“Envirology™” is a word that sums up our current thinking – it’s the “Science of Sustainability”, but sustainability on 3 counts – not just Environmental Sustainability, but also Social Sustainability and Economic Sustainability – a tripod, if you like – if you have one without the other 2, its unsustainable and it runs the risk of falling over, if you have 2 but not the 3rd, there’s an imbalance, something is missing – yes, it may work for a while, but a gust of wind or unexpected development can ‘blow it over’ – in summary, Envirology™ believes that Environmental Issues must be balanced with social and economic needs, Economic Growth must be balanced by environmental and social considerations, and Social Considerations must take account of both the environmental and financial perspective. We’ve always believed that there must be profit in order to develop, but that it should never be at the expense of human dignity, and to this must now be added environmental responsibility.

Envirology™ Classifications / Scoring

“Envirology™” aims to create its own scoring system, so that products or services can have their own Envirology™ rating based around the three pillars of Sustainability – the lower the Envirology™ rating, the better.

Environmental Sustainability

Widely defined as development in a manner that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”, Environmental sustainability includes the need to conserve scarce natural resources, to reduce, reuse, recycle, to use renewable resources, to reduce the use or generation of toxic or hazardous materials, to protect and restore natural habitats to name but afew.

Social Sustainability

Social sustainability is related to how we make choices that affect other Human beings in our global community – it covers the broadest aspect of business operations and the effect that they have on employees, suppliers, customers, neighbours, investors and both local and global communities – Social sustainability also has regard to the more basic human needs of happiness, health, safety, freedom, dignity and care.

Economic Sustainability

Economic Sustainability means quite simply the need to operate in a manner that allows companies to stay in business, individuals to live and communities to flourish – it recognises a need to be competitive in todays global marketplace, to make money, to save money, to generate wealth and ‘returns’, to make purchasing and operational decisions based on what can be afforded, and to operate within realistic and real world constraints.

Envirology™

Envirology™ is an ‘open source’ science – we don’t know exactly how it will develop, and that’s part of the fun, but also part of the challenge – we welcome others in getting involved in defining it and saying what it means – we think that its something to do with Acknowledging the past, Enhancing the present, but perhaps most importantly, Creating the future.