Sustainability Starts Within
It happens every year.
A new year begins. An invitation to restart.
As the night offers a bridge into a new day, a new year, even a new era, the date changes (in the Gregorian calendar), and suddenly everything feels possible again.
This year, I hope we take inspiration from that bridge — and apply it to how we think about sustainability.
In 1987, nearly 40 years ago, the Brundtland Report Our Common Future introduced the now-famous definition of sustainable development: meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
A powerful idea. And yet, as we approach four decades since its official birth, I find myself yearning for the same kind of collective reset the New Year offers us every January.
Because somewhere along the way, sustainability became something else.
For many, it became primarily environmental: climate change, CO₂, recycling, reporting, going green. Important topics — absolutely. But incomplete.
Over my 15 years as a sustainability professional, I’ve often surprised people when I say this:
I’m not here to save the planet. Or the polar bears.
I’m here to serve and inspire humans.
To help us remember something we once knew instinctively: how to think and act holistically. How to see connections instead of silos. How to understand that sustainability starts within — within ourselves.
At its core, sustainability is a people topic.
It’s an invitation to rediscover our human superpower — one many of us lost somewhere along the way — the ability to think in systems rather than in isolation. To see change as everyone’s responsibility, not a department’s. And to begin with ourselves, rather than pointing outward.
So let me ask you:
How many people do you know who are stressed, overwhelmed, and exhausted — while working tirelessly to “create change”?
How many organisations collect certifications and rebrand as green, while very little actually shifts on the inside?
Too many. Sadly.
And why is that?
Because the focus so often lies outside the self and the organisation, instead of within.
When we start from the belief that sustainability starts within, something changes. Individuals, teams, organisations — even societies — gain access to a different quality of change. One that is rooted, honest, and far more effective.
And it’s urgently needed.
Because if we’re honest, too little has changed over the past 40 years given the scale and seriousness of our societal and environmental challenges.
Whilst this approach demands self-inspection — a serious look at the self, one’s choices, beliefs, values, and ways of doing things (hence it’s not that popular yet) — never have I been more convinced that now is the time to ignite this resolution… or should I say, revolution?
As individuals burn out.
As businesses struggle.
As institutions crack at the seams.
We’re being invited to reflect on the future and the bridges we’ll need to get there.
With the 22nd century just around the corner (74 years — that’s seven generations, and the original Native planning timeframe, a period many of us may witness), we are all being nudged to be honest and admit that what we are doing isn’t working as well as we had hoped. Not because the intentions are wrong, but because the focus has been external rather than internal. We’ve been busy fixing systems, processes, metrics, and images , without tending to the inner foundations that actually fuel change.
So, here it comes — the quote that triggers many:
Be the change you want to see in the world.
It’s a cliché because it’s true. After all — what can you really change, other than yourself?
Can a tattoo cure acid reflux?
Can stressed and disconnected people create a healthy planet?
I think you know my answer. And I’m curious about yours.
So as the New Year’s night lingers — offering us all a bridge into a new day, a new year, maybe even a new era — my hope is this:
That we collectively remember our innate wisdom.
That we dare to start within and remember our superpower to shine bright from within — starting with ourselves, then our groups, our organisations, and together creating a ripple outward to change our societies.
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By Stephanie Bartscht
Founder of EVERiSE
Sustainability starts within.
I work with brave leaders and leadership teams who can feel the future knocking and want to answer with clarity, connection, and confidence. Through EVERiSE, I help organisations navigate complexity from the inside out — so sustainability becomes something people can actually live.