On February 10, the MIT Sloan Management Review, in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group, published their Winter 2011 Research Report on findings from the 2010 sustainability and innovation global executive study and research project. The report, Sustainability: The ‘Embracers Seize Advantage,’ explores the following questions: How has the economic downturn affected sustainability investments within for-profit companies? Are there patterns that appear across organizations making sustainability investments? And, if so, what can we learn from them?

It’s a fantastic reflection on the progress society has made in the past decade to realize that our job is no longer to convince people that sustainability is important. The sustainability imperative has never been clearer and there is more and more evidence that sustainability is here to stay as a driver of innovation and change.

Sustainability is becoming more and more mainstream as corporations, municipalities, and civil society work to understand and adopt sustainability strategies within their organizations. From sustainable supply chains to life cycle analysis, from community sustainability planning and smart growth, and from sustainable procurement to packaging, there’s no shortage of activity underway.

An internship at The Natural Step Canada is far from ordinary. There’s no stapling, no photocopying, and besides a few hours of replacing the office address on some print materials, there’s nothing stereotypically “intern” about this experience.

My (Stephanie) experience is vastly different from that of Kara, the other intern also hired though the YMCA’s Youth Eco Internship Program. Since January, I took on the online voice of The Natural Step Canada through their social media outlets and the blog. Kara was responsible for an overhaul of The Natural Step Canada’s award-winning eLearning course. We were both working online but with vastly different platforms.

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Economists deny that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was ever intended as a metric of overall country progress or well-being. However, that’s how it is being used. Leaders express alarm if the GDP—the value of all goods and services produced within a nation in a given year—falls. Countries are ranked by GPD or GDP per citizen, implying that countries with higher rankings are doing better overall than countries with lower rankings.