According to a stronger version of sustainability, sustainable business is defined by the responsibility for both collecting wastes arising from goods and services along the output end and for reducing them along the input end (supply chain). In other words, it is meant by reducing the throughput - the unavoidable cost of maintaining stocks, from material and energy requirements (depletion) to supply goods and services, at the input end, up to the wastes (pollution) arising from their consumption and left along the way, at the output end. Accordingly, input-output matrices can appropriately cope with the throughput. Moreover, by bringing hybridism into these models, it is possible to ground the monetary value (measured in monetary units) of the economic output in the biophysical value (measured in weight or volume units) of its maintenance. An alike model is applied to the retail sector to show why biophysical savings imply higher monetary costs.
Urban solid wastes; Corporate social and environmental responsibility; Input-output models; Sustainable retail
