Trees growing on building facades, drinking sea water, growing food indoors, trapping sunlight in the most diverse contraptions, and the list keeps going on. There is no limit to human creativity and that is fantastic because creativity we will need, if not only our present is to be secured, but the future of our descendants as well. Welcome to our blog series Sustainable Business in which we define sustainability and sustainable development, tackle imprecisions or actual misconceptions, and ponder paths such as circular economy to take in business in particular.

Bosco Verticale As A Beacon Of Hope

Before providing you with the customary growing list of links to blog posts in the series, let’s bring up hope first. It is easy to feel gloomy when watching the news, reading dystopias, or being confronted with climate change once again. Predictions are just that though, and each drop of change counts no matter how small it seems at first.

In my childhood, all garbage was thrown into one bin, but in today’s apartment buildings here in Helsinki, we separate paper, cardboard, plastic, industrial glass (pickle jars etc.), metal, compostables, and “landfill”, which is the stuff destined to be burnt up. In school I was taught about recycling, brought home the idea to compost organic waste, and my parents literally laughed at me. Today they are as much in favour of recycling as I am, and horrified they tell stories of how people got rid of old stoves by placing them on the ice until spring. What? Indeed…

As leaders, members, consumers, and in the end humans, inhabitants of this planet, we all need to know more, ask questions, alter habits, and influence those around us to awaken to the importance of sustainable development. Why? There is no Planet B. And if we continue to procreate as we do in the present, our population could be 14 billion strong in 70 years. How would that work? (We were 2,5 billion in 1960.)

Unsplash – Victor – Bosco Verticale

More than one person must have asked themselves who in their right mind would put trees on buildings, not only inside them at ground level, but literally on balconies reaching for the sky. As I first stumbled upon a photograph of this iconic apartment complex called Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) in Milan, Italy, I questioned whether it was real or just a utopia created by an artist.

But there it is, the pair of tree towers, proving that some serious gardening skills combined with fabulous architecture and engineering can make it happen. Bosco Verticale supposedly is the home of 900 trees, 5.000 shrubs and 11.000 perennial plants (lazy source) smack in the middle of an urban landscape.

What next? This, in my opinion, is the only sensible question.

The Sustainable Business Blog Series

• What Sustainability Is And Is Not (24.12.2021)

We’ve made a collection of all our blog series, so please head over to that page if you like reading!

Last edited: 22 December 2021.