STUDENTS' CORNER - 135

Sustainability means simply doing anything that helps you to maintain yourself at a certain standard without damaging the interests of the future generations.  Say, you have now the access to clean air and portable water, so on. And whatever you do, personally and professionally, must not deprive the future human beings of the access to clean air and portable water. It boils down to the basic point of protecting the environment which, unfortunately, we are doing many things that kills environmental purity. To put it differently, man has almost lost the essential sense of social responsibility.  To promote his own interest, he does not seem to hesitate to inflict damage on anything, any one and anywhere. Slowly but steadily, he has spoiled the environment to such an extent that unless the dangerous process of polluting the environment in all fronts man has no future in the sense that he will have to struggle immensely for basic water, air and even healthy food.

Sustainability covers two basic facts:  Talking about business now, which is our immediate interest, it deals with its impact on environment and on society. Any business that considers and commits itself in its own way to take care of environment and society will ultimately thrive; it will sustain itself and while sustaining itself it will help future generations as well to sustain themselves.

Simply, doing good back to society is the breath of sustainability.  Active environmentalists and social reformers look upon the sustainability as the most urgent fact of the day. In fact, the United Nations focuses on environment and takes endless efforts to promote environmental awareness among the citizens of the world.

Sustainability in supply chain management expects ‘green’ in every aspect of the business.  We will go rather deeper in the question of sustainability discussing the ways and means of turning the business into sustainable enterprise.

Analysts have talked about four ways that render your business activities environmentally friendly; that is, the ways that help achieve sustainability in supply chain.  We shall study those steps in our next session.