The folks at Joots have one of the best visual depictions of the interrelationship between economy, equity and ecology I’ve ever seen. This color keyed chart articulates their philosophy of providing “Multiple Bottom Line Solutions“, that is solutions that meet more than one type of success critieria.

Multiple Bottom Line Solutions are not only economic economically successful, but socially and environmentally successful as well. I recommend a study of the Joots chart as an excellent layout of 21st century ideals.

Miniature provided here, click it to see the original from their site.

Economy Equity Ecology

The Joots notion of Multiple Bottom Line Solutions recognizes that there is more than one bottom line, more than one ultimate measurement of success. This concept was also explored at length by Paul Hawkins and Amory and L. Hunter Lovins in their seminal book Natural Capitalism. The book points out that there have been many financially successful companies who created ecological costs to society large enough to essentially cancel out their value. There is nothing inherently wrong with Capitalism, Lovins argues, the problem lies with the traditional conception of Capitalism which ignored a critical part of the equation: namely the long term economic cost of unsustainable resource utilization. Natural Capitalism leaves the motivations and transactional character of capitalism intact; it simply takes into account the full set of factors impacting the long term creation and conversion of value.