The new age of sustainability is like a three-legged stool, and over the last couple of weeks I've discussed my ideas for the first two legs, including customers and energy or transportation. The third leg involves products, and this idea takes some thinking to fully comprehend. Most of us don't think a lot about products because they are ubiquitous. Unless you lived in the old Soviet Union, the concept of bare store shelves makes no sense. In the old CCCP, basic commodities were in short supply, and for everything from bread to shampoo, you stood in line.

Last time, we explored how we can make IT more sustainable by improving data center energy use. Managing energy use is the most well-understood form of sustainability we have, but it is largely an internal form of sustainability practice. If we intend to make our businesses sustainable -- i.e., able to function for a long time despite changes in the economy -- then we also need to consider sustainability in customer facing business processes. That's where treating the customer as a renewable resource comes in, and it is the subject of today's article.