John Ehrenfeld’s excellent book, Sustainability by Design, should be the starting point for anyone thinking about sustainability. With his business, academic and scientific backgrounds, he stresses a non-mechanical approach to the subject and talks about the importance of being over doing.
Many in the business are starting from the point of view of curing what’s wrong, rather than from the point of view of starting from the heart. Here is his view of sustainability in a nutshell (apologies to my colleague John for the graphic, adapted from his printed in the book).