Beatrice Otto picks the best books on sustainability and sustainable design
Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism: Creating the next industrial revolution, Back Bay Books, 2000, ISBN 0316353000
The book that explains why you need to bother with sustainable design and business. A broad, inspiring sweep of what is being done and what is possible, with dozens of excellent examples. It's an 'if you read nothing else, read this' kind of book.
Stuart Hart, Capitalism at the Crossroads, Wharton School Publishing, 2005, ISBN 01314 39871
Hart is one of the key academics looking at sustainable business. This book examines how to create sustainable products that are integral to business success. An easy read of a few hundred pages, it’s one of the better books on sustainable business strategy to come out recently.
Joseph J Romm, Cool Companies: How the best businesses boost profits and productivity by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Island Press, 2006, ISBN 1597261165
A great one for getting the business case across through lots of superb 'how to' examples showing companies cutting costs while reducing environmental impacts. Concentrates more on process than product.
Sissel Waage, ‘Reconsidering business from a systems perspective: the shift to sustainability-oriented enterprises and financial services’, in Ants, Galileo, & Gandhi: Designing the Future of Business through Nature, Genius and Compassion, Greenleaf Publishing, 2003, pp. 40-60, ISBN 18747 19713
A clear overview of approaches, principles and key tools in the sustainable business armoury, it sums up concepts such as ‘natural capitalism’, and approaches such as ‘eco-efficiency’ or the Natural Step, while also showing how many points of contact there are between sustainability and core business concerns.
Charles O Holliday, Stephan Schmidheiny, Philip Watts, Walking the Talk: The business case for sustainable development, Greenleaf Publishing, 2002, ISBN 18747 19500
This is an excellent starting point for persuading people that sustainability is compatible with business success. Not too long, clearly laid out, and backed up by 67 mini case studies, the arguments are well presented.
Helen Lewis and John Gertsakis, with Tim Grant, Nicola Morelli and Andrew Sweatman, Design + Environment: a global guide to designing greener goods , Greenleaf Publishing, 2001, ISBN 18747 19438
A good general introduction to sustainable design, suitable for designers and engineers.
Alastair Fuad-Luke, The Eco-design Handbook: A complete sourcebook for the home and office, Thames & Hudson, 2005, ISBN 05002 85217
A great pleasure to browse, read, flick through. Bursting with colour illustrations of hundreds of products and materials, this is a delightful starting point, offering ideas and guidance, as well as an excellent contacts list at the back of suppliers and others.
Wolfgang Wimmer and Rainer Züst, Ecodesign Pilot: Production investigation, learning and optimization tool for sustainable product development with CD-ROM, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001, ISBN 14020 10907
A slim little volume written in relatively human language. Good for designers or others who actually have to DO sustainable design, rather than just influence it.
The Natural Step for Business: Wealth, ecology and the evolutionary corporation, Brian Nattrass and Mary Altomare, New Society Publishers, 1999, ISBN 0 86571 384 7
An introduction to The Natural Step framework and how (and why) companies have adopted it - good case studies.
Kenneth Geiser, Material Matters: Towards a sustainable materials policy, MIT Press, 2001, ISBN 02625 7148X
No good if you want help with materials selection for a given design, this is nevertheless a comprehensive overview of materials and sustainability. It should be of interest to policymakers and others with an interest in materials. Although an academic book, it's more readable than most..
Below are some journals dedicated to various aspects of sustainability. However, the subject is also often dealt with in an engaging way in various mainstream business newspapers, magazines and journals. In particular, the Financial Times, Economist and, less frequently, the Harvard Business Review, are worth keeping an eye on.
Business Strategy and the Environment covers the strategic angle of how environmental concerns affect business.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5329?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
Green Futures
A bi-monthly magazine about sustainability in business and the public sector. Good general read with lots of news and well illustrated, readable articles.
www.greenfutures.org.uk
Greener Management International is good for business managers above all. More readable than some of the others.
http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/gmi/gmihome.htm
International Journal of Environmentally Conscious Design and Manufacturing - has more of an eco-design focus than some of those below.
www.ijecdm.com
Journal of Cleaner Production
‘Cleaner production’ (CP) is an all encompassing term which tends to have a far wider scope than just production. The CP crowd have spent a long time trying to define it, but that doesn’t matter, there’s a lot of overlap with sustainable design.
www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
Journal of Industrial Ecology is the key journal on the subject of Industrial Ecology (putting the Marmite factory next to the brewery, facetiously, or more seriously, trying to make industrial systems operate like ecosystems, more sleek and cyclic than linear).
www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/jiec?cookieSet=1
The ENDS Report is a good source of news on sustainability issues, including industry and legislation news.
www.endsreport.com
The Journal of Sustainable Product Design is a Quarterly journal from the Centre for Sustainable Design, with lots of case studies of business sustainability. Can be received in paper or online versions.
www.cfsd.org.uk/journal
Design for Environment Guide, National Research Council of Canada, 2000. Can be downloaded from their website.
www.nrc.ca/dfe
Electrical and Electronic Practical Ecodesign Guide, Julio Rodrigo and Francesco Castells, with Juan Carlos Alonso, University Rovira I Virgili, 2002, ISBN 84 8424 010 X
Five Strategies for Business Reinvention: The development of sustainable products and services, Jacquelyn Ottman, 1999
A straightforward article on sustainable design and marketing strategies. Can be downloaded from the following website.
www.greenmarketing.com/articles/Five_strategies.html
Business and Sustainable Development: a global guide, one of the most comprehensive overviews of sustainability and business. Provides an introduction to all the jargon and standards, with short case studies. Excellent starting point.
www.bsdglobal.com
Green Seal, free guides to sustainability and various products and materials - these reports are clear and concise, giving straightforward facts and also a list of suppliers of more sustainable alternatives (tend to be US-based however).
www.greenseal.org
Guides to sustainable supplies
Free guides to sustainability and various products and materials – these reports are models of clarity and succinctness, giving straightforward facts and a list of suppliers (which tend to be US-based however). More useful for guidance than for supplier lists therefore.
www.greenseal.org