Permaculture is a Design Tool
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No two permaculture people live the same way, but both can be sustainable because it's not about what to think but how to think.  

		Permaculture is a way of: 1.    Looking at a problem as a whole 2.     Seeing connections between the parts 3.     Observing how the parts relate, 4.   Designing human systems by  applying ideas learnt from natural systems.
		We can apply permaculture systems thinking to the design of a single tool as easily to the re-design of a farm or corporation.   The designs we create are not concrete:  Permaculture Designs are flexible and adapt, and can seed even more ideas.

Commonly, “Initiatives that are taken tend to evolve from strategies that focus on efficiency (for example, more accurate and controlled uses of inputs and minimisation of waste) to substitution (for example, from more to less disruptive interventions, such as from biocides to more specific biological controls and other more benign alternatives) to redesign  -- fundamental changes in the design and management of the operation (Hill & MacRae 1995, Hill et al 1999)."  
Today a lot of people are considering substitutions.  They are keenly aware of their impact and want to do something, to start somewhere.  Substituting a harmful product for a less harmful one is their first step.  
Some other people like to focus on efficiency (value for their effort) their actions include choices to support public transport and libraries, hired equipment, and green government initiatives.
Others are now actually considering their whole-of-life and see the value in redesign for their lifestyle.  Permaculture is about helping people make redesign choices: set new goals and a shift in thinking that effects not only their home but their actions in the workplace, borrowings and investments.

Examples include the design and employment of complex transport solutions, optimum use of natural resources such as sun light, radical design of information-rich, multi-storey polyculture systems (Mollison & Slay 1991).  

"This progression generally involves a shift in the nature of one’s dependence  -- from relying primarily on universal, purchased, imported, technology-based interventions to more specific locally available knowledge and skill-based ones.  This usually eventually also involves fundamental shifts in world-views, senses of meaning, and associated lifestyles (Hill 1991).  My experience is that although efficiency and substitution initiatives can make significant contributions to sustainability over the short term, much greater longer-term improvements can only be achieved by redesign strategies; and, furthermore, that
Steps need to be taken at the outset to ensure that
efficiency and substitution strategies
can serve as stepping stones and not barriers to redesign... ”  (Hill 2000)
 WORKING WITH PROCESSES OF CHANGE, PARTICULARLY PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES, WHEN IMPLEMENTING ORGANIC FARMING. Professor Stuart B. Hill

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