approach (the Natural Step), and it
engaged multiple stakeholders in its
development. The Natural Step’s
framework provides four system conditions that must exist in order to create a sustainable society or
organization. They are as follows:
In a sustainable society...
organics, distribution, governance, climate change, waste, water, energy, packaging and consumer education. Each of the areas has an
ideal end-state to work toward. For example, in the area of climate
change, the goal for the Declaration is to: “strive to actively reduce all
production, storage, processing and retail practices that create greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.” And to “
...mea-sure the carbon footprint of our operations and strive to achieve
carbon-neutrality in all of our business practices.”
1. nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of
substances extracted from the
earth’s crust;
After adopting the framework, we gathered data to determine our
baseline and then performed a gap analysis to understand where we
2. nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of
substances produced by society;
3. nature is not subject to systematically increasing degradation by
physical means and, in that society,
4. people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their
needs.
Using these four principles as a
base, the Declaration created an action plan for continual improvement
in the following areas of operation:
By redesigning granola bar
packaging, Nature’s Path cut out
33,950 lbs. of paperboard,
corrugated and metalized film per
year. The smaller size also means
that 76 more boxes of bars can fit
on each pallet, resulting in a 39
percent decrease in trucking needs
and 114,499 lbs. less GHGs created
al, LLC
from shipping.
