It's hard to wrap your mind around
the concept of sustainable innovation and the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) of the
OECD is a nice way to think about it.
So what is sustainability? Well, it
is how you use the earth's resources and what you will leave your grand and
great grandchildren! Sounds simple and rhetorical but is pretty powerful if you think going by the Did you know section on page 1 of this OECD Document:
- 2400 liters or 634 gallons of water are used to make
one hamburger - A billion cell phones are sold every year and we change
cell phones every 18-24 months
Just thinking about the water in all
the hamburgers that we eat and thinking about re-cycling a billion cell phones
every two years at the entire world level is overwhelming and you would feel
that something should be done. And that feeling of wanting to do
something is the "Response" in the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) of the
OECD .
The "State" is the current
situation of so many cell phones and their rapid replacement by consumers as
better and better phones become cheaper. However, unless there is public
protest, awakening of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on the part
of cell phone makers you can't expect the "Pressure" to happen.
But if you look around in the US you
find that for auto tires and car batteries the old ones are taken back for
recycling, sometimes with a small fee when you buy new tires or batteries. It
is not entirely clear in the messaging by tire companies and auto battery
makers, whether they are improving the composition of their products via their supply chain to reduce
environmental damage in disposal.
This improvement of sustainability
of existing products at the organizational level is sustainable innovation
that is the "Response" motivated by the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) framework. Contact StratoServe.