As a Canadian with more than 15 years in Mexico and work experience in over 35 developing countries, I am keen student of how corporate sustainability emigrates to and from developing countries. A particular interest is to identify what people believe is driving or blocking corporate sustainability in various regions of the world.

This installment is one of three focused on Sustainability Materiality. The first, Puzzling Sustainability Materiality with Beer & Pizza (http://bit.ly/1d6VlFF) provides an introductory look at sustainability materiality. In this article, we look deeper at the concept as a prelude to the next instalment which will provide an example method of estimating the sustainability materiality of an organization.

Few in the world of corporate sustainability believe there is no such thing as a “non-financial” issue. The fact is that in a world of declining resources and increasing population, sustainability is every day becoming more material to all companies and not just the select few who choose to act.

I have seen business and economic statistics used in meaningful, senseless, suggestive, misleading and just plain silly ways.

Not sure where the stats in this blog fit in. They are the result of a tangent I went on during some research on agglomeration economies yesterday where I was trying to see if there was a budding Silicon Valley for Sustainability (say a Sustainability Valley or Sustainability Street or something like that).

There has been a lot of hoopla recently over the concept of sustainability and materiality.

For many, especially those of us who have been around sustainability for a long time, the concept of materiality is not particularly new. But for others it’s a new concept.

So what is materiality?