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John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

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You are here: Home / Publications / Books

Books

       binoculars 2

The trinoculars symbolised People, Planet & Profit

My first book came out in 1980, beginning the production of a veritable library over the decades, when foreign editions are taken into account. 

So which would be my favorite? The Green Consumer Guide may have sold around a million copies in its various editions, and Cannibals With Forks may have introduced the world to my linked concepts of the ‘triple bottom line’ (1994) and ‘People, Planet & Profit’ (1995), but I have many other favourites among the 19 books I have produced to date. These would include A Year in the Greenhouse, my published diary of an extraordinary year, 1989, The Young Green Consumer Guide (because for years afterwards I was sent school projects from around the world), The Chrysalis Economy (because of the seductiveness of the underlying metaphor), The Power of Unreasonable People (which helped bridge the worlds of social entrepreneurship and mainstream business) and The Zeronauts (which explored the use of zero-based targets in fields as disparate as climate change, health and bribery & corruption).

But there is always the hope that the next book will have a bigger impact, a hope I hold  for The Breakthrough Challenge: 10 Ways to Connect Today’s Profits with Tomorrow’s Bottom Line, co authored with Jochen Zeitz, former CEO of PUMA and now co-chair, with Sir Richard Branson, of The B Team. More details on the book here.

btc-cover

Due for release in September 2014, my latest book

Except for the last couple, all of my books to date have been written in the back study of our family home in Barnes. (The Zeronauts and The Breakthrough Challenge were largely born on the kitchen table. At least one earlier book, The Green Consumer Guide, was written with builders’ feet crashing through the ceiling above our heads – Julia (Hailes) and I wrote back to back at that point, with desks facing opposing walls. The books listed here have been categorised under four headings: business; consumer and lifestyle; science and technology; and other.

So here are the books to date:

Business:

The Ecology of Tomorrow’s World (1980).

The Green Capitalists (1987), with an additional chapter by Tom Burke.

Green Pages (1988), with Julia Hailes and Tom Burke.

The Green Business Guide (1991), with Julia Hailes and Peter Knight.

Cannibals with Forks (1997).

The Chrysalis Economy (2001).

The Power of Unreasonable People (2008), with Pamela Hartigan.

The Zeronauts (2012).

The Breakthrough Challenge (2014).

Consumer and lifestyle:

The Green Consumer Guide (1988), with Julia Hailes.

The Green Consumer’s Supermarket Shopping Guide (1989), with Julia Hailes.

The Young Green Consumer’s Guide (1990), with Julia Hailes.

Holidays That Don’t Cost the Earth (1992), with Julia Hailes.

Manual 2000 (1998), with Julia Hailes.

The New Foods Guide (2001), with Julia Hailes.

Science and technology

(which invariably also has business dimensions):

Sun Traps (1984).

The Poisoned Womb (1985).

The Gene Factory (1985).

Other: To date, there is only one book in this category:

A Year in the Greenhouse (1990)

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From the Journal

Mudlark

2 February 2023

Walking home across Waterloo Bridge this evening, with Chinese students all around, I caught sight of this mudlark on the Thames foreshore, in front of the South Bank complex. One of those moments.

Manic Tuesday

31 January 2023

Have rather fallen out of the habit of posting here, partly because have been finishing off the new book, Running Up The Down Escalator, and partly because 2023 has taken off like a rocket. Today was somewhat typical in that respect, with Elaine reminding me at 06.30 that I should be at a Pi Capital […]

We Are What We Read

21 December 2022

We are what we read, they say, and sometimes it’s true. Just notified about a new series of Neste interviews on what we read. Mine here: https://lnkd.in/ePWHkEWw. Marcius Extavour here: https://lnkd.in/eiqSQcpQ. And Geoffrey Weston‘s here: https://lnkd.in/eQM3dUcq. All members of the Neste advisory council on sustainability and new markets, which I chair. Happy holidays and new years, all.

About

John Elkington is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. He is currently Founding Partner and Executive Chairman of Volans, a future-focused business working at the intersection of the sustainability, entrepreneurship and innovation movements.

Contact

john@johnelkington.com  |  +44 203 701 7550 | Twitter: @volansjohn

John Elkington

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