John Elkington (born 23 June 1949) is an author, advisor and serial entrepreneur. He is an authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. He has written and co-authored 20 books, including the Green Consumer Guide, Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business, The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, and The Breakthrough Challenge: 10 Ways to Connect Tomorrow's Profits with Tomorrow's Bottom Line. He is a founding partner and chairman & chief pollinator at Volans; co-founder and honorary chairman of SustainAbility; honorary chairman of Environmental Data Services (ENDS, 1978); senior advisor to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre; member of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Council of Ambassadors; visiting professor at Cranfield University School of Management, Imperial College and University College London (UCL). He is a member of over 20 boards and advisory boards. He coined the terms environmental excellence, green growth, green consumer, the triple bottom line and People, Planet & Profit.

Biography

At the age of 28, Elkington co-founded Environmental Data Services (ENDS) with David Layton and Max Nicholson. In 1983, SustainAbility, a think tank consultancy that works with businesses through markets in the pursuit of economic, social and environmental sustainability. (launched as John Elkington Associates, and renamed SustainAbility in 1987). In 2008, he co-founded Volans Ventures with Pamela Hartigan, Sam Lakha, Geoff Lye and Kevin Teo. He wrote his first book with Julia Hailes, the Green Consumer Guide, in 1980, at the age of 31. Elkington was described by Business Week in 2004 as "a dean of the corporate responsibility movement for three decades." In 2008, the Evening Standard had named him among the '1000 Most Influential People' in London, describing him as "a true green business guru", and as "an evangelist for corporate social and environmental responsibility long before it was fashionable".

Awards

He has received awards from the United Nations, Fast Company, the American Society for Quality, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Skoll Foundation. In 1981, he was awarded the Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship, UK. In 2009, a CSR International survey of the Top 100 CSR leaders placed Elkington fourth after Al Gore, Barack Obama and the late Anita Roddick of the Body Shop, and alongside Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank. In 2014, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex.

Selected publications

Selected forewords (around 20 done to date): Selected chapters/essays in other books: Selected reports - over 50 authored or co-authored reports published to date, including: