Sustainability means different things and actions to different people and industries. To some it might be just a theory, while others have turned sustainability into a business model and way of life.

For me, sustainability starts at UBC, one of the worlds’ most green and sustainable campuses. After walking the whole day through campus searching for an image that would say to me “Sustainability” I ran into Kris Holm, without even knowing he was Kris Holm founder of KHU, a Canadian company providing top-end unicycles in over 15 countries and the first company in Canada to join “One Percent for the Planet”, donating 1% of its sales to support environmental conservation.

The concept and professional domain of sustainability have come a long way since 1969 when the first national policy for environmental sustainability was established in the U.S. or since 1983 when the World Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Sustainability and sustainable development are evolving in sync with everyone one of us.

Corporate Social Sustainability has become much more than a fashionable trend or a way for corporations to make up for possible wrong doings. CSR has become a business model, a way of proving that business is indeed a part of society.

Just a few days ago RobecoSAM and S&P Dow Jones Indices announced the 2013 results of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices Annual Review. Being the first global sustainability benchmark, the DJSI assesses the performance of the world’s 2,500 largest companies that create long-term shareholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments.

If in my native Romania these days we are witnessing national protests condemning a gold mining project using cyanides, amongst companies named to the top of the DJSI we find leading Canadian mining companies like Vancouver headquartered Teck or Kinross Gold Corporation.

And mining is just one industry. According to a research published this month by Euromonitor International, sustainability has also become “the hottest consumer trend, crossing both income and cultural divides.” According to this research, in order to compete in tomorrow’s market, businesses should adapt sustainable practices across their value chain. The food and drink sector is nowadays at the heart of the sustainability issue, with an increasing percentage of consumers (41% of Americans in 2011) placing “green considerations” at the top of their purchase decision making criteria. An example of business innovation in the field of sustainability from a leading company in the food and drink sector comes from PepsiCo brand Walkers Crisps, a company that worked together with farmers which supplied its potatoes and found new ways of producing dryer potatoes, saving energy in the drying process.

The DJSI also recognizes the importance of sustainability in the consumer products sector by having a distinct “Food and Beverage Category”. The leader this year was named Canada’s oldest brewery Molson Coors, another sustainable business innovator that has turned sustainability into its mission statement. The company invented the concept “Our Beer Print”, a corporate culture that recognizes the business’s impact on communities, people and the environment.

Sustainability takes different forms and actions in different industries. Still, paraphrasing the 1983 WCED definition, we can do much more than allow future generations to fulfill their needs. We can create sustainable and responsible business models in our present for the future growth of our society.