When you think about sustainability, your first thoughts are probably about environmental sustainability. Environmental sustainability refers to how decisions impact land, air and water, but sustainability reaches beyond just that.
Another common impression about sustainability is that it refers to Corporate Social Responsibility. This focuses on a businesses' philanthropic giving or social equity. Many companies adopt Triple Bottom Line (TBL) practices. They use the TBL to measure how their decisions affect not only their profits, but people and the planet, too. A TBL approach assesses impacts on financial, social and environmental areas.
Business, non-profit, government and individual decisions have impacts on each of these three areas. Developing a TBL approach doesn't attempt to make the impacts on each of these equal. Rather, it ensures that impacts on these three guide decision making.
Quadruple Bottom Line
In 2016, we expanded our TBL approach to the Quadruple Bottom Line (QBL). This means we now measure sustainability using these pillars:
To do this we consider how our policies, plans and programs impact:
We're striving to be the best city government you could hope for. We work to be as responsive, transparent, accessible and fiscally resilient as possible.