The Upcycle: Beyond Cradle to Cradle
By William McDonough, Michael Braungart (2013)
William McDonough & Michael Braungart’s newest book, The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability — Designing for Abundance, is an updated version of their manifesto Cradle to Cradle, published over a decade ago. The Upcycle goes one step beyond the theory behind Cradle to Cradle: Rather than continuously reusing materials in a closed-loop system as proposed in the first book, The Upcycle suggests that humans can have a net positive effect.
The Upcycle rejects the idea of merely being ‘less bad’ and proposes that we focus more on creating a positive footprint for future generations. This may seem utopian but the ideas behind this being put into practice are not only possible but, as the authors describe, profitable.
A recurring theme of the book is to ask the question ‘What’s next?’ for the products we create. Often, when recycling products, the recycled product’s quality is not as high as the original, mostly due to the fact that it’s been mixed with other elements during its first lifetime. The authors ask us not only to create products that will be useful for what they are intended but how we can design them to be useful again and again.
Read more about The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability – Designing for Abundance. You can buy the book here.
Flourishing: A Frank Conversation About Sustainability
By John R. Ehrenfeld and Andrew J. Hoffman (2013)
Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability invites you into a conversation between a teacher, John R. Ehrenfeld, and his former student now professor, Andrew J. Hoffman, as they discuss how to create a sustainable world. Unlike virtually all other books about sustainability, this one goes beyond the typical stories that we tell ourselves about repairing the environmental damages of human progress.
Through their dialogue and essays that open each section, the authors uncover two core facets of our culture that drive the unsustainable, unsatisfying, and unfair social and economic machines that dominate our lives. First, our collective model of the way the world works cannot cope with the inherent complexity of today’s highly connected, high-speed reality. Second, our understanding of human behavior is rooted in this outdated model. Driven by the old guard, sustainability has become little more than a fashionable idea. As a result, both business and government are following the wrong path—at best applying temporary, less unsustainable solutions that will fail to leave future generations in better shape.
Read more about Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability. You can buy the book here.
2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years
By Jorgen Randers (2012)
Many authors writing about the future dismiss doubts and contrary opinions, striving with provocative titles such as The End of History and the Last Man (by Francis Fukuyama) or The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (by Ray Kurzweil) to persuade readers that the future they envision is not only plausible but inevitable. Thankfully, Jorgen Randers forgoes this temptation in his new book, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years.
Randers, an expert on business and sustainable development and currently a professor of climate strategy at BI Norwegian Business School, offers a nuanced analysis of the state of the world today and a forecast for global development for the coming decades. It’s not a pretty picture. Writing in the first person, Randers is not shy about discussing his worries about the resource, environmental and societal challenges the world faces. “I have lived my whole adult life worrying about the future,” Randers admits. His candor and expertise, gained over decades of work in sustainable development for businesses and governments, yield a book well worth reading and discussing with colleagues, friends and family.
Read more about The Future May Bring. You can buy the book here.
Climate Capitalism: Capitalism in the Age of Climate Change
By L. Hunter Lovins and Boyd Cohen (2011)
Believe in climate change. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter.
But understand this: the best route to rebuilding our economy, our cities, and our job markets, as well as assuring national security, is doing precisely what you would do if you were scared to death about climate change. Whether you’re the head of a household or the CEO of a multinational corporation, embracing efficiency, innovation, renewables, carbon markets, and new technologies is the smartest decision you can make. It’s the most profitable, too. And, oh yes—you’ll help save the planet.
In Climate Capitalism, L. Hunter Lovins, coauthor of the bestselling Natural Capitalism, and the sustainability expert Boyd Cohen prove that the future of capitalism in a recession-riddled, carbon-constrained world will be built on innovations that cutting-edge leaders are bringing to the market today. These companies are creating jobs and driving innovation.
Climate Capitalism delivers hundreds of in-depth case studies of international corporations, small businesses, NGOs, and municipalities to prove that energy efficiency and renewable resources are already driving prosperity. (Description: Amazon)
You can buy the book here.
Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier
By John Elkington (2012)
In the last century, Astronauts launched into the heavens, in search of new worlds to colonize, their adventures helping to catalyze the evolution of everything from non-stick frying pans and minicomputers to satellite telecommunications. Their work forced our species to recognize that our Earth is a very rare planet indeed and our only home for the foreseeable future. Now a new wave of explorers, adventurers and entrepreneurs is pioneering novel ways to create wealth in tune with the twenty-first century reality of a human population pushing towards 10 billion people by mid-century and with key elements of the planet’s biosphere already coming apart at the seams. These are the Zeronauts.
Featuring contributions by twenty-five of the world’s leading innovators and drawing on interviews and surveys of many more, the book showcases the pioneers that are at the cutting edge of the global sustainability movement, which the author, John Elkginton, has helped create and lead over several decades. Elkington introduces the emerging disciplines of zero-impact design, engineering and management through the personal experiences and reflections of the leading practitioners putting us on a path to a zero impact economy: Zero Risk, Zero Emissions, Zero Pollution and Waste, Zero Biodiversity Loss and Zero Population Growth. Leading Zeronauts explain how they came to wake up to the challenges, they speak about the mistakes they have made along the way and the lessons they have learned in the process, offering their advice on how we can get others to the same point in terms of thinking and action. From this, Elkington distils a concise set of rules for success.
Concluding with recommendations for governments, investors, innovators and educators, the book shares the lessons learned from scores of people worldwide who are helping define the scale of the challenges our species now faces and, crucially, developing and deploying at scale some of the solutions that will provide the building-blocks of tomorrow’s economies and the foundations for some of the future’s greatest fortunes. (Description: Indie Bound)
You can buy the book here.
Sustainable Marketing
by Diane Martin and John Schouten (2011)
As the engine that drives the global economy, marketing leaves an enormous footprint on the environment and society. To help readers make a lasting impression in their marketing efforts, Martin/Schouten provide the concepts behind valuable – and lucrative – sustainable marketing strategies.
This text’s framework – The Natural Step - shows how every marketing decision can be optimized with respect to profits, the natural environmental, and social well-being.
You can buy the book here.
Ethical Marketing and The New Consumer
by Chris Arnold (2009)
Ethical marketing isn’t just about environmentalism; it’s far bigger than that.
This book challenges a lot of conventional thinking and introduces you to a wider range of ethics and the many types of ethical consumers.
You can buy the book here.
Green Marketing and Management: A Global Perspective
by John F. Wasik (1996)
Green Marketing and Management is a timely guide to the complex issues involved in making and selling a product in an environmentally responsible way. It is an essential resource for anyone doing business in today’s environmentally conscious global marketplace.
John F. Wasik, managing director of the New Consumer Institute, believes that doing business with a real commitment to environmental concerns will ultimately reduce costs, increase productivity, and boost profits.
In Green Marketing and Management: A Global Perspective, he offers a complete guide to balancing various corporate and ecological goals and provides hundreds of examples of profitable companies all over the world that already are merging the two seemingly disparate interests with great success. (Amazon review)
You can buy the book here.
Sustainable Marketing: Managerial – Ecological Issues
by Donald A. Fuller (1999)
Sustainable Marketing is structured around the traditional “4Ps” of marketing and explains how marketing mix decisions can and do influence environmental outcomes. Throughout the book, Fuller advocates for conversion of consumption systems to a sustainable paradigm that represents a circular use of resources, not the linear approach that leads to the pollution of ecosystems.
The book’s running theme is that marketers can reinvent strategy and craft “win-win-win” solutions, where customers win (obtaining genuine benefits), organizations win (achieving financial objectives), and ecosystems win (ecosystem functioning is preserved or enhanced). The theme is vividly illustrated by 49 in-text exhibits of successful corporate environmental initiatives. (Description taken from the back of the book jacket.)
You can buy the book here.
Beyond Green Marketing
by Christiane Katharina Murr, VDM (2008)
New approaches for a possible implementation of sustainability in marketing.
Would you like to add a review to this book listing? I can’t find anything that describes the book on any of the sites offering the book for sale. It looks very interesting! What do YOU think?
You can buy the book here.
The Green Marketing Manifesto
by John Grant (2007)
The Green Marketing Manifesto provides a road map on how to organize green marketing effectively and sustainably. It offers a fresh start for green marketing, one that provides a practical and ingenious approach. The book offers many examples from companies and brands who are making headway in this difficult arena, to give an indication of the potential of this route.
John Grant creates a “Green Matrix” as a tool for examining current practice and the practice that the future needs to embrace. This book is intended to assist marketers, by means of clear and practical guidance, through a complex transition towards meaningful green marketing. (Amazon publisher review)
You can buy the book here.
