I'm no great fan of utopias, having visited and worked at several communities with an utopian bent in the early 1970s. And, while the combination of London's incessant downpours and Olympian megacrowds are a drag this year, I still like calling London home. But, still, there's something in me that aches to move to Sustainia launched by Arnold Schwarzenegger. To be honest, the former gubernator wouldn't be my choice for a utopian governor or president after his performance in California, but my wanderlust was spurred when I browsed the Sustainia100 prospectus developed for Rio+20.

As far as I can tell, Sustainia hasn't (yet) been covered in The Guardian's Let's Move To series, probably because it's a figment of some rather creative imaginations in Copenhagen – rather like London's Frestonia, where SustainAbility roosted for six years. In his foreword, Schwarzenegger states that he is "back with a clear mission to make Sustainia a reality". This, he says, is "the world we could make possible if we work together across countries, regions, sectors and cultures" to scale sustainability solutions "that are already available".

What is interesting about the Sustainia100 prospectus is that the 100 solutions it spotlights not only cover 56 countries on six continents, potentially having an impact on 10 different sectors, but are also directed to citizens, advocates, chief executives, engineers, venture capitalists and politicians.

The criteria used to select the 100 solutions were that they should: be ready and available, scalable, collaborative, transformative, cost effective, improve quality of life, and produce a positive environmental impact.

In presenting the solutions, however, the Sustainia team boiled the analysis down to the triple bottom line, a term I coined 18 years ago, although they charmingly introduce it as the "Tripple" bottom line. I have to say I love the typo, suggesting as it does the idea of the ripple effect carrying the concept into parts of the world other memes fail to reach.

So here are some of my favourite solutions. For the citizen, I confess one that jumped out for me immediately was one I happen to be involved in: the online gaming platform operated by Recyclebank that incentivises people to recycle, save energy and favour sustainable transport options. One of the most interesting elements of the Recyclebank story is that its relatively recent partnership with giant corporation Waste Management means that it is potentially positioned to serve the latter's installed base of some 20 million householders.

For the activists among us, one of the solutions that grabbed my attention was developed by the Land Art Generator Initiative, which aims to counter community resistance to renewable energy systems by making them into "objects of city beautification", the sort of things people would clamour to have in their neighbourhood.

When it comes to business and chief executives, two solutions immediately called out to me, though I suspect that both had zero in the title was part of the appeal. The first was the concept of zero landfill manufacturing, illustrated by the achievements of Subaru of Indiana Automotive, which recycles or composts 99.9% of the plant's waste, and what is billed as the world's first zero-carbon and zero-effluent automotive plant, built by Renault and Veolia Environment in Tangier, Morocco.

And zero also popped up in the menu of solutions for engineers, with Verne Global's zero emissions data centre in Iceland, which exploits the colder environment for cooling purposes, and also taps into the island country's abundant renewable energy resources. Running a close second, however, were plans to build hybrid powered ships, to save fuel and cut down on emissions from one of the great out-of-sight, out-of-mind industries.

As someone who works with venture capitalists, I was particularly interested in the solutions proposed here. Of the 16 solutions covered, the one that topped my list, at least on first skim, was the idea of leasing renewable energy systems — an approach that is core the business of SolarCity, which has grown rapidly since being founded in 2006.

And then the sixth group targeted, politicians. In case they proved to have forgotten their role in all of this, and Rio+20 wasn't reassuring on that score, the Sustainia message to any politician was: "You provide the framework that drives societies in a more sustainable direction, while engaging the electorate in this collaborative effort." Nice idea and, to be fair, that was something Governor Schwarzenegger at least attempted.

One idea that caught me eye here was that of greening the military, not least because I contributed on essay on exactly that theme to Jørgen Randers' new book 2052 for the Club of Rome, also launched at Rio+20. But then another idea began to appeal, that of creating a North Sea offshore electricity grid to enable the growing number of windfarms around Northern Europe to tap into abundant Norwegian and Swedish hydropower resources, providing back-up capacity for otherwise intermitted renewable energy production.

The idea was to inspire, the Sustainia100 survey's authors explain, and I confess that I was duly inspired. And now that the Sustainia Guide to Copenhagen has been published, I'm itching to see counterpart guides published for cities around the world. There are in the pipeline sector studies, which will be fascinating. I'd like to see ones on emergent sectors like synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and geoengineering, among others.

Instead of building Utopia in one place, by sheer feat of will, perhaps the best way forward is the one we flagged at our recent Breakthrough Capitalism Forum, inspired by sci-fi author William Gibson's "The future is here – it's just not evenly distributed." Initiatives like Sustainia help us pop the emerging reality into view, like one of those autostereograms you have to look at every which way before it suddenly communicates. Click on that last link and spot the 3D shark emerge from the 2D background; click through the Sustainia100 and, with a bit of judicious squinting, you may see a sustainable future hovering there, tantalisingly almost in reach.

John Elkington is Executive Chairman of Volans and Non-Executive Director at SustainAbility. His latest book is The Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier (Earthscan/Taylor & Francis). He blogs at www.johnelkington.com and on Guardian Sustainable Business and tweets at @volansjohn

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