Sustainability means satisfying today’s demand without sacrificing future generation’s benefits. It is hard for everyone to be conscious about it since human beings are selfish creatures. In order to inform people and alter the way they do things, it is very important for the big companies to lead the way. Although there are certain things expected from those companies, it would be unfair to expect it if the companies are not getting monetary benefits.

The triple bottom line is a framework that companies use to evaluate their environmental, social, and economic performance. This framework helps us to understand what firms consider while making decisions. People, Planet, and Profits. All three dimension are crucial, and if one of them is overlooked, the results will harm the company in the long term. If a company wants to be sustainable, it needs to be able to sustain itself first, and the only way to sustain a company is to make profits. Doing environmentally or socially responsible things will not benefit the company, nor anyone else if it doesn’t yield any profits.

If we consider intermaché’s inglorious fruits and vegetables campaign, it is very successful according to all three dimensions.

Environmental benefit: Reduces food waste significantly

Social benefit: Promotes eating healthy fruits and vegetables.

Economic benefit: Generates revenue from products that were going to be wasted.

This campaign has much more to it than these 3 simple benefits, but it shows how an action can be socially and environmentally responsible, and generate profits as well. This is exactly what we need, because companies are profit maximizing agents, people are selfish, and world resources are finite. If we want to take bigger steps towards being sustainable, we as consumers have to accept the fact that companies will always want to make money, and companies have to accept the fact that they can and must do more than just that.

Pictures Taken from:
http://www.powerhousegrowers.com/triple-bottom-line-the-modern-business-model/#prettyPhoto

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