the Triple Bottom Line

The new fad in business! If you pretend that recycling makes you an environmental steward and that your workers are real people, then you can make more money as a corporate business owner! Invest in your community and they will invest in you!

I was reading over some of the plans towards making Grand Rapids more sustainable. One thing that kept coming up was the Triple Bottom Line. A new buzz phrase in the business community that says that success should also be measured by social/ethical and environmental performance, its basis is the 3 P's: People, Planet, and Profit
"Companies as significant as AT&T, Dow Chemicals, Shell, and British Telecom, have used 3BL terminology in their press releases, annual reports and other documents."*
Some Critics say "the rhetoric is badly misleading, and may in fact provide a smokescreen behind which firms can avoid truly effective social and environmental reporting and performance."*

The fact of the matter is that my visions for social and environmental responsibility are starkly different from that which a CEO of AT&T or Dow Chemicals will propose.

Sounds like just another way to cover up the irreversible social and environmental impacts of large businesses and industries.

My roommate reminds me how our culture tends to name things after what we destroy.   Much like these corporations using Social and environmental sustainability as a facade to that which they exploit.

So I guess my bottom lines is that if Shell or Down Chemicals are token examples of Social and Environmental responsibility in the Triple Bottom Line movement then I call Bullshit.

*http://www.businessethics.ca/3bl/triple_bottom_line_abstract.html