Below are some of the key principles and guidelines leading business and industry toward more sustainable patterns of production and operation.

Natural Capitalism
Natural Capitalism is a vision for a new industrial system based on a very different mind-set and set of values than conventional capitalism. It is based on four central strategies that are a means to enable countries, companies, and communities to operate by behaving as if all forms of capital were valuable.

The Natural Step
The Natural Step Framework is a science and systems-based approach to organizational planning for sustainability. It provides a practical set of design criteria that can be used to direct social, environmental, and economic actions.

Eco-Effectiveness
Eco-effectiveness is a strategy for business growth and prosperity that generates ecological, social, and economic value. It represents a fundamental conceptual shift away from the inherently unsustainable system design of the Industrial Revolution as opposed to a damage management strategy.

Eco-Efficiency
Describes a vision for the production of economically valuable goods and services while increasingly reducing the ecological impacts of production.

International Standards Organization (ISO) 14000
ISO 14000 is a series of voluntary standards designed to help firms worldwide create and maintain effective environmental management systems.

CERES (Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies) Principles
The CERES Principles (formerly the Valdez Principles) are a model corporate code of environmental conduct created by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES), a coalition of investors, public pension trustees, foundations, labor unions, and environmental, religious, and public interest groups.

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