Sustainable business, or green business, is by definition an enterprise that has no negative impact on the global or local environment, community, society, or economy. This is a great idea which I support, however the idea of sustainability imposes a constraint against the business (albeit by choice) that not all other businesses chose to impose.

The idea if Sustainability adds an emotional aspect to the impact of your business to the world around it, yet businesses typically remove this sense of emotion when making desicions that concern money, profit, etc. so there needs to be a clear ROI in any sustainability program.

In a marketing sense, it may yeild some gains depending on your customer base, but in my experience, price is still king. So in a competitive marketplace, adding a policy that could potentially limit the profitability of the company is a difficult choice. Also, considering the global economy, emerging markets such as Asia, India, etc. are aggressively pursuing entry and expansion in all market segments, with a higher emphasis on profitability, growth and competition. This will continue to add pressure against policies restrictive of profit, because what good is a sustainability policy if the company goes out of business.

If you use the business adage "if you are not growing, you are dying", I'd have to say sustainable business means out of business given enough time and competition.