Here's a heretical thought for the day. Perhaps just achieving improved energy efficiency is not so sustainable after all. While doing "more with less" is definitely commendable and most cost effective, if the resource is not renewable and nothing is done to recycle or reclaim it, then it will just take longer to use it up! In the end, the resource is still exhausted.
Energy efficiency programs are often the initial way to provide funding for increasing the sustainability of practices - after all, when you use less of something, the money you save is available to be directed somewhere else.
Harnessing those savings and creating sustainable systems is the key to making energy efficiency sustainable. Next time you identify a way to save energy, by all means put it into place but then go to that next step - make the changes which make those resources renewable or recyclable.
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