Over the last twenty years, progressive companies and governments have developed a number of initiatives that have started to open societies up to the ecological impacts associated with their actions. Where these have been fully implemented they add up to a good start, even though they have arrived in a very unco-ordinated fashion.

But in general, the initiatives taken up to date have only minimised the level of ecological impact, sometimes only marginally and/or temporarily. In terms of the development of substantially more sustainable lifestyles and workpractices, we haven't even begun yet.

Well designed sustainments show us that major structural change is possible. They reveal how unnecessarily limited the following are: