Why Sustainability Efforts Will Fail If This Underlying Business Model Is Not Addressed
A reflection on quality, durability, and systemic responsibility
Earlier this week, I had a conversation with my financial planner that stayed with me.
I was sharing my recent experience from a stay in Greece, where I own a home. In the course of everyday life there, I learned something that is now widely accepted and normalized there:
household appliances are only built to last for a few years.
It is understood — without much protest — that appliances are built with cheaper materials and designed for failure.
When something breaks, the cost of repair routinely exceeds the cost of replacement. This isn’t limited to small items.
It applies to refrigerators, ovens, stovetops, and other major appliances.
Replacement has become easier than repair.
And as I was describing this, I felt a deep frustration rising. Because once you step back, a larger question becomes unavoidable:
What happens to all of those discarded materials?
How can this level of constant turnover possibly be sustainable — especially for islands, and ultimately for the Earth as a whole?
In response, my financial planner shared something he had learned in business school that explains this.
There is a formal business strategy taught and normalized called planned obsolescence.
In this model, companies analyze where profit can be optimized — calculating the cost of creation, the expected lifespan of the product, maintenance costs, and the projected revenue. Products are then designed to fail at a specific point where profitability is maximized.
Durability is not the goal.
Longevity is not the goal.
Mastery of materials is not the goal.
Deterioration is intentionally built in.
And once you see this, you can’t unsee it.
It shows up in appliances.
In vehicles.
In phones and laptops.
Across nearly every category of modern consumption, products are no longer created for mastery, craft, and integrity — they are created for profitability via built in deterioration.
If you step back and look at the cumulative impact, the implication is staggering.
The material usage required to sustain this cycle — over years and decades — far exceeds what would be necessary if products were designed for quality in the first place.
And this is where the illusion of sustainability begins.
Because if this underlying model of creation and production is not addressed, then sustainability initiatives layered on top of it are fundamentally compromised.
They may look good.
They may be well marketed.
They may generate positive headlines.
But they are built on a core dysfunction.
It’s like a crime lord donating to charity.
An act of good does not cancel an act of harm.
Or consider a smoker who exercises regularly. Exercise does not undo the physiological consequences of smoking. The solution is not to add more “good” behaviors — it is to address the smoking itself.
And if you look more closely, smoking is rarely about cigarettes alone. It’s often a coping mechanism — a way of self-soothing in response to stress, anxiety, or an unexamined inner world.
The behavior is a symptom.
Not the root.
The same is true here.
Sustainability efforts that do not address planned obsolescence are illusions of change, not real solutions.
They exist downstream from the real issue.
The root problem is not insufficient recycling programs.
It is not carbon offsets.
It is not better messaging.
The root problem is a business model that optimizes for deterioration rather than stewardship, integrity, and quality.
Until that is addressed, sustainability remains performative
— an aesthetic layered over a system that continues to extract, discard, and externalize cost.
True sustainability requires a fundamentally different orientation.
It requires creating for durability.
For quality.
For longevity.
For relationship with materials rather than exploitation of them.
It asks different questions at the beginning — not at the end.
Not How much profit can we extract before failure?
But What would it mean to create something that honors its full lifecycle?
Until those questions are allowed back into the center of business, sustainability will remain an illusion
— well intentioned, perhaps, but structurally incapable of delivering what it promises.
Because no amount of green messaging can compensate for a model designed to break what it creates.
This raises a larger question — not just about sustainability, but about where we believe real change actually begins.
From what I have experienced both personally and professionally, effective change must begin with thorough examination of the beliefs and values that are creating the existing outcomes.
The brain and mind are extraordinarily powerful instruments that few truly understand how to master and leverage.
If you:
are a mission-driven deeply caring leader,
and desire to reclaim the true intelligence + power of your mind-body-brain,
my private 1:1 guidance work may interest you.
I have limited spots reserved for this high level 1:1 guidance.
You’re welcome to apply using the following link:
Thank you for this restack @Jacquelyn Miles! What resonated the most with you from this writing?