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Rating: 
Summary: Global view on sustainability
Review: Do not expect from this book practical guidelines to become "sustainable" as some reviewers seemed to have expected. This book explains in detail what sustainability involves, three majors fields: economical, social and environmental that the author called the triple bottom line. Each field has been for long separated from each other and the new trend for sustainability is to make them working together. How? There are no answers in this book. This book does not want to offer solutions but just to show us that this so-called revolution has already started, based on existing facts and where these changes are taking places.
Rating:
Summary: Global view on sustainability
Review: Do not expect from this book practical guidelines to become "sustainable" as some reviewers seemed to have expected. This book explains in detail what sustainability involves, three majors fields: economical, social and environmental that the author called the triple bottom line. Each field has been for long separated from each other and the new trend for sustainability is to make them working together. How? There are no answers in this book. This book does not want to offer solutions but just to show us that this so-called revolution has already started, based on existing facts and where these changes are taking places.
Rating: 
Summary: a guide to get from here to there
Review: Elkington has created an awesome nuts and bolts description of where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. If The Ecology of Commerce (Paul Hawken) lays the visionary groundwork, this book is the next step. It adds in a lot of detail, bringing to light many cases and ideas about specific problems. It is a slow read but well worth the time.
Rating: 
Summary: An incomprehensible presentation of some important ideas
Review: Elkington has some good ideas about how businesses can change to become more sustainable, but his pompous writing style and disorganized structure completely undermines the coherence of the book. "Cannibals With Forks" is grueling to read; every chapter is filled with presumptive arguments ("We WILL see this happen...") and annoying scientific analogies ("shear zones," "superconductors," etc.). Elkington tries to structure the book like a high-school textbook, with fancy graphics and big, bold headings, but the structure of the arguments follows no logical pattern and makes the book very difficult to read. Elkington does not build towards a conclusion; he simply beats the same problems to death over and over again. Our environmental studies class at UW - Madison read this book in its entirety and every one of us was sick of it by the end of Chapter 6; enough so that the instructor decided to remove the book from the class reading list next year. An interested reader would be better off reading "The Ecology of Commerce" by Paul Hawken; as it is infinitely more compelling and logical.
Rating:
Summary: Essential reading for responsible business people!!!
Review: If society is ever to achieve a more sustainable future: 1. it is essential that business will step on the bandwagon. This was recognised in the Rio+5 Conference in 1997 (New York). 2. for this to happen, business executives will need to see the strategic benefits for their companies, and 3. these executives will need a structure on how to implement their commitment to sustainable development. John Elkington has succeeded in the latter 2 points like no-one has before (at least to my knowledge). I can recommend it to anyone that has an interest in sustainable development and want to see how their company can contribute!
Rating:
Summary: Count the Silver
Review: Long term sustainability has become a topical issue not just for politicians, but also for executives. For the executive, the key lies in the question: "How do we serve the shareholders in the short term, yet leave behind a long term legacy with which to be remembered?" While these two aims appear contradictory, they are linked via the organisation's system of shared values. Values work in the present and the future. They set the framework for consistent decision making, yet remain with an organisation long after its physical assets have depreciated. Values also link the organisation to the society in which it operates and to its social agenda, namely the creation of wealth, the protection of the environment, and the support for social equity. It is in the context of the social agenda that John Elkington asks us whether capitalism is sustainable, and whether it has made progress over the last hundred years. "Is it progress", he asks, "if a cannibal uses a fork?" Not that we expect progress to be uniform. Lenin measured progress as two steps forward, and one step back, and even that is steeped in the paradigm of central planning. Free enterprise progresses by many steps in many different directions. Yet the record shows that de-central systems make progress, less systematically, but perhaps more surely than central ones. However, the random nature of such progress generates many deceptive examples, where the same instance may be used to support contradictory theories. Thus, The Body Shop and Shell become symbols of corporate responsibility, but also corporate duplicity, while Nike and Intel become examples of corporate greed but also corporate responsiveness. Unplanned progress appears as a subtle, difficult to navigate, terrain. Yet the pitfalls are great. We live in a world, where renewable resources such as trees are "mined rather than harvested". We find children on the one side of the planet working as slaves to produce fashion items for consumers on the other side. Furthermore the public, ever more aware of social and environmental issues, mobilise suddenly and to dramatic effect as ABB, Intel, Monsanto, Shell, Nike, and Texaco and many others testify. To help us navigate, Elkington introduces his triple bottom line, which comprises of social, economic, and environmental measures. He uses this to expound on 'the seven revolutions affecting sustainability': Markets, Values, Transparency, Life-cycle Technology, Partnerships, Time, and Corporate Governance. He looks at the need for regulation, but also for regulatory frameworks "which operate, as far as possible, through market processes and are intrinsically pro-competition". The triple bottom line becomes his yardstick for corporate values. When people start talking of values, said Mark Twain once, it is time to count the silver. Since the early sixties environmentalists have told us that "things will go very well and then suddenly collapse". Yet this proved indistinguishable from the prediction that "things will go very well, and then even better". The predictions of our demise have proved to be greatly exaggerated. Yet, 'Cannibals with forks' raises all the relevant issues. If you are in an industry, which is subject to the whim of public pressure, or if you are trying to solve the riddle of long term sustainability, then 'Cannibals with forks' will make an interesting and profitable read.
Rating: 
Summary: Low on content and little practical guidance
Review: This book is bogged down in useless metaphores and imprecise, whooly language - well suited neither for practical decision-makers nor serious academics. Claims are not explained sufficiently well, and we are left guessing how to solve - or even understand - the important problems that this book claims to adress.
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Summary: The bible of sustainability
Review: You can expect a complete perspective from the head of an organisation called SustainAbility on sustainability. That is what you get. John Elkington makes a useful classification of Non Governmental Organisations. The polarisers don't want to have anything to do with business. Business is in principle bad and should be watched and harassed. The integrators try to add two additional dimensions to business, environmental and social responsibility. Discriminators differentiate between good and bad businesses and the non-discriminators do not. This book is for the discriminating integrators. John Elkington believes that it is possible and necessary to get all businesses to act responsibly concerning profit and social and environmental issues- the triple bottom line. The book provides an excellent historical perspective of why businesses are moving on from the Friedman doctrine stating that the only social responsibility of a business is to make a profit. A business that wants to move in the sustainability direction can use the book to find out where it is on the path to full sustainability. The book also makes many practical suggestions on how to move forwards. The book is equally useful for NGOs, and public policy makers.
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