Is your business sustainable or not sustainable? (версия на английском языке)

Is your business sustainable or not sustainable?

Key words in the environment protection vocabulary in the English language have changed in recent years.

Decades ago “businesses with principles” and “ethical businesses” started appearing with Body Shop being the first.

Later phrases “organic products”, “eco-friendly businesses”, “product upgrading” and “being green” flooded the English business language.

Recently, “reduce, reuse, repair and recycle” became waste management strategies in the western world. Even primary schoolchildren memorize this chant.

Moreover, people have begun sending things to charity shops instead of throwing them away since the shops’ profits go to environment protection projects.

Also more and more businesses are advertising that their products, as well as the packaging, are recyclable or biodegradable. For example, modern plastic packaging often biodegradable, i.e. it rots down after use.

Nowadays “sustainability” is the main principle for many western companies.

It is the most sophisticated term among the mentioned. And this is how Wikipedia defines it-“Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of responsibility, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of stewardship, the responsible management of resource use. In ecology, sustainability describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time, a necessary precondition for the well-being of humans and other organisms. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems.”

Well, as you can see, if your business is sustainable, it brings no harm to the economy, environment and society.

Would you like to learn more? You might find these links useful-

http://helloskype.ru/index.php?action=1&c=news&id=95 (Find out what a label “free-range” on eggs boxes in a supermarket means)

http://www.gojo.com/united-states/sustainability/glossary.aspx (learn more sustainability glossary)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/fashion/gallery/2012/may/02/traid-recycled-fashion-in-pictures?INTCMP=SRCH#/?picture=389191231&index=0 (find out how charity shops in London work)

http://www.london2012.com/about-us/sustainability/ (the first sustainable Olympics?)

http://www.ted.com/talks/bjarke_ingels_hedonistic_sustainability.html (this architecture talk isn’t exactly boring)

Впервые эта статья была опубликована на сайте профессионалы.ру в группе Business English - изучаем деловой английский язык 17 июля 2012 в 19:53