Sweden has made headlines for running out of trash.
This is not the only way that Sweden is leading the way in green living.
A non-profit in Sweden called The Natural Step has created a framework that’s tried and true.
The creator of The Natural Step, Karl-Henrik Robèrt is a medical doctor, whose work with cancer patients put him in direct contact with people in moments of life and death.
He says that the way people come together when their survival is evidence of the vast goodness of people.
That survival instinct and the kindness is what he accessed in creating The Natural Step.
When Karl-Henrik Robèrt started outlining a definition for sustainability, he gave his work to professors who were experts in areas other than his own.
Tempted as professors will be, they each gave heavy criticism to Robèrt's “truth.”
He revised the document multiple times and kept sending it back for critique.
Eventually a consensus was reached, resulting in the four system conditions of sustainability, which was taught in schools, distributed to every household, supported by the king and tested in businesses.
The conditions are that:
“in a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing …
- … concentrations of substances from the earth’s crust (such as fossil CO2 and heavy metals),
- … concentrations of substances produce[d] by society (such as antibiotics and endocrine disruptors),
- … degradation by physical means (such as deforestation and draining of groundwater tables),
…and in that society …
4. … there are no structural obstacles to people’s health, influence, competence, impartiality and meaning.”
Simply put, these four principles aim to not produce or extract beyond the capacity of the Earth to create and to not let that negatively impact the quality of life for people.
This framework is largely negatively worded: a series of “do nots” to follow.
An interesting byproduct of this structure is room for imagination and innovation.
To implement this framework, The Natural Step employs an “ABCD Method.”
ABCD stands for “Awareness and visioning,” “baseline assessment,” “creative solutions” and “decide on priorities.”
The idea is to create a vision for the desired outcome and then give people the opportunities to resolve that creative tension by coming up with strategies to reach their goal.
This is called “backcasting.”
Backcasting makes an impossible-seeming concept into a real possibility
The Natural Step has been enormously successful.
Their website boasts, “since 1989, we have worked with thousands of corporations, municipalities, academic institutions and not-for-profit organizations that have proven that moving strategically toward sustainability leads to new opportunities, reduced costs and dramatically reduced ecological and social impacts.” (http://www.thenaturalstep.org/)
Nike calls the framework from The Natural Step its North Star.
By being forward-looking, companies have had economic gain by adopting principles of sustainability.
“We want to help organizations to succeed better economically, not in spite of showing consideration for social and ecological systems, but actually by virtue of so doing,” (https://www.sustainabilityprofessionals.org/files/Insight%20Karl%20Henrik%20Robert.pdf)
Principles of sustainability can lead businesses into the future and help them succeed socially and fiscally.
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