Our Jim Montague is putting the final touches on April's cover story about sustainability and the machine builder. He's planning to make the case that, in similar fashion to the way this industry evolved with machine safety, making sustainability a part of machine design saves money.
As an indicator of the shape of things to come, KPMG just published Expect the Unexpected: Building Business Value in a Changing World. The report shows that population growth, exploitation of natural resources, climate change and other factors are putting the world on a development trajectory that is not sustainable.
In other words, if we fail to alter our patterns of production and consumption, things will begin to go badly wrong. How wrong and for whom, is also explored in the report. The sectors analyzed were Airlines; Automobiles; Beverages; Chemicals; Electricity; Food Producers; Industrial Metals & Mining; Mining; Marine Transportation; Oil & Gas; Telecommunications & Internet.
The data argues that the external environmental costs of business operations are doubling every 14 years, a rate that is unlikely to be sustainable even in the medium-term
You can read a copy of the 20 page executive summary here.
The full 175 page report can be found on the KMPG web site.
If you'd like to give Jim your thoughts to include in his article, you still have a little time.
