued economic development is environmentally, ecologically, ethically, and socially sustainable. Areas in which government direction is needed include changing consumption and production pattern; appreciation for cultural diversity and traditions, development of healthy social systems; and widespread education and awareness of sustainability and sustainable development.
• Some experts have described sustainable development as the main driving force for the twenty‐first century industry. Engineers, scientists, business and industry owners, lawyers, governments and policymakers, and educators all will play key roles in this endeavor.
• Sustainability and sustainable development is a journey, not an endpoint.

Business

The most broadly accepted criterion for corporate sustainability constitutes a firm’s efficient use of natural capital. This eco‐efficiency is usually calculated as the economic value added by a firm in relation to its aggregated ecological impact. This idea has been popularized by the WBCSD under the following definition: “Eco‐efficiency is achieved by the delivery of competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing ecological impacts and resource intensity throughout the life cycle to a level at least in line with the earth’s carrying capacity” (DeSimone and Popoff 2000).

Similar to the eco‐efficiency concept but so far less explored is the second criterion for corporate sustainability. Socio‐efficiency describes the relation between a firm’s value‐added and its social impact. Whereas it can be assumed that most corporate impacts on the environment are negative (apart from rare exceptions such as the planting of trees) this is not true for social impacts. These can be either positive (e.g. corporate giving, creation of employment) or negative (e.g. work accidents, mobbing of employees, human rights abuses). Depending on the type of impact socio‐efficiency thus either tries to minimize negative social impacts (i.e. accidents per value added) or maximize positive social impacts (i.e. donations per value added) in relation to the value added.

Both eco‐efficiency and socio‐efficiency are concerned primarily with increasing economic sustainability. In this process they are instrumentals, both natural and social capital aiming to benefit from win‐win situations. However, as Dyllick and Hockerts (2002) point out the business case alone will not be sufficient to realize sustainable development. They point toward eco‐effectiveness, socio‐effectiveness, sufficiency, and eco‐equity as four criteria that need to be met if sustainable development is to be reached.

CASI Global, New York, states: “CSR & Sustainability together lead to sustainable development. CSR as in corporate social responsibility is not what you do with your profits, but is the way you make profits. This means CSR is a part of every department of the company value chain and not a part of HR/independent department. Sustainability as in effects towards Human resources, Environment and Ecology has to be measured within each department of the company.”

Corporate Sustainability

Corporate sustainability is an approach that creates long‐term stakeholder value by implementing a business strategy that considers every dimension of how a business operates in the ethical, social, environmental, cultural, and economic spheres. It also formulates strategies to build a company that fosters longevity through transparency and proper employee development.

Corporate sustainability is an evolution on more traditional phrases describing ethical corporate practice. Phrases such as CSR or corporate citizenship continue to be used but are increasingly superseded by the broader term corporate sustainability. Unlike phrases that focus on “added‐on” policies, corporate sustainability describes business practices built around social and environmental considerations.

The phrase is derived from two keys sources. The Brundtland Commission’s Report, Our Common Future (WCED 1987), described sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This desire to grow without damaging future generations’ prospects is becoming more and more central to business philosophies. Within more academic management circles, Elkington (2004) developed the concept of the Triple Bottom Line which proposed that business goals were inseparable from the societies and environments within which they operate. While short‐term economic gain could be chased, a failure to account for social and environmental impacts would make those business practices unsustainable. Measuring corporate sustainability is possible through composite indicators which aggregate environmental, social, corporate governance, and economic measures, e.g. complex performance indicator (Shaker 2015).