Sustainability’s Fourth Wave

Sustainability may be an overused buzzword now, but its origins date to the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the 1830s, considered the first wave of sustainability. In the 1970s, the second wave of sustainability was characterized by Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, and Ohio’s burning Cuyahoga River, weather inversions, Earth Day, and the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The third wave of sustainability …