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Company experience is thatenvironmental constraints are throttlingbusiness progress. Pressures fromlegislation, insurance, finance andstakeholders, who all demand evidence of environmental excellence, are everincreasing. At the same time, theeconomic system is driving business in a predominantly unsustainable direction.In view of this dilemma, the need for apractical methodology enabling the fullimplementation of sustainabledevelopment into business cannot beoverstated.

Central to all this is a clear definition ofwhat sustainable development means forindustry in practice; how sustainableprocessing can be applied from firstprinciples and the adoption of totalsustainability as the ultimate goal.

This paper aims to clarify theimportant issues involved in practicalsustainable development and to assemblethe elements of a practical methodology

or toolkit, for the attainment of totalsustainability in business. Copyright ©2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERPEnvironment.

Received 22 April 2002Revised 5 February 2003Accepted 16 April 2003

INTRODUCTION

I t would appear that environmental con-straints are throttling business progress(Rowledge et al., 1999; Nattrass and

Altomare, 1999; Welford, 2000). Pressure fromlegislation, insurance, finance and stake-holders generally is demanding evidence ofenvironmental excellence, and it is increasingrelentlessly and irreversibly. At the same time, the economic system is driving businessin a predominantly unsustainable direction(Rowledge et al., 1999) Faced with thisdilemma and with sustainability increasinglybecoming a necessary condition for admissionto the market (Rowledge et al., 1999) the need for a practical methodology enabling thefull implementation of sustainable develop-ment in business and in industry cannot beoverstated.Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

BRIDGING THE UNSUSTAINABILITY GAP: A FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Stefan Boron and Keith Murray*

Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

Sustainable DevelopmentSust. Dev. 12, 65–73 (2004)Published online 23 March 2004 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/sd.231

* Correspondence to: Keith Murray, Chemical Engineering Division, School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot Watt University, Riccarton Campus, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

To make transition to sustainability a reality,the following necessary conditions have beenidentified (DTI/EPSRC, 2001).

(i) Economic growth needs to be de-coupledfrom the negative effects of environmentalresource use.

(ii) A proper definition and framework forsustainability in practice has to be established.

(iii) An appropriate management toolkit tohelp achieve the necessary transition hasto be assembled.

In addition, in order to assess the problemproperly, and to formulate a viable solution, awide variety of new or different paradigmshave to be taken on board. These includesimultaneous solutions to economic, environ-mental and social goals rather than trade-off(Rowledge et al., 1999); life-cycle thinking from cradle to grave (Azapagic and Perdan,2000; La Grega et al., 1994); and the adoption of sustainability as an overriding goal for business operations. Once accepted, these new perceptions create the necessary aware-ness framework, within which sustainabledevelopment can be realized.

It is important to clarify the issues involvedin practical sustainable development and toassemble the elements of a methodology for the attainment of total sustainability inbusiness.

Central to all this is a clear definition of whatsustainable development means for industry inpractice; how sustainable processing can beapplied from first principles and the adoptionof total sustainability as the ultimate goal.

SETTING THE SCENE

When the Tokyo declaration of the BrundtlandReport (World Commission on Environmentand Development, 1987) talks about ‘a massiveshift in social objectives’ and advocates ‘the

breaking out of existing patterns’, it actuallysingles out paradigm shift as a necessary con-dition for ‘a successful transition to SustainableDevelopment’. In many cases this shiftinvolves a return to facts and truths that havesomehow become lost in today’s thinking. Theprinciple of ‘concentricity’ (Mitchell, 2000), forexample, reminds us of our total dependenceon the environment. It reiterates the fact thatthe three domains of sustainability, namelyeconomics, society and the environment, areactually in a hierarchical relationship to eachother, rather than a co-planar one (Clift, 1998).Economics in fact is constrained, firstly byenvironmental and secondarily by sociallimits. It is subservient to both in a sustain-ability context and thus needs to be recon-figured to accommodate this higher realitywhen the three domains are consideredtogether in decision-making. This means thattrade-off becomes unacceptable as a man-agement mechanism for the attainment of sustainable development.

The required economic reconfiguration,which involves the incorporation of bindingenvironmental and social laws into economicmechanisms (Pearce and Turner, 1990), is hap-pening slowly but surely although it was beingmooted at least 30 years ago (Schumacher,1974). In essence, this reconfiguration is happening by default rather than by design,for in practice economics is predominantlylinear (Engineering Council, 1994) and is stillrewarding processes and procedures that arefundamentally unsustainable. The economicsystem is still part of the problem rather thanpart of the solution.

Driven therefore by unsustainable econom-ics on the one hand and constrained by envi-ronmental laws on the other, it is little wonderthat businesses resort to a trade-off betweenenvironmental damage and economic gain.They are willing to justify an ‘acceptable’amount of environmental degradation result-ing from their activities through the man-agement policy classed as ‘eco-modernism’(Welford, 2000).

S. BORON AND K. MURRAY

Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Sust. Dev. 12, 65–73 (2004)

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Much of the strategy used to counteractenvironmental degradation today has beeninherited, and is built on a ‘legacy of the past’.Both the list of environmental impacts and theways of dealing with them have been moldedby history. Problems such as acid rain, ozonedepletion and climate change have beentackled on a one-problem–one-solution basis.This has led to the present, problem-orientatedapproach to impact assessment and to the predominantly reactive, pollution controlstrategies in use today.

Such thinking requires drastic revision ifprogress towards true sustainability is to bemade. No-one can control or steer such acomplex multifaceted system as sustainabledevelopment by using only reactive (feedback)control loops; the time-delays, measured inyears or even decades, are prohibitive.

To achieve sustainability in business, anoverall strategy based on proactive manage-ment, which sets a definitive course towardssustainable development objectives, is indis-pensable. This is not entirely new, for proactivemanagement strategies (Robert, 2000) arefinding ever greater application in industry.Yet, this realization and these applications willnot, in themselves, guarantee the delivery ofsustainable development solutions in business.Not until an absolute level of sustainability isdefined will it be possible to assess the signifi-cance of ‘sustainable development’ venturesand prioritize them accordingly. To simplyseek the more sustainable processing optionson a relative scale (Azapagic and Perdan, 2000)without an absolute reference point is notlikely to produce meaningful long-termresults.

In order to be successful, management has tobe guided by a clear description of the salientfeatures of sustainability and of the definingfeatures of sustainable development, so thatproper objectives can be set.

The proposed definition of an absolute levelof sustainability is something that goes muchfurther than the generalized concepts of theBrundtland definition and is more precise than

the global principles of The Natural Step(Robert, 2000). Both can be viewed more as adirection setting compass, rather than a goalsetting target.

Armed therefore with the further paradigmof an absolute sustainability level to aim for,sustainable development can be put into practice or operationalized in a deliberate andconsistent manner.

Implementation of a fully proactive (feed-forward) management strategy will then be themain driver for the elimination of all forms of environmental and social insults arisingfrom the business activity. With sustainabilitydesigned into the system from the outset, andassuming a suitable management toolkit, anyenvironmental or social problems will be anticipated and the system will steer towardsits target objectives.

This is akin to the Natural Step’s ‘back-casting’, but with respect to a more explicitlydefined and absolute goal rather than thegeneral direction advocated by the four-systemconditions (Robert, 2000).

THE MODEL OF SUSTAINABLEDEVELOPMENT AND SUSTAINABLE PROCESSING

Leading on directly from the Brundtland defi-nition, sustainable development is a system‘for the continuous and indefinite delivery ofwelfare through the meeting of needs’. Theseneeds include ethical and moral aspects as wellas involving environmental and social goodsand services not provided explicitly throughthe economy.

The model of sustainable development presented here is based on two conditions,which have to be fulfilled for the sustainabledevelopment to be true. First, the needs of theindividual and populations have to be met,which is the role of development itself. Second,these needs have to be met in a way that can go on forever, which is the essence of sustainability.

BRIDGING THE UNSUSTAINABILITY GAP

Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Sust. Dev. 12 , 65–73 (2004)

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Sustainable development

Processes and inter-relationships are installedinto the ‘development’ framework (Figure 1),and are operated to meet needs. Environmen-tal and social resources are converted intogoods and services, which are then made avail-able to populations and individuals. For thedevelopment to be sustainable, the processesinstalled within the framework have to be ableto go on indefinitely. They have to be sustain-able in themselves.

Sustainable processing

What makes a process sustainable and what needsto be done in order to allow a process to fulfill its‘welfare generating’ function forever?

This question cannot be answered directly interms of sustainability itself, because it is a lackof sustainability (or an unsustainability) thatmanifests itself most readily, as an environ-mental or social insult. Such a lack of sustain-ability is much easier to identify and deal with

in practice and this concept of unsustainabilitywill therefore be used in the definition of sustainable processing.

In summary therefore, a process, or a ‘wayof doing things’, is unsustainable when itundermines the environmental, social or man-ufactured resource inputs on which it depends(primary unsustainability), or on which otherprocesses depend (secondary unsustainability)(Figure 2).

An unsustainable process can be said tocause resource availability infringements(RAIs) in one way or another, and converselya sustainable process is a ‘way of doing things’that has no side effects. Sustainable develop-ment, therefore, is a welfare generating systemmade up of processing routes that have nodemonstrable unsustainabilities.

Sustainability impact criteria

In the model of sustainable development aspresented, resource availability infringement(RAI) is taken as the fundamental criterion for environmental and social impact.

This is not the traditional historical impactderived from environmental insults such asglobal warming and acid rain. The RAIsdescribe impacts relative to the wider aspectsof sustainability because they directly identifyeffects that undermine the process inputsrequired to maintain process viability. Theseare pivotal to sustainable development andsustainability as described in Figures 1 and 2.The traditional impact list is more remote as itis restricted to environmental insults thatignore, for example, soil and water availability,climate stability and social equity.

Sustainable development requires the con-servation and enhancement of the ‘life-giving’resources, which are all crucial inputs to theprocessing network of the economy. The list isgenerated by considering the capital input cat-egories given in Figure 2, plus other factorscontributing to the development scheme ofFigure 1. It includes inherent environmentaland social resource features, as well as the



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ProcessingInfrastructurethe way we do

need satisfaction

Social and Ecological Resources

+ Services

population

distribution

goods + services

Sustainable Development

requires that this structure

and its links be maintained for

ever

Poverty

is a lack of need

satisfaction

results from the breaking

of links

Figure 1. Sustainable development schema. Develop-ment is the means by which resources of all types, including goods and services, are made available to populations and individuals to meet their needs. Theprocesses and distribution system installed must be ableto go on for ever if they are to be sustainable. Sustainabledevelopment is made up of sustainable processing roules

material, structural and organizational capitalresources that have been produced through theeconomy itself.

Resource availability infringement link diagrams

The central feature of unsustainability is thenegative side effect of processing expressed asa causal link between the process and an RAI.

Processes that are unsustainable will usuallyhave a whole array of RAIs associated withthem. These can be gathered together in onediagram to provide a concise picture of the unsustainability profile of the processing route being considered (Boron and Murray,submitted).

This source process and resource availabilityinfringement link diagram, or SPARAILdiagram, itemizes the unsustainabilities ascause/effect chains (Figure 3).

It is important here to note that the entireoperation from raw material acquisition all theway to process output assimilation by the environment constitutes one continuous andintegral whole. The various parts of the entire system, cradle to grave, are totally inter-dependent and must be treated as such by theanalysis. To cover this, a whole array ofSPARAIL profiles is necessary.

The list of links shown in these diagrams is not exhaustive and will expand as the RAI idea is refined and extended to includenon-inventory sources and causes. A particularstrength of the SPARAIL construction is the ease with which non-inventory ‘policy’items (e.g. purchasing and investment) can be accommodated into the link structure as causes of RAIs alongside the traditional inventory items of material and energy flows.



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Secondary unsustainabilities

Production

Process/

National

Economy

KN Ecological Capital RESOURCE

1. Raw materials

2. Assimilative capacity

3. Life support context

KH Human Capital RESOURCE

1. Individual

2. Social/

organizational

KM Manufactured Capital RESOURCE

negative

side-

effects

Goods and

services

Primary unsustainabilities

Figure 2. Process unsustainability. The outputs of any process includes both the desired outcomes (products, services,etc.) and side effects. These are often detrimental to other processes (secondary unsustainability) or to the process itself

(primary unsustainability). In all cases the availability of resources is undermined by the side-effects

To summarize therefore, a processing unsus-tainability is shown to exist when a causal linkcan be demonstrated between the process andan RAI. Traditional impacts are often involvedin the cause/effect chain but rarely figure asthe bottom line, for example, climate stabilityinfringement is contributed to by the enhancedgreenhouse effect, but is also affected by defor-estation (Figure 3).

THE MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE

The Brundtland Report in the Tokyo Declara-tion (World Commission on Environment andDevelopment, 1987), stresses the need for ‘allcountries’ to ‘adopt the objective of sustainabledevelopment as the overriding goal’ for a pros-perous, just and secure future. Sweden forexample is doing this (Rowledge et al., 1999;Petersen, 1995) and the Swedish socio-

economic framework is actively being alignedwith sustainable development objectives. This makes it so much easier to ‘go for’ sus-tainability in business as a priority. In theabsence of such a national strategy, the busi-ness dilemma persists unmitigated, makingthe corporate management challenge all themore demanding.

Total sustainability – the management goal

Regardless of socioeconomic opinions and con-straints, however, the challenge of sustainabledevelopment in business is a reality, which has still to be recognized and met.

There is no such thing as ‘almost’ sustainabledevelopment, but it is possible to get varyingdegrees of sustainability. A process can becomeincreasingly sustainable, as its SPARAILprofile is progressively reduced and the sustainability gap is closed (Figure 4). Real



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Figure 3. Source process and resource availability infringement link (SPARAIL) diagram for power generation using the combustion of fossil resources. Each link path identifies an unsustainability of this processing route

sustainable development, however, can onlybe true when the gap is fully closed. This real-ization is of fundamental importance in thefield of environmental management.

It is a paradigm that constitutes a veritablemilestone on the learning curve towards sus-tainable development: a learning curve verysimilar to the one already traveled (Crosby,1989) in the quest to manage quality. In thiscontext, it is interesting to note that the qualityrevolution only became possible when totalquality was the overriding goal (Crosby, 1989).

All this leads to the inescapable conclusionthat the definition of an upper limit of sus-tainability is indispensable to a managementsystem that seeks to deliver sustainable development.

To date, many companies have already integrated their quality and environmentalmanagement systems (Rowledge et al., 1999).But, no one, as far as we know, has tried to usea total sustainability goal in the way that thetotal quality has been used.

Defining such a total sustainability ‘ceiling’as a reference will allow a proper assessmentof the significance of any improvement mea-sures undertaken. It will provide a muchneeded reality check with regard to thedetailed strategy for sustainable developmentbeing undertaken.

The management challenge then is to takethe present unsustainable processing routeswithin business and to guide them to total sustainability along a maximum improvementpath (Figure 4): not unlike the procedure sug-gested by the TNS framework (Robert, 2000).

The toolkit

Any environmental management programbegins with a stock taking exercise, to establishthe environmental problems associated withthe operation. Both this and the improvementaction, which follows, depend on the contextof the exercise, which in turn is dictated by per-ception. Old-world perceptions will produceold-world solution strategies, which have notmet with much success to date (Anon., 2000).

To make sustainable development happen inpractice therefore, the following steps arerequired.

(i) Reorientation of perception to accommo-date paradigm shifts including the adop-tion of sustainable development as theoverriding goal.

(ii) Benchmarking the current state of un-sustainability, which means(a) the definition of a sustainable pro-

cessing route from the perspective offactory operations (cradle to grave)and

(b) a determination of the current andultimate sustainability gap (SPARAILdiagrams).

(iii) The mapping out of the optimumimprovement path and its implementa-tion, which entails the following.(a) The creation of processing property

databases, including mass and energyflows and other features.

(b) The creation of legal, processing andenvironmental requirement lists.

(c) The development and enactment of animprovement strategy.

(d) The adoption of a management frame-work to organize and monitor all theseprocedures.



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Figure 4. The management challenge. Management ischarged with taking an operation which is unsustainableas far as it can towards sustainability as quickly as pos-sible. To do so requires the adoption of total sustainabil-ity as a goal. An equivalent sustainable processing route

represents the ceiling of the procedure

A combination of an EMS (ISO14001) and lifecycle assessment (LCA) procedures is capableof providing the tools to cover the majority ofthese listed requirements. However, withoutsome mechanism for the inclusion of sustain-ability criteria within these tools the toolkit,and in particular the EMS, remains an emptyvessel.

To make the toolkit work for sustainability,a suitable criterion needs to be installed withinthe toolkit framework, which will indicatewhen sustainability has been achieved withinthe processing route being considered.

This can be done through the use of RAI,which, when linked to a processing feature,will actually indicate an ‘unsustainability’ ofthe processing route. The SPARAIL profilemade up of the whole array of processingproperties (causes) linked to RAIs (effects)defines the ‘sustainability gap’ (Figure 4),while its elimination is the goal of the management procedure.

A combination of EMS, LCA and SPARAILtogether with the explicit goal of total sustain-ability will then form the toolkit necessary forthe delivery of sustainable processing and ultimately the practical implementation of sus-tainable development in a business operation.

Toolkit demarcation

Each element of the toolkit has its particularrole to play. The EMS fulfills the familiar organizational and iterative requirements andprovides the management framework whichembraces all the legal processing and environ-mental aspects of the operation.

The achievement of total sustainability, asexpressed through the elimination of theSPARAIL profile, is fed as an operational con-dition into both the EMS and the LCA, andspecific targets for the achievement of total sustainability then follow.

The LCA, which is installed as a procedureinto the EMS, provides the database (inven-tory), and the impact assessment, which iscarried out relative to total sustainability,

through the use of SPARAIL profiles. These arethen systematically minimized and finallyeliminated through the implementation ofimprovement strategies drawn up within thethird stage (interpretation) of the LCAprocedure.

CONCLUSIONS

Starting from the generalized Brundtland def-inition, we have established sustainable devel-opment as a system for needs satisfaction,which can persist forever, and which dependson sustainable processing.

A sustainable process or way of doing thingsis one that does not undermine the resourceson which it depends. Moving towards sustain-able processing is a crucial part of the man-agement challenge, but in itself is notsustainable development.

Sustainability in practice resides in the eco-nomic/business/processing domain, and theunsustainability of this domain manifests itselfin the ecological and social spheres by under-mining the ecological and social resources.This is the basic and correct inter-relationshipof the three domains.

A tool has been identified that would appearto deliver sustainable development in practice.

The procedure involves the use of a processorientated LCA, within a conventional EMScycle, both of which are operated relative to thegoal of total sustainability.

Total sustainability can only be achievedwhen all negative side effects, social and environmental, have been eliminated and theSPARAIL profiles no longer exist.

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BIOGRAPHY

Stefan Boron and Keith Murray (correspond-ing author) are based in the Chemical Engineering Division, School of Engineeringand Physical Sciences, Heriot Watt University,Riccarton Campus, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK.Tel.: +44 (0)131 451 4719Fax: +44 (0)131 451 3129E-mail: [email protected]



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