1 Some Considerations regarding the Ecological Sustainability of Marketing Systems Anja Schaefer Open University Business School Sustainable development is perhaps the most significant and yet the most difficult problem that marketing – and human economic activity in general – face at the beginning of the third millennium. The paper starts by charting the state of affairs for marketing and sustainability so far. It then uses the analogy of a living system to explore the requirements for a sustainable marketing system and barriers to sustainability. Proponents of living systems theory argue that a systemic understanding of life can be extended to the social domain and social systems can be considered as living, autopoietic systems, with self-regulatory functions that allow them to adapt to environmental change. A sustainable marketing system would have to be flexible, decentralised, and open to learning from environmental cues. Experiments to deal with these environmental changes would emerge in various forms and at various places and multiple feedback loops would help to identify viable solutions and spread them. However, there seem to be continuing barriers to such changes that would make the marketing system as a whole more sustainable. The biggest of these barriers may be the requirement for growth in a capitalist economic system. This obstacle is discussed in the final part of the paper. Introduction Sustainable development can be called, without undue exaggeration, the most significant and yet the most difficult problem that marketing – and human economic activity in general – face at the beginning of the third millennium (WCED, 1987; Ottman, 1993; OECD, 1998; Diamond, 2005). Modern production methods and marketing systems have brought unparalleled material comforts to most people in affluent societies, to many in the so-called emerging economies, as well as to a few in less developed societies. In this sense affluent consumers have never had it so good. But this level of material wealth has come at a high price as increasingly the earth’s natural resources are seen to be under enormous stress, the most significant example of which is perhaps global climate change (Throop et al., 1993; Stead & Stead, 1994) This is one global environmental problem that can be directly linked not only to the production of material goods but also to their consumption, where – to give just one example – an increasing number of people travel more frequently and for longer distances, using motorcars, airplanes and other forms of motorised transport, all of which use increasing amounts of fossil fuels. Making marketing – and production, consumption and everything else that goes with it – more ecologically sustainable is therefore one of the big challenges ahead. The Promises and Trials of Green Marketing Conventional marketing practice, what might be called ‘brown’ marketing, has been criticised for its lack of ecological sustainability. The key points of criticism are that it promotes excessive consumption and materialism, and that product design is often environmentally wasteful due to short durability of products, products not being designed for recycling and excessive material use. No part of the marketing chain is without criticism. Excessive packaging, production of marketing materials and the