I’ve just seen a quote on marketeer Seth Godin’s blog, attributed to Carnegie:

“Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors……Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory.”

There seems to be two approaches to sustainability – technology oriented and people oriented – and I always believe that the AND is important – you have to do both (hence my brainstorming tool).

But fundamentally everything is about people. People create technology, people implement technology, people operate technology. When a resource has a cost – that is a societal (peoples’) value – you could argue that nature would put a higher value on a kilo of dung than a kilo of gold. So we always have to look at sustainability through the human lens.

I have a saying: the barrier to sustainability is six inches wide – the width of the space between our ears.