- World Commission on Environment and Development
In Our Common Future (1987)
Enhancing the health and welfare of people and animals, improving both the working and living environment, enriching society and culture and promoting equity, requires co-innovation and committment across a broad range of public and private sectors. Although the notion of sustainable innovation lacks a universally agreed definition, for our purposes and in order to understand what "Sustainable Innovation" is, perhaps it is best to begin by indicating what it is not.
Innovation is not sustainable if its implementation
- Leads to the depletion of non-renewable resources
- Creates or contributes to unnecessary consumption or waste
- Introduces processes or products that utilize energy inefficiently
- Creates waste that is non-recyclable or causes environmental degradation
- Introduces environmental hazards or risks
- Contributes to or requires the exploitation of a workforce anywhere in the supply chain
Sustainable innovation aims to create new products, services or processes that significantly and demonstrably contribute to an improvement in the quality of life for all by reducing environmental impacts through minimal use of natural resources and eliminating the release of toxic substances into the environment. Sustainable innovation brings improvements to the social and environmental nexus of humankind and fosters ecological stewardship, non-domination of nature and justice between generations.