When it comes to sustainability most business leaders and politicians pick and choose the bits they like so it doesn't interfere with their profits or solve the real problems.

What is sustainability?

The best known and most elegant definition is that from the 1987, 'Our Common Future', report from the World Commission on Environment and Development:

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

It covers the essentials – it's not about living in caves but it is about moderation and self-control: living within our means, and exercising personal responsibility. It wasn't so long ago that parents would make huge sacrifices for the wellbeing of their children and families, but we appear to have created a world, in a very short time, where we sacrifice our children's futures for our own instant gratification. We consume more than our fair share so the poor grow in number and our children and descendants will be left with nothing of real value.

Consumption and Population

At the moment, with 7 billion people, the Earth needs 18 months to regenerate what we consume in just 12. So we already need 1.5 planets just to keep living as we do and this is despite the vast inequalities that let 25,000 people die every day of starvation. So we need to find more resources to stop a billion people from starving and, at the same time, we have billions more who want to live like we do in the developed countries. All the while, the population grows at an alarming rate. We have too many people on this planet and they are all chasing too few resources. So we have all these terrible symptoms bearing down on us: climate change, food shortages, the mass extinction of life, toxic oceans, and soil erosion. And there are just two causes: our excessive consumption and over population. It really isn't complicated – we, in the developed world, either have to live with less or many billions have to die. Yet our business leaders and politicians live with the delusion that we have many planets, perhaps because they love their money and power too much to do anything useful. They look for convoluted, overly complex, 'quick fixes' to treat symptoms and usually create a whole set of new problems in the process. Common sense says treat the causes with simple, direct, and long-term solutions and the symptoms will be eased, but is anyone listening? We have a simple choice - either we stop consuming so wastefully and reduce our population or nature will do it for us and She won't be gentle about it and, as always, the poor will pay a terrible price. And here lies a problem. Genuine sustainability would slash our rampant consumerism but this would jeopardize all those boardroom salaries and bonuses and reducing population would deny those same businesses the cheap labour and new consumers to brainwash. The usual, devious, response is to blame their customers for 'using the product incorrectly'. We're chastised for leaving our electronics on standby or battery chargers plugged in but nothing is said against the manufacturers deliberately producing energy wasting devices or chargers that don't switch off and change with each model forcing us to pay for replacements. Yes we all need to take responsibility for our own actions but manufacturers need to do even more – not be allowed to pass the blame for their decisions onto us, their 'consumers'.

Spaice is going to change this

To us sustainability is more than a mechanistic approach to using resources. It must embrace morality and a reconnection to the Nature upon which our lives so utterly depend; all the while remembering that the future is just as important as the present. To achieve this we have to address the whole problem - consumption and population. Spaice does this by: Helping us reduce our own consumption – the 5Rs

Reject – Letting us make better choices by eliminating the marketing 'noise' that tells us that we are somehow inadequate unless we have that latest phone or gadget.

Rethink – Giving us less damaging options by highlighting the products designed and built to last.

Reduce - finding ways to conserve resources, sharing or leasing instead of owning, and demonstrating more efficient and effective products.

Reuse – offering maintenance, upgrade, repair, and refurbishment as alternatives to buying new replacements.

Recycle – recovering materials to turn into new products or as spares to repair existing ones.

Using profits to address population issues through key partners

1.3 billion People live on less than $1.25 a day and need access to finance, education, and healthcare to bring them out of absolute poverty.

Support women's rights and access to finance, justice, healthcare, and family planning programmes. 200 million women would prefer not to have more children but cannot access contraception, an estimated 80 million pregnancies a year are unplanned which will contribute to the 40 million abortions every year. The World Health Organization estimates that 400 women die every day during childbirth from a pregnancy they did not want.

Spaice lets each of us set a personal example for the world as it should (and will) be, so that our collective moral authority recognizes fairness and compassion as the strengths they are and self-interest and greed as the qualities of the weak and insecure. We're changing the game and want you to join us so follow our blog by subscribing to our RSS or email feed and contribute your thoughts below. And don't forget to share this post and follow us on Facebook and Twitter (@SocialSpaice)! Speak to you soon, Vipul