The Lush Spring Prize Celebrates Social and Environmental Regeneration
The £200,00 prize fund redefines what environmental and social responsibility should look like.
Author: Katherine Martinko | Published: April 26, 2018
‘Sustainable’ is an appealing yet complicated word. Since its definition is not officially regulated, any business or organization can describe its product or service as sustainable without being held accountable. This has resulted in a great deal of greenwashing, making things out to be more eco-friendly than they are.
At the same time, however, there are many wonderful organizations that model sustainability at its finest, working to develop systems that meet present-day needs without compromising the abilities of future generations to support themselves. This is good, except that it fails to address the problem of damage already done. For instance, a sustainable food production system could operate on degraded land, but that doesn’t mean the land will ever be improved or brought back to a biologically diverse state.
Enter the concept of regeneration, which some experts are hoping will replace sustainability as the buzzword of the future. Regeneration is sustainability taken a step further. Regenerative systems strive not only to do no harm, but also to improve their social, environmental, and economic contexts. In other words, they leave behind a better world.