SiD has been developed since 2001 as a toolkit to develop long term viable sustainable solutions for business, governments and industry. SiD guides individuals and interdisciplinary groups in incorporating problems beyond material and energy usage, extending to include social, ecological, economic, and political matters. If we ever hope to achieve sustainability, we must optimize for all of these competing areas at the same time – and this is what SiD does.

On this website, some of the basic principles of SiD are explained. Note that this is just a short introduction, and not in any way a full documentation of SiD. Additional SiD information can be found in the free to download SiD quickguide. A book about SiD is in the making. You can help support it by donating.

SiD is maintained by the registered non-profit Except Integrated Sustainability Foundation in the Netherlands.

SiD was conceived and initiated by Tom Bosschaert in 2001. In the subsequent years it has been added to and improved by the efforts of a multitude of people, mostly within the context of the work performed by independent entrepreneurs of the Except Integrated Sustainability cooperative. Specific authors are listed at their contributing sections.

SiD’s main author remains Tom Bosschaert, a Dutch sustainability strategist, designer and entrepreneur. Originally trained as an industrial design engineer in the Netherlands and Architect and Urban Planner in the USA, Tom founded the sustainability consultancy and development organization Except Integrated Sustainability in 1999. Tom started developing SiD after utilizing existing methods and finding their limited domain approaches to fail in the development of truly long term solutions for society. SiD was set up from the beginning to lead transdisciplinary teams from Except and partners to develop pioneering solutions that breach the frontier of what’s possible for organizations, cities, and industries. These include solutions for the circular economy, natural capital, smart urban redevelopment, bio-based economy, and resilience research and development.

Using SiD, Tom has launched global firsts in bio-based architectural and urban designs, such as the Merredin Algae plant, Shanghai vertical agriculture tower systems and the urban redevelopment of Schiebroek-Zuid. He spearheads developments ranging from software for supply chain optimization, to sustainable agriculture systems such as Polydome. In addition, Tom is the driving force behind sustainable communities of practice such as the Rotterdam Collective (RoCo, 2010) and the Utrecht Collective (UCo), two collectives for socially engaged entrepreneurs in the Netherlands. He advises national and regional governments as well as multi national corporations on sustainability strategy.

After obtaining his Master in Industrial Design Engineering from Delft, Tom studied Architecture in Australia at the University of Western Australia, and obtained his Masters in Architecture & Urban Planning from Yale University in the USA.

Tom has worked and lectured in Australia, Canada, China, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and the United States. He teaches as a guest-lecturer in various universities and publishes articles regularly.