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John Elkington recalled his famous triple bottom line model, much better known as the triple P-model, in June 2018 (1). Very few people are aware of that and organizations keep proclaiming they are following the People, Planet, Profit trilogy of a recalled model. John Elkington observed that his model was being misused and that the planet was suffering heavily under the focus on profit, the single bottom line. His objective of creating a model leading to a more balanced approach to business with respect for nature was not working. Given the current state of the planet, one can only conclude that this was a visionary observation. In this article, we will show that our current approach to sustainable development is not sustainable on our finite and vulnerable planet. We will need a new definition and an approach focusing on the quality of all life to guarantee a long-term successful future for organizations and society at large.

The State of Spaceship Earth

Buckminster Fuller introduced the term “Spaceship Earth” in his book in 1969 (2) and it has never been more relevant than today. Spaceship Earth is a very special spaceship, because it holds a biosphere that contains all known life in the universe. One would think that we do our utmost to keep that valuable spaceship in a good condition, but the current data is showing a different picture. One of the most encompassing models describing the state of the planet is the “Planetary Boundaries System”, developed by the Stockholm Resilience Center (3). In this model nine critical characteristics and their boundaries for safe operation have been defined. Together, they describe the health of planet Earth. This article shows the latest results and the conclusion is that 6 out of the 9 vital systems for a good functioning of our spaceship are out of specification. As a quality professional imagine the following situation: a production supervisor comes to you and says that parts are ready to be shipped to the customer but six out of the nine critical characteristics on the drawing are out of specification. His question is a simple one: “May we ship the parts?” What would your answer be?

The Unbalanced Triple P

In the trilogy People, Planet, Profit the people and planet aspects are to a large extent qualitative in nature. The profit part is quantitative and easily quantified and as such always prioritized, especially as the benefits (more profit) show up immediately. As an example: by cutting a few hectares of the 6.7 million square kilometers Amazon forest, an immediate profit can be created for farmers putting cattle on the cleared area. Given the choice, the forest will always be cut because what it has to offer is much more difficult to calculate and the negatives of cutting it, will only show up much later. This one decision is not a problem, but this happens thousands of times and each time the forest loses. That is how a rain forest gets cut.

Any system that sees sustainable development as a combination of people, planet and profit will always lead to the destruction of nature. That is true for triple P, for the UN SDG’s (Sustainable development Goals), for the ESG system (Environmental, Social, Governance) and so many others. This is illustrated in table 1 for the SDG system.

This table shows that if the entire world population were to live like the people in the most sustainably developed countries live, we would roughly need four planets to fulfill people’s needs. There is only one. This problem is directly related to the 1987 United Nations Brundtland commission definition: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

This definition only talks about one form of life (human) and it does not define or restrict the “needs” of that lifeform. In a quantitative, growth driven economic system additional “needs” have to be constantly created.

A Different View: Holistic Quality Leadership

As shown in § 2, we cannot continue with business as usual. Any new system will need to combine two things: focus on all forms of life as they are all intertwined, and prioritize the qualitative aspects of planet and people. Today the planet is sacrificed and people have been turned into human resources to maximize profit, whereas profit should be there to help both planet and people to thrive.

A new definition: “Sustainable development means that the present generation takes the necessary actions to pass on our unique biosphere to the next generation in a better state than it was received. And so on …” (6).

This definition encompasses all life and is as such holistic by nature. It sets a clear target and can be measured by using indicators linked to the most critical problems like biodiversity loss and climate change and their corresponding drivers. This is obviously a macro level definition, but it also shows a way for organizations to contribute.

Companies embracing business excellence aim to become the best in the world, holistic thinking aims for a long term thriving planet and all life on it. Holistic quality leadership can combine the two. To make it happen, quality can play a major part and is introduced here as a working tool to achieve true sustainability.

Through improvement methods like Lean Six sigma, Root Cause Analysis and so many others, quality has already made a large contribution to making organizations more sustainable. However, these efforts are mainly directed at reducing harm to the environment. That is fine and must continue, but given the current state of the biosphere it is not good enough. Organizations must move towards holistic quality leadership and contribute to improving the global ecosystem. Actions to be taken can be:

• Take up “Future Generations” and “Earth Biosphere” as interested parties in your quality management system (QMS), evaluating their needs and expectations and translating this throughout the organization. Use it in your risk analysis methods and in your design reviews and verifications.
• Use double materiality thinking to evaluate the risks and opportunities associated with current biosphere status. The effect of climate change on business will be, and already is, much more critical than generally thought. One of the key elements is water, both too much (flooding) and not enough (drought). Investing in process water recycling is an example of combining profit with sustainability.
• Treat Earth’s biosphere as a shareholder. One way of doing this is to reserve a number of shares for organizations that work on restoring ecosystems. That can be local or global but by doing this you relate the success of the organization (being good in the world) to ecosystem restoration (being good for the world).
• Many of our economic activities are about adapting nature. We have to rethink technology and development to be adaptive to nature, so natural processes go hand in hand with economic development. Low tech, low energy solutions are cost effective and much longer lasting.

Conclusions

The data shows that an approach to sustainability that is based on balancing economic, social and environmental aspects, is leading to a deterioration of ecosystems. When faced with a choice, satisfying human requirements always prevails over care for nature. Only by creating a holistic definition of sustainability, putting Earth’s biosphere at the center, can an authentic sustainability be obtained. Focusing on quality of all life and using quality methods to achieve this, is the way to go.