How do we make this important shift in thinking beyond sustainability to regeneration?
Imagine you have a bank account with an initial deposit of cash. “Sustainability” as it’s often used today is like trying to keep your account balance from dropping by carefully managing your spending – but you’re not adding any new deposits. Eventually, no matter how careful you are, you’ll run out of money.
Now think of Earth as a living system – like a garden. True sustainability would actually mean working with nature’s cycles where nothing is truly “used up” – everything is transformed and renewed. But many of our current “sustainable” business practices are more like that bank account – they’re just trying to slow down how quickly we use things up.
Regeneration takes this further. Instead of just trying not to damage the environment, we actively help restore and enhance it. It’s like turning that garden into a food forest – where each plant, animal, and microorganism contributes to building better soil, cleaner water, and more abundant life.
Here are some concrete examples:
– Instead of just reducing carbon emissions (sustainability), we can restore forests and rebuild healthy soils that naturally capture carbon (regeneration)
– Rather than just conserving water (sustainability), we can restore watersheds and wetlands that naturally purify and replenish water systems (regeneration)
– Instead of just recycling materials (sustainability), we can design products and systems that create no waste because everything feeds back into natural or technical cycles (regeneration)
The key shift is recognizing that humans don’t have to be a destructive force – we can be a positive part of Earth’s living systems, helping them become even richer and more resilient than before. This means redesigning our technologies, economies, and communities to work more like nature does – where every “waste” is food for something else, and the system as a whole becomes more abundant over time.
Little Book of Big Eco Actions: Seven Generation Sustainability
“If you’re not doing something on this list then what’s the point?”