Truth be told, if any piece of a system is sustainable it has a natural sustaining effect on the other parts. By sustainable I mean the true definition of the word, the capacity to endure. This can be applied to any system, natural or human-made.
For example, if we build a civilization that is dependent on non-renewable energy sources, we’ve built a unsustainable civilization, one that cannot endure. The same is true of business. A business built on top of an uncertain foundation might benefit from rapid growth while that foundation holds but when it fails, watch the greedy bastards that set it up jump off like rats leaving a sinking ship, before it sinks.
This is actually the main reason all the dominos in our economic game fell in sequence. When a big one drops, (like home values), other segments that were dependent on unsustainable resources, (like borrowed capital), saw their foundations crumble. Since so many small businesses were built on the foundation of borrowed home equity, we naturally saw the failure of many small businesses when the home value bubble burst.
I was surprised to see corporate giant AT&T running ahead with a renewable energy program. This shows how they must understand how environmental sustainability will help to ensure their economic sustainability. They will be keeping their networks alive with solar power.
It would be nice to see more regular folks embrace this business strategy and apply it to their own lives. Imagine how sustainable our civilization would be if we were all a bit more self-reliant.