Design for Sustainability (D4S) is a globally recognized method for companies to improve profit margins, product quality, market opportunities, environmental performance, and social benefits. Companies can achieve this win-win situation for shareholders, consumers, and the public by improving efficiencies in the products and services they design, produce and deliver.

Basic D4S techniques include interventions similar to those used in cleaner production audits, such as increasing energy efficiency, using recycled materials, designing for recyclability, reducing toxic materials, extending product life, and providing services in new ways. Life cycle analysis and supply chain management are more precise tools for evaluating material flows and environmental impacts in a product's life cycle, and can help designers identify additional improvements. In many developed economies, D4S efforts have also been linked to wider concepts such as product-service mixes, cleaner production, systems innovation and life cycle-based efforts.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR, also called corporate responsibility, corporate citizenship, responsible business and corporate social opportunity) is a concept whereby organizations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, communities and other stakeholders, as well as the environment. This obligation is seen to extend beyond the statutory obligation to comply with legislation and sees organizations voluntarily taking further steps to improve the quality of life for employees and their families as well as for the local community and society at large.

Corporate sustainability reporting aims to satisfy the information needs of external and internal stakeholders, more organizations are measuring and reporting on their social and environmental performance. CPAs can play an important role in providing the needed information and helping to verify its accuracy.

Corporate Sustainability reporting

Corporate sustainability reporting (CSR) involves reporting financial and nonfinancial information to key stakeholders on the company’s operational, social and environmental activities and its ability to deal with related risks.

The most dominant CSR regulations are those of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which issued its first comprehensive reporting guidelines in 2002 and its G3 Reporting Framework in October 2006. As of October 2006, more than 1,000 international companies had registered with the GRI and issued corporate sustainability reports using its standards.

Cleaner production is a preventive, company-specific environmental protection initiative. It is intended to minimize waste and emissions and maximize product output. By analysing the flow of materials and energy in a company, one tries to identify options to minimize waste and emissions out of industrial processes through source reduction strategies. Improvements of organisation and technology help to reduce or suggest better choices in use of materials and energy, and to avoid waste, waste water generation, and gaseous emissions, and also waste heat and noise.

Supply chain management (SCM) is the management of a network of interconnected businesses involved in the ultimate provision of product and service packages required by end customers. Supply Chain Management spans all movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point-of-origin to point-of-consumption.

Successful SCM requires a change from managing individual functions to integrating activities into key supply chain processes. As our global economy becomes more complex and demand for natural resources grows, sustainability will become as important a business discipline as quality and efficiency. Companies work with their suppliers to jointly develop sustainable business practices, as well as products and services, which are commercially viable, preserve our environmental resources and look after our workforce and communities. The green supply chain will bring the companies financial, environmental, and social benefits.

In order to change the individual and institutional patterns of consumption, this is a need to build a vision of sustainable lifestyles among different stakeholders to achieve sustainable patterns of consumption. Actions proposed include support for sharing best practice examples in this area, awareness raising campaigns, consumer education on the knowledge about SCP issues , including the parties which  influence the purchase decision , such as businesses, retailers and governments.