Articles by John Elkington
John Elkington is cofounder and chief entrepreneur at SustainAbility and blogs at johnelkington.com.
All Articles
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Has the corporate-responsibility movement lost sight of the big picture?
Just as people sailing full-tilt into an iceberg zone can get distracted rearranging deck chairs, those of us advocating corporate responsibility may be guilty of spending too much time fiddling with the nuances of the language that describes our work. We do this even as abrupt climate change, pandemics, and other mega-trends float, quiet but […]
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Will cleantech turn mercenaries into missionaries?
Lately, politicians from Tony Blair to comrade-in-arms George Bush have raced to embrace green technology — at least on the surface. But is there substance behind their carefully crafted words? Venture capitalists are seeing green. Image: iStockphoto. Well, while government funds may be slow to swing around to so-called “cleantech,” venture capitalists are suddenly sniffing […]
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A little time in the lab could teach big business how to help the poor
Recent weeks have seen surprisingly effective demonstrations in support of animal testing in SustainAbility’s home city of London, under the catchy title of “Pro-Test.” Will support for the oft-reviled practice catch on? We aren’t sure, but it made us think. If we humans are animals, is there ever an argument for treating people as laboratory […]
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What green looks like to the world’s emerging economies
Give a child a hammer, they say, and everything is seen as a nail — or at least in need of a good pounding. Likewise, give an environmentalist a brush loaded with green paint, and she or he may set to turning everything one verdant hue. Pretty, perhaps, but problems can arise when well-off painters […]
