The term sustainability is now widely used. At a recent trade exhibition I attended, virtually every stand was seeking to demonstrate how its products or practices were sustainable but what exactly does the term mean, as it seems to be applied in many different ways. I always believe in starting with a dictionary definition and my version says “Sustainability is a societal goal that broadly aims for humans to safely co-exist on planet earth.” Well this gets us started but it is clear that we need to get a more complete understanding, certainly if we are to apply it correctly in our own lives and organisations.

Let us take for example a typical UK Golf Club. The first aim of that Club is to be an economically viable business with financial margins sufficient for re-investment and future development. Without this it is not sustainable, and so economic viability is an essential element in sustainability. A further aim of the Club is to, wherever possible, protect the environment and seek to ensure that operations undertaken have as little as possible impact upon its surroundings. This it can do through such things as re-cycling practices, looking to reduce carbon emissions from machinery used and other activities and, in managing the surrounds to the golf course, looking how it might encourage biodiversity and insect life. So in addition to economics, a second element in sustainability is the environment and its conservation.

We now have two essential elements of sustainability but a third remains and that is impact upon society. The Golf Club needs to deliver a first class product to its visitors and members but also seek to minimise its impact upon those who live close by and ensure its staff are safe, as well of course those who use its facilities. Therefore we can best consider sustainability as having three main parts. These are often referred to as the three pillars – economic viability, environmental protection and social equity. I recognise that I am in danger of getting too complicated and academic but I do think that before we can consider sustainability properly and decide how we can contribute to a sustainable agenda, we need to properly understand what it means. The dangers of not doing so are that we look to do something which may seem to be sustainable in one element but be thoroughly detrimental to the others.