To implement sustainability in the existing economic system, three key strategies have been proposed that should be pursued equally in order to ensure the long-term coexistence of humans and non-human nature.

Efficiency describes the ratio of benefit to effort required to achieve a certain result (cf. Haase 2020, 49). A more efficient economy aims to use fewer materials in the production process in order to generate the same quantity of products. On the one hand, this should reduce the burden on natural resources and, on the other, generate more economic prosperity. Increases in efficiency are appeling insofar as they promise a more sustainable economy without requiring a greater sacrifice in prosperity. However, this promise in itself is an illusion, as the necessary efficiency gains cannot easily be achieved with the aim of maintaining an ecologically sustainable economy without loss of prosperity. In addition, there is a risk that so-called rebound effects will ensure that the positive results of an increase in efficiency become obsolete, for example by stimulating higher consumption or additional, unsustainable investments through lower production costs.

The strategy of consistency, on the other hand, is about achieving greater compatibility between nature and technology by adapting economic processes to ecological processes. By imitating natural cycles in the economy, resources should be preserved in the production cycle as far as possible and no waste should be produced. Similar to efficiency improvements, the pursuit of a consistency strategy is also compatible with existing economic practices and does not require the sacrifice of material wealth that has already been achieved. Instead, ecological problems are to be avoided by changing the way we do business. 

Unlike the other two strategies, the sufficiency strategy is not based on production, but on consumption. The main aim is to counter widespread and unconsidered overconsumption with a more reflective and reduced lifestyle. Alternative consumption patterns should be geared more towards the things that are essential for a good life and consumption decisions should be made primarily with a focus on the environmental impact of the chosen products. It is not always a question of practising renunciation; instead, in many cases it is possible to switch to more sustainable alternatives that are also beneficial for consumers.

Equivalent to the three strategies mentioned above, various R-principles are often referred to in the popular discourse on sustainability. Here, too, the primary aim is to establish alternative economic and consumption methods, for example by rethinking conventional economic practices in terms of their efficiency, choosing more environmentally friendly, ecologically degradable (rot) materials and keeping them in circulation for longer (recycle, reuse, repair) or selecting products from consumers with more caution (reduce, refuse). Both, the three key strategies and the R-principles approach focus primarily on the ecological and economic dimensions of sustainability rather than the social dimension.