Ray Anderson set out to make his business sustainable long before green was the flavor of the month.  Reading Paul Hawken's The Ecology of Commerce in 1994 literally changed his life, inspiring him to overhaul his carpet company, Interface, and aim for zero waste and zero environmental impact.  Now, with his new book Confessions of a Radical Industrialist, he wants to spur other business leaders to "climb Mount Sustainability." 

Anderson recently dropped by the Grist office and we asked him how his own ascent is going so far. 

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Q. You've been working for the last 15 years to make your company sustainable. What do you know that other companies need to know?

A. Well, it's hard. It's the work of a lifetime. It takes an awful lot of patience and stick-to-itiveness.

We're 15 years into a 26-year journey -- that's how long we calculate it will take us to get to a zero footprint, taking nothing from the earth that's not naturally, rampantly renewable and doing no harm to the biosphere.

Q. How long did it take your company to recoup the investment that you initially made?

A. No time. From day one, we were ahead of the game. Tackling waste -- that's where the low-hanging fruit is. We declared war on waste: only zero is acceptable. Doing everything right the first time, every time, including making no scrap and no off-quality. When we measured ourselves against that kind of perfection, we found 10 percent of the sales dollar going down the drain as waste, most of it considered allowable, expected.

Fifteen years later, we're only halfway there. But we've saved over $400 million, which has more than financed everything else that we've done -- the R&D, the capital expenditures, the process changes, employee training, the whole ball of wax.

Q. Is that a technique that's replicable?

A. Yes. We ought to be doing this anyway in business. When you set that bar at zero, that's a stretch, but it's easy to understand.

Q. Are there things you thought would be easy to do that have turned out to be really difficult?

A. The technologies didn't exist and we didn't know what it was going to take to create them. We couldn't have done it by ourselves. We didn't know how long it would take to get suppliers involved, or get new inventors inventing things that we'd never heard of. So there was a big mystery about it all.

But we had a clear vision and that was the main thing. Climb that mountain clear to the top.

Ray Anderson. 

Q. In the whole lifecycle of your products, what was the hardest aspect to get within that sustainable margin? Transportation?

A. No, transportation is miniscule in the grand scheme. The important thing is the technologies for recycling. Today they have been invented and we're increasing recycled content. Like 35 percent now of our raw material comes from used products, post-consumer recycling. At the time I wrote the book, I think it was 28 percent, so it's moved up since.

Q. You're not turning plastic bottles into carpet -- you're turning old carpet into new carpet, right?

A. Yeah, the ideal product is our own product from 20 years ago. And we're also recycling other carpet manufacturers' carpets too.

Q. As a business leader, what do you want to see Congress do about climate change?

A. Put a price on carbon. I'd prefer to see it done through tax shifts, taxing bad things instead of good things. A shift in those taxes even in a revenue-neutral way that just puts a price on carbon so that an honest market can then work. Today it's a dishonest market, blind as a bat, just stumbling around ignoring the externalities.

Q. As you've made sustainability core to your business, have you gotten new customers through that effort? 

A. Yes. There was a survey done of commercial interior designers three or four years ago, who very heavily influence our marketplace, and 91 percent said they preferred recycled content.  Not just accepted it, but preferred it. Today it's probably even higher than that.

It was that community, interior designers, who were asking us the question 15 years ago: "What's your company doing for the environment?"  So when we began to actually do something, they began to embrace us for what we were doing. The goodwill of the marketplace is amazing. 

If you had to state the pure dollar-and-cents business case for sustainability, our cost is down, not up -- the waste-elimination effort alone has more than paid for all the rest of this. Our products are the best they've ever been. Biomimicry has had a huge influence; it's a wellspring of innovation. Our people are galvanized around a shared higher purpose. You can't beat it for attracting people and motivating people. And the goodwill of the marketplace is just astonishing. What else is there that underlies shareholder value but cost and products and people and market? That's it. It's a better business model without doubt.

Q. Do you think the business community at large is capable of a shift to sustainability?

A. They will either do it or be superseded by those who do. The industrial system that operates today is undermining the basis of the industrial system; it's committing suicide because nature is that undergirding factor. There's no business that can operate without air and water and food and energy and materials and climate regulation and ultraviolet radiation shields and pollination and seed dispersal and distribution. All of those are supplied by nature. If we kill nature, we will certainly kill the economy. When somebody sits down and tries to figure out the value of nature, it's very simple: Whatever the economic GDP is today, that's the value of nature, because none of it would exist without that undergirding.

Q. Are there examples of other businesses you've influenced?

A. I claim some credit for Wal-Mart. They sent two teams to our factory in Lagrange, Ga. -- one lead by Mike Duke, who is the president/CEO now, and one lead by Doug McMillon, who is now the No. 2 man. Each of them came and spent the day there understanding what we were talking about and what we were doing. They went away satisfied that it's doable, which was a huge hurdle for them to get over before they went to 60,000 suppliers and said, "You gotta do this too." I think that was a hurdle that we helped them clear. Since then they've been going gangbusters.

Q. So what's next for you?

A. We've got the rest of this mountain to climb.

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Adam WerbachAdam Werbach’s career is something of a lodestar for the trajectory of the 21st century American environmental movement. A student activist tutored at the knee of the Archdruid himself, the legendary David Brower, Werbach was elected the youngest president of the Sierra Club in 1996 at age 23. 

Then business beckoned and he launched a startup, Act Now Productions, to advise companies like Wal-Mart on going green. Global advertising and marketing goliath Saatchi & Saatchi acquired Act Now last year, rebranding it as Saatchi & Saatchi S (for sustainability) and installing Werbach as the CEO.

Now he has written Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto.

“The book came from a basic frustration with the business dogma I confronted as someone who had what I thought were some very simple ideas about how business should work,” says Werbach during an interview at Saatchi & Saatchi S’s offices in San Francisco’s Mission District. “It became clear to me they didn’t hold the same fundamental business notions I did. They lacked a singular strategy that brought in the concepts of sustainability.”

The book, which joins a shelf of sustainable business titles published in recent years, is essentially a how-to guide for companies to reframe the way they do business in a carbon-constrained, Twittering world.

“To be successful, you need to peel off the green blinders and start thinking of sustainability as a new tool set, like information technology or globalization, that can help you reinvigorate a business,” Werbach writes.

In fact, Werbach would like to take the environment out of environmental sustainability.

“The battle I’m trying to fight in the business world is to adopt a broader definition of sustainability that is not just about environmental sustainability,” says Werbach, who at 36 sports a touch of gray in his hair. “That’s a limiting factor to sustainability. What are the tools you need to be around for the long term? What is your long-haul strategy?”

In other words, casting sustainability as a green thing allows companies to compartmentalize such efforts rather than make them part of the corporate DNA.

Still, even in an era when mainstream environmentalists are more likely to lunch with corporate suits than file suits against them, such talk is sure to rankle.

But the message may resonate among the younger generation for whom the thought of corporate environmentalism does not cause cognitive dissonance. For instance, the MBA students I talked to who signed up for the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps saw nothing incongruous about pursuing green goals from within the Fortune 500. In fact, the point was to change corporate America from within.

And those are exactly the people Werbach is trying to recruit with his book. “The world of corporate change is still underpopulated with people who have a sustainability mindset and experience,” he says. “There’s a better chance I’ll be arguing with six people about who has the best idea when I’m with activists, which is great. It’s more likely I’ll be lonely and looking for help when I’m working with a company.”

In his book, Werbach lays out “Seven Tenets of a Strategy for Sustainability”:

Like other books of the genre, Werbach's contains his own PowerPoint-friendly jargon -- sustainability-speak, if you will. He advocates an approach he calls “STaR mapping” to analyze a company’s strategy in terms of social, technological, and resource changes. Then a company needs to decide on a “North Star goal” -- “the strategic direction toward which an organization drives to reach greater sustainability.”

Werbach presents case studies of companies that have pursued sustainable strategies, like Clorox, whose Green Works natural cleansers have been endorsed by the Sierra Club.

It remains to be seen whether corporate America embraces sustainability as way to gain a long-term competitive market advantage or just as a marketing strategy. But signs of change abound.

Late last month, Werbach was invited to give a talk on sustainability at Apple’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. The iPhone and Mac maker has long been a whipping boy of groups like Greenpeace for its lack of environmental disclosure and reluctance to jump on the green bandwagon crowded by Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and other tech stalwarts.

Apple also came in for a fair share of criticism in Werbach’s book.

“I don’t know a lot of people who have strict critiques of Apple who are invited to go speak there,” he says. “A friend from a previous incarnation invited me down. His instructions were to say whatever I wanted. I was shocked they would say that. We had a really open conversation about what I thought they could do better.”

And Werbach at least practices what he preaches: I learned about the Apple meeting through his Twitter feed.

Find out more at the Strategy for Sustainability website.

Read Todd Woody’s past Green State columns.

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If the Texas company EEStor is running a scam, it's a frakking brilliant one. For years the otherwise tight-lipped outfit has been promising a capacitor that can quickly charge, quickly discharge, and hold enormous amounts of energy -- on all accounts, performance far beyond any battery on the market, or even contemplated. If it performs as promised, the EESU (Electrical Energy Storage Unit) will revolutionize the electric vehicle market. It will enable cost-effective, high-capacity storage for renewable electricity sources. It can radically increase the utility of portable electronics. It would be an honest-to-god game changer.

It sounds too good to be true, and quite a few people think it is. But the company has passed some initial tests; it has signed an exclusive contract with Lockheed Martin; electric car company ZENN is ready to put EESUs in vehicles and begin selling them in short order.

And now, there's a leaked interview with EEStor CEO Dick Weir (who never talks to the media, and who doesn't appear aware the interview will be published; journalist Tyler Hamilton, one of the few to have interviewed him, vouchsafes that it's his voice) in which he claims that he'll have a pre-production prototype EESU done by the end of the year.

If this is a bluff, it is one of the ballsier, more elaborate bluffs the cleantech world has ever seen.

Here are a few of the remarkable things Weir says, as related by Hamilton:

* On EEStor's value: “If we make an EESU ... God only knows what we'll be valued then.”

* He has two patents on grid-load levelling. “You can put 45 percent more electricity on the grid and do nothing more than put our batteries on there. ... that electricity could supply the electricity to the electric vehicle market as it emerges ... we make wind and solar real ... you can make a wind farm operate like a coal-fired plant and it's really cost-effective.”

* On storage for PCs and handhelds. “We can take a battery for a cell phone and give you three to five times more energy storage that would never degrade on you and you can charge in seconds.”

* How quick to market for EESU electric car? “Need is always a wonderful thing, and the need is very high for our technology ... there's nothing corrosive, harmful or explosive in our technology ... there's nothing, there's no chemistry part of our product. It's all solid state ... I think also ZENN is going to happen very, very quickly ... people will want that electric car. They'll be able to test it, don't get me wrong, but they'll be able to pass those tests quickly because we've got the UL.”

* On EESU status: “I'm already out there putting EESUs together and I'm still in June. I'm ahead of schedule.” Says ZENN will get pre-production prototypes by the end of this year. “Once I do that, all hell is going to break loose for ZENN as well as EEStor.”

* Ending note: “We've done our homework, and you'll see the results when we get into 2010 ... you'll see a very effective and constant ramp-up to our production capabilities.”

I wouldn't invest in this company, but I can probably spare a little hope.

More on EEStor:

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Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Hi Umbra,

I'm in the book business, and there are many who try and make sure books never make it to landfills and are donated to worthy causes. However, I have been wondering for some time about the environmental impact of such authors as Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts, and Tom Clancy, whose books quickly become worthless, and how they feel about their environmental impact, and what if anything they are doing to improve the clearcutting they might be causing? Just a thought.

Joe Hoppe
Austin, Tex.

A. Dearest Joe,

Is this misplaced blame? They are in the book business, you are also in the book business. They write books, you sell or collect or ship or edit or in some other way earn your living off of books. Like it or not, you and Danielle Steel have a mutual interest in the success of and continued circulation of books. And you also share a mutual responsibility for urging the book industry to be more eco-minded.

Your plots are delicious, but your eco-impacts suspicious.justin via flickrI looked into the authors you mentioned whose books "quickly become worthless." All three have engaged in various philanthropic causes, mostly involving children's health. I don't see any obvious messages about clearcutting coming from them, although Nora Roberts has done a bit of donating to Defenders of Wildlife. And Tom Clancy wrote Rainbow Six, involving terrorist environmentalists! From the Wikipedia summary: "After living in sealed redoubts ... and protected by the secret 'B' vaccine, they will come out to rebuild the world in an environmentally friendly way."

Sounds exciting! What may be more exciting, in light of your question, is some of the progress the book industry is making. The industry, like all others, contributes to global warming and other environmental problems. Glancing over at our friend the Carnegie Mellon EIO-LCA database, we find that for every million wholesale dollars of book printing, 717 MT of CO2 equivalent are produced. We also know that 30 million trees are used to make books sold in the U.S. each year.

So what are some of the steps publishers are taking? Random House, which publishes Steel's novels, has committed to increasing its use of recycled paper from 3 percent to 30 percent by 2010. Penguin, which publishes Clancy's and Roberts' work, has an even more substantial-seeming green effort, which includes using FSC-certified paper, publishing work by environmental-minded authors, partnering with various green groups, and taking concrete steps to green its in-house business. Then, of course, we have electronic publishing, which is taking the trees out of the equation; as I have written before, e-books may be the greener option -- and your authors have made their work available in that format.

That is good news. But more to the point, I do not share your concern about the obsolescence of popular literature. I'd particularly like to direct you away from the idea that bestselling mainstream books quickly become "worthless." There is a reason that Steel and her ilk have sold millions and millions of books: People like to read them. Not just once, but again and again. My small window into vacation homes, library book sales, airplane and bus reading, shows that it is these very books that are repeatedly proving their worth. Perhaps not monetarily -- and maybe this is where your gripe comes in -- but certainly as reading material. It's the intellectual stuff that weighs down the table at a yard sale.

I say not to worry. Unlike many other manufactured objects -- cell phones spring to mind -- books are endlessly reused. Paperbacks have two great benefits: they are easily recyclable alongside old phonebooks. And they are highly portable. After all, no one is going to take their leatherbound copy of The Mill on the Floss to the beach.

Relaxedly,
Umbra

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Q. Dear Umbra,

Hi. I love your column. I just wanted to see if you were aware of the company Mean Green Trucking and Transport ... We run our fleet of moving trucks on recycled veggie oil and biodiesel. Our NYC warehouse is solar powered. And we plant a tree with every move.

Chris K.
Tarzana, Calif.

A. Dearest Chris,

My fingers are exhausted from waving tiny flags all weekend, and I can barely click through my email for questions about green moving companies. So we round out our moving revue with your letter. The hopefully only time I have used a product endorsement to introduce a topic.

Cargo beep-beep.Once upon a time in 2006, I responded to a question about green transcontinental moving companies, finding none. As you later pointed out, I overlooked yours. When you wrote, you said it was the only one of its type, which seems plausible. But today, for those who have the money and loads of stuff required to hire movers, there is more than one biodiesel-spewing, tree-planting, cross-country moving service.

I have not used such a moving service, so the use of this letter is as I said only a device to introduce the topic. I have not vetted any of these moving services, nor do I wish to pack up my things here in the stacks and try any of them out.

But I can mention the emissions factor for diesel fuel: 22.3 pounds of CO2 emitted per gallon burned. Biodiesel is considered by the EPA to reduce lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions over 50 percent from this sad baseline. Logically, then, if you must drive a diesel truck any distance, biodiesel makes the carbon footprint better.

"Green" moving companies not only run biodiesel in their trucks. They also run energy-efficient offices, recycle cardboard, and lend out reusable boxes. Some plant trees and offset their emissions, which are steps with questionable effect but certainly good intent. These are all improvements over the status quo. To start you movees off on your hunt for green moving companies, I offer Chris's Mean Green Trucking, another lead in California, one in New York, and a somewhat faceless national affiliation of green movers.

Now let's wrap up the moving revue and allow another three years to pass quietly by before revisiting the topic. Before I move along, I will quickly mention the other major aspects of green moving to consider. We can avoid solid waste problems by planning ahead and averting last-minute jettisoning of possessions that could be reused or recycled. Advance planning will also help us properly dispose of household hazardous chemicals. It's just too tempting to use a time crunch as an excuse to throw toxic stuff into the trash.

Wistfully,
Umbra

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Photo: Sarah van SchagenStroll into the newly renovated Starbucks coffeehouse in Seattle's University Village and the décor may feel more familiar than you'd expect.

The menu boards are made from the chalkboards you may have scribbled on at nearby Garfield High School; the shelving is from old bleachers you may have sat upon; the leather accents near the bar are from your old shoes and car seats; and the ash-wood community table that stretches the length of the store and patio (one-third of it is outside) is salvaged from a tree that fell in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood.

It's part of an effort to create a shared sense of community while reducing impact on the planet -- all by sourcing materials locally. But it's no one-off show-off. The University Village store is actually one of three pilot locations (another in Seattle is on the corner of 1st Ave. and Pike St., and a third is in Paris Disney Village in Paris, France) for the company's new global store design strategy.

That strategy, which is part of the brand's Shared Planet initiative, also involves employing local artisans and craftsmen and incorporating reused and recycled materials as much as possible. All of which will help the stores achieve LEED green building certification -- the goal for all new company-owned stores built and renovated beginning in 2010.

Photo: Sarah van Schagen"This green store vision for the company has been happening and building in momentum for several years now," says Jim Hanna, director of environmental impact for Starbucks. "When we ran our carbon footprint, it basically said that 75 percent of our total carbon footprint is operation of our stores ... so if we were really going to have an impact on reducing our footprint, we had to start with the stores."

And this particular store, which reopened to coffeehounds at 6 a.m. this morning, is the company's second busiest globally, which makes it a perfect location for testing the green design concepts. One of those new elements is the lighting: Unhappy with the LED options available on the market, Starbucks partnered with GE to create an LED light fixture that wouldn't be so harsh.

And while the new GE lights are only available to Starbucks right now, they may eventually make it to the mass market. It's a good example of how the company is using its size for good, Hanna says -- not unlike Wal-Mart and other massive global brands that are often villainized, but can create major change in the market when they put their minds to it.

"A lot of our stores have a relatively similar footprint to people's homes," Hanna said. "So if somebody sees a cool LED lighting bank in the store, that's something they can take home and use in their house to reduce their energy usage."

The same could be said for the dual-flush toilets, which are already in use in all of their Australian locations. "It's interesting," says Starbucks Corporate Architect Tony Gale, "people come out of those coffeehouses and that's what they're talking about -- the dual-flush toilets."

In an effort to shepherd this sort of take-home messaging, Starbucks is adding explanatory signage throughout the stores to highlight the sustainable elements.

"Our new design actually gives the community a way to learn a little bit more about it as they discover it and maybe take some of those behaviors back to their homes," says Liz Muller, director of global concept design. "It becomes more of a lab for taking care of our planet."

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Entrepreneur Jeffrey Hollender launched a mail-order catalog business 20 years ago and nursed it for more than a decade before it became profitable. That company is now Seventh Generation, and there's no more catalog, but there certainly is a ton of recycled toilet paper -- and all-natural cleaning supplies and non-toxic personal-care products.

It's a product category that has seen massive growth in the last few years as environmental issues have risen to front-page news status. In fact, Seventh Generation saw its biggest numbers recently -- posting about 50 percent growth last year. Which is exactly why Hollender has decided it's time to step down from his role as CEO.

Sound like odd timing? Not for Hollender. "I realized that I lacked most of the experience that would be required to manage that growth to its fruition," he says. Hollender was also growing increasingly torn between other projects like writing -- his next book, In Our Every Deliberation, comes out next month -- and speaking gigs, and a TV program called Big Green Lies. "As I wandered around the offices, I began to wonder what all the people in different rooms were doing."

So as of last week, there was at least one more new face in the Seventh Generation offices: Chuck Maniscalco. He comes to the company from PepsiCo, where he was CEO of the $10 billion Quaker, Tropicana, and Gatorade division, which he calls "very purpose-driven businesses." Maniscalco, who actually came out of retirement to take on this job, says he's determined to manage Seventh Generation's growth in a way that remains true to the company's commitment to sustainability.

As for Hollender, he'll be continuing in the role of "Chief Inspired Protagonist," focusing more on corporate responsibility and sustainability advocacy work rather than being involved the company's day-to-day operations.

I spoke to the two of them in a three-way conference call just days after Maniscalco took over his new office. Here's what they had to say:

Q. One of the reasons you're leaving, Jeffrey, is because of the massive growth Seventh Generation has seen recently. What do you attribute that success to?

A. Hollender: I think that we live in a world where there is a tremendous sort of search for purpose and meaning. In some respects, who Seventh Generation is and what we aspire to helps people be the people they want to be and live the lives they want to live and that is a stark contrast to what they often experience from [other] companies and businesses ... [It] builds a strong and deep connection to people that I think is more important than it has perhaps ever been. Now, that's not enough; you have to also get your products on the shelves of stores at the right price and the products have to work the way people expect them to work.

Q. Speaking of getting your products on the shelves at the right price, are you still refusing to sell them in Wal-Mart?

A. Hollender: Historically, that was true; up until a year ago while we were in a very close dialogue with Wal-Mart and working to help them become a more sustainable and responsible business, we were not comfortable selling to them. But the progress that Wal-Mart has made in the past three to four years is astounding and absolutely an incredible inspiration for what's possible of a large company. Does that mean they're perfect today? No, but they have made more progress than just about any company that I can think of and that progress has led us to experiment with them in a small group of stores. ... So it's really a question for Chuck in terms of when is the right time and what is the right way, but there is no philosophic issue that restrains us from doing business with them.

Q. Do you feel like it's possible for a big company like Wal-Mart or PepsiCo to commit to the same standards of sustainability that Seventh Generation has?

Chuck Maniscalco (left) and Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation.Photo: Chrystie HeimertA. Maniscalco: I think it would be difficult for any company to ever reach up to the standards that Seventh Generation has set. I've never seen it before, and I probably will never see it again and that's why I'm here. Having said that, Wal-Mart, for example, was a very big customer for PepsiCo and Quaker Oats, and Wal-Mart over the course of the last several years has been the single biggest force in getting companies in the consumer packaged-goods world to take waste out of their products, out of their packages, and out of the supply-chain stream. So I think they can be a force for good.

Hollender: And they can move quicker than government or any regulatory agency. Now, they don't all use that power in ways that are beneficial, in fact we wouldn't be in the situation we are if they did. But I don't believe that we can solve the urgent problems that face us -- whether it's global warming, or whether it's a crisis of fresh water or species disappearance -- without aggressive leadership from the business community. Part of the role that Seventh Generation wants to play is showing business that being responsible is good business and being sustainable is good business, and that we can't afford to have business stand in the way of the progress we need to make to become more sustainable.

Q. In the same vein, is it possible for a company like Seventh Generation to scale up? You've said your goal was to take the company from $150 million annually to $1 billion. How do you plan to do this while maintaining a commitment to sustainability?

A. Maniscalco: It's a question of how to get big and be authentic at the same time ... Even with all of the growth this business has had over many, many years, we have still tapped into a minority of the consumers out there who care about what we offer in our products and who care about what the company stands for ... so there's still distribution opportunities. And from a consumer standpoint, this group of people is already big and it's growing by the day, because all of the issues that we all know the world is facing are becoming much more apparent to more people. So I absolutely think it's doable, but you have to do it with real care and real discipline. And that's our charge.

Hollender: It helps to be a private company so that we don't have to answer to shareholders who've purchased stock in the company who might not share our vision or our values. We choose our investors as carefully if not more carefully than our employees, because the alignment of those investors is absolutely critical. I also think that what I've experienced is that a company with the mission we have is a magnet for the best talent in the marketplace ... that's one of the ways in which we will scale, because we can get the best and brightest people to come and join what we're doing.

Q. When you started Seventh Generation, you were a big fish in a little pond. That pond is more crowded now; is there enough room in the pool for everyone? How do you feel about the competitors like Method who are on the shelves with you at Target or other stores?

A. Maniscalco: People always say they love competition and they rarely mean it. I would say, in this case, we love competition and we do mean it. In my view, the more people who come into this space -- and do so legitimately -- the greater good we're serving. And as Jeffrey pointed out before, we don't succeed against our mission if we do it all by ourselves. Secondly, the more people that come into this space and do it right, the more awareness and understanding consumers will have about how to behave responsibly. The challenge for us, I think, is to ensure that we keep driving standards higher and higher and higher, so that as other people come along, we still have a significant edge over them.

Hollender: One of the biggest gaps that exists today is a green product does not make a green company. And what we need to do -- and what we need our customers, consumers, and partners to do -- is to push businesses beyond greening a teeny part of their business, to embrace sustainability across everything they do. When you look at the competitive landscape today, it's mostly large companies taking a small part of their portfolio and making it greener than it was before. I think that consumers will increasingly look for sustainable companies, not just sustainable products.

Q. You're touching on a major problem for consumers: greenwashing -- companies putting out products that have green labels on them, but aren't really following that up within the actual product or their company as a whole. What can consumers do to make sure they're buying a legitimate product?

A. Hollender: Well, I'll just mention two things. One is we have a great application that you can download to your phone or your computer or your PDA. As you're walking down the aisles of a grocery store, you can use this application to help make better choices. Secondly, we are big advocates of what the Good Guide is doing, and we think that the service that a third party like the Good Guide provides in making independent evaluations of the products on the shelf is a very valuable service to consumers.

Q. What is the biggest challenge for a business wanting to be truly sustainable?

A. Hollender: I think we face a couple of challenges. Clearly, education is a huge challenge, so it is critical that we help consumers make conscious and responsible choices. We need greater transparency so that they can make informed decisions. Secondly, we live in a regulatory environment that often encourages us to do the wrong thing because companies are allowed to externalize so much of their costs that dangerous, environmentally irresponsible products often cost less than sustainable, responsible products. If consumers are shown the full cost of the products and services that they're buying, there's no question that they will increasingly choose responsible, sustainable products.

Q. How can we show them that cost?

A. Hollender: There are hundreds and hundreds of examples, and some of them directly affect our business. We're in the business of selling recycled tissue paper, and the government -- for the last year in which a calculation was made -- spent a billion dollars subsidizing the virgin timber industry by building roads and allowing that timber to be cut at below-market prices. What that does is it artificially makes recycled fiber more expensive. All of these things send the wrong message to the consumer, and we need to actively make sure that the government and the regulatory agencies are reflecting decisions that are in the best interest of future generations, not the shareholders of some of America's largest companies.

Q. So, it's got to be a political-activism sort of thing?

A. Hollender: It does, and Chuck's going to allow me more time to do that, which I'm looking forward to.

Maniscalco: The great news is we've now got Jeffrey playing a much bigger role in that big external environment, and I can get really focused on driving [the company] from the inside, and I think that's a really good one-two punch.

Hollender: Absolutely. We're subtly sending a message to all these large companies that they better, to a certain extent, watch out because this is a game-changing event for our business and for our industry. The addition of Chuck to Seventh Generation will dramatically accelerate the need for everyone to rise to a higher standard and move more quickly in a sustainable direction.

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This Friday, don’t just Buy Nothing—use nothing!

On the 28th floor of a San Francisco skyscraper, a cadre of 26 young men and women called the Climate Corps is being briefed. They won't be planting trees or serving as Al Gore's cap-and-trade shock troops.

Rather, these are MBAs on a mission to infiltrate the Fortune 500 and help them save ... money (and the planet too) by rooting out energy inefficiency and developing strategies to cut corporate carbon budgets.

The Climate Corps is an internship project of the Environmental Defense Fund, and I'm at EDF's San Francisco outpost as a three-day boot camp gets underway to train these green MBAs in such things as "HVAC Technologies and Efficiency Approaches" and "Energy Efficiency Option Identification & Evaluation Process." (And yes, they stayed wide-awake during those presentations.)

Once the interns are "embedded" at Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and 21 other companies for the summer, they'll go to work assessing ways to cut power consumption at data centers, corporate HQs and other facilities while doing the math to justify energy efficiency investments for the bean counters.

"The thing that is most exciting about what you're doing is the opportunity that you have to be the catalyst for change in the companies that you go to," Elizabeth Sturcken, EDF's managing director for corporate partnerships, tells the troops. "Some of these companies get it and others, they're trying to get it and that's why you're there."

The nuts and bolts of energy efficiency can be mind-numbing -- just sit through the "Lighting Lifecycle Cost Calculation" session -- but the bottom-line numbers are jolting: Office buildings in the United States account for as much greenhouse gas emissions annually as 43 coal-fired power plants, according to the Department of Energy. Corporations, meanwhile, spend $108 billion a year on their energy bills.

During the Climate Corps' inaugural run last summer, seven interns indentified $35 million in energy efficiency savings at their companies, EDF says.

Members of the Climate Corps' 2009 class of interns listen to a presentation from EDF's Millie Chu Baird.Courtesy of Environmental Defense FundWhich begs the question: why don't these wealthy corporations hire their own corps of energy efficiency experts?

Easier said than done, says Millie Chu Baird, the Climate Corps' project director. "We found there are a number of organizational and institutional barriers that prevent companies from embracing energy efficiency investments."

Mainly, the guys who keep the lights on don't talk to the gals who pay the bills, and no one wants to make more work for themselves or ask for money for capital improvements, especially at a time when the global economy it teetering.

Enter the tech-savvy MBA with dark green eyeshades who can bridge the gap between the two worlds. Half this year's Climate Corps members are trained engineers who didn't sweat solving boot camp exercises like, "How many gallons of gasoline equivalent would be saved every year by replacing a 60W incandescent light bulb running 4,000 hours with a CFL?"

"We thought why not MBA interns, future leaders?" says Baird "We can indoctrinate them and train them and they themselves can show companies that being good for the environment is good for the bottom line."

A green fifth column, in other words.

It may be a harbinger of a cultural shift that these once-future masters of the universe from A-list B-schools at Stanford, Yale and Columbia are choosing to put their financial smarts to work saving the universe -- while making a buck, of course.

"The sustainable finance class is really popular," says Ryan Whisnant, who's getting dual degrees from the University of Michigan business school and the school of natural resources. "People think it's really a strategic advantage to have an understanding of sustainability."

Whisnant will be embedded at the Wayne, Penn., headquarters of SunGard -- a $5.5 billion software and IT services company -- where he'll work on carbon foot-printing the corporate campus.

Jennifer Sweet, SunGard's senior manager for corporate responsibility, says she jumped at the chance to take on an intern dedicated to energy efficiency, especially one like Whisnant, who has a degree in environmental engineering. Like the other companies in the Climate Corps program, SunGard will pay Whisnant's salary during the internship.

That's a sweet deal for Sweet. "This is the kind of consultant that would cost $80,000 to $100,000 for three months," she says.

"This is a phenomenal opportunity to get an idea of what we need to do and spread that to all our other offices," adds Sweet, who is the sole full-time employee among SunGard's 21,000-person workforce dedicated to sustainability issues. "Sustainability is really pushed heavily from our CEO and our board and from the grassroots," she says. "Hopefully, we'll be pushing the center to get the operations mangers to make changes."

Last summer, Emily Reyna was one of 15 MBA candidates dispatched to Silicon Valley networking giant Cisco Systems by the University of Michigan, but she was the only one working on energy efficiency. She spent her internship devising ways for Cisco's R&D laboratories to cut their energy use.

She discovered that a Cisco lab in North Carolina had installed intelligent power strips to turn off equipment when idle, resulting in a 25 percent cut in electricity consumption. She spent the summer talking to lab managers and studying the financial implications of rolling out the devices to all of Cisco's 1,000+ labs.

"As an MBA going in, you're working with facilities people or energy managers and they don't think you're credible," say Reyna. "But being able to really dig into the numbers and make the case is what's valuable about the program because they often don't have time do it."

A Climate Corps MBA candidate from the University of Michigan will continue her work this summer, Reyna says, as Cisco launches a pilot project to test the power-saving gadgets at three labs.

--

Watch a short EDF promotional video about the Climate Corps program:

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Three weeks, max.planetearthsingles.comAt last, there is a green-friendly dating site for environmentally, socially and spiritually conscious singles!

Not making this up:

Types of Dating:

If you can tell us what the hell any of these mean, we should, you know, maybe get coffee or something sometime.

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Though corporate leaders from across the country came to the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday asking representatives to put a cap on carbon, leading Republicans on the committee held firm in their contention that mandating emission reductions would be catastrophic for the nation's economy.

The first full day of hearings on the proposed Waxman-Markey climate bill found Republican members repeating thoroughly debunked claims about how much a cap-and-trade plan would cost American households, even as leaders from some of the country's biggest companies joined the EPA administrator in arguing that limits on carbon would benefit the country in the long run.

"If we design this bill right, if we get the transitions right, it will put us in a position to be stronger. It will not weaken our economy over time," Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, told the committee in his testimony. "It won't be easy, it won't be quick, but it must be fair, and it must be now."

Still, Republicans on the panel argued that the bill would be dangerous. "A cap-and-tax, cap-and-trade will essentially kick American families when they're down," said Fred Upton (R-Mich.). "I do believe that we need to reduce emissions, but it needs to be done in a commonsense way that takes into account the economic and global realities of the issue."

Getting down to business

The panel of business leaders gave insight into how the bill might be shaped going forward, if they have their way.

Rogers testified on behalf of the United States Climate Action Partnership, the coalition of business and environmental groups whose blueprint for climate action served as a model for the House bill now being debated.

He was joined on the panel by fellow USCAP members Charles Holliday, chairman of DuPont; Red Cavaney, senior vice president for government and public affairs for ConocoPhillips; Meg McDonald, director of global issues for Alcoa Inc.; David Crane, CEO of NRG Energy; and Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Though some expressed concerns with specific components of the bill, the entirety of the panel called for the committee to pass a cap-and-trade plan this year. "In the long run, I think it will help us be more competitive," said Holliday.

But their testimony didn't persuade Republicans on the panel, who insisted that the bill would drain jobs from the economy. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) warned that it would weaken U.S. competitiveness on a global scale.

That's not to say USCAP members were entirely keen on the draft bill at this point. Rogers argued that its renewable energy standard is too stringent and states should be allowed to set their own goals. He also expressed concern about the program kicking in by 2012, and suggested to reporters afterwards that a five-year window before it goes into effect might be more appropriate.

All of the business leaders called for a significant portion of carbon credits to be distributed free of cost in the early years of the cap-and-trade program, saying it was essential to help businesses successfully shift gears. "We've got to get the transition right, or it could have a devastating effect on our economy," said Rogers. "The whole sport is around whether we get the transition right."

The current draft of the bill doesn't address the question of what proportion of credits to auction off versus hand out to polluters, which will be a highly contentious issue going forward. The Obama administration has said it wants 100 percent auction, while the committee's Democratic leadership has indicated that the final product is likely to be a balance between auctions and allocations. Cavaney of ConocoPhillips called for the entirety of the credits to be distributed free of cost in at least the first year of the program. NRG's Crane said his company would not support the bill if it was all auction.

Bill coauthor Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has said this aspect of the bill was left open-ended so committee members and interested parties like USCAP could weigh in. But this approach has rankled Republicans on the committee. Ranking member Joe Barton (Texas) accused the majority of "trying to buy votes" in the process of determining how to give away allowances. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) alleged that the lack of specifics is an "intentional move to deceive us so we can't do the cost-benefit analysis."

Beaming in from Obamaland

During another panel session, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood offered the Obama administration's support for the legislation. "Three important players in this issue, that represent the president, believe the principles laid out in the bill are very strong and are principles the president and his team can work with," LaHood told reporters following their testimony.

Jackson was asked how the EPA had been able to estimate the costs of the bill to American households -- $98 to $140 a year, or 27 cents to 38 cents a day -- even though the measure is incomplete. She said the agency based its figures on the assumption that approximately 40 percent of auction revenues would be returned to consumers through rebates.

"The EPA's economic analysis shows that there are no harbingers of huge job loss in this bill," said Jackson. "Nothing is free," she continued, but the administration believes there will be only "modest impacts." If anything, Jackson said, EPA modeling tends to err on the conservative side and overestimate costs.

Jackson said the administration is willing to collaborate with Congress to develop an allocation and auction scheme. "Though [President Obama] has called for 100 percent auction, he looks forward to working with this committee ... and believes that these allowance questions can be addressed," she said.

Jackson was also asked about the EPA's finding last week that carbon dioxide emissions are a danger to public health, which triggers the process of regulating the pollutant under the Clean Air Act. While Jackson acknowledged that the agency is beginning that regulatory process, she made it clear that EPA rules would take months to finalize. She said the administration would prefer that Congress pass a new bill directly addressing the issue -- but that doesn't mean it's going to wait around.

"The race is clearly on and time is of the essence," she told reporters.

And this is only the beginning ...

There were four separate panels on the climate bill on Wednesday, involving 21 witnesses. The fourth was added at the last minute to accommodate witnesses whom the minority members of the panel had requested, including representatives from conservative outposts like the Heritage Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute. The hearings stretched on for more than 10 hours, and by the end, as few as four members of the committee were actually present to hear testimony.

The day certainly had its theatrics -- especially from the committee's resident climate skeptics. Shimkus was one of the more dramatic participants, raising his voice at several points.

"This is the largest assault on democracy and freedom in this country that I've every experienced," he said during the day's first panel. "I've lived through an impeachment, two wars, terrorist attacks ... I fear this more than any of the above activities."

But the Democratic leadership of the panel seems to be taking it for granted that they'll be able to pass a bill out of their committee in the next five weeks, even if it's still not entirely clear what that bill will look like.

"It is no longer a question of whether we will act to reduce CO2 emissions," said Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). "The real question is whether we will do so in a way that strengthens our economy, creates new jobs, and ends our dangerous dependence on foreign oil."

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Nike, Starbucks, eBay, and a handful of other big-name U.S. companies are putting forward a climate agenda that's just as ambitious as that of many environmentalists, if not more so.

The new coalition -- Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy, or BICEP for short -- grew out of a partnership between Nike and Ceres, a nonprofit network of investors and enviro groups. Other members now include Gap, Symantec, Levi Strauss & Co., Sun Microsystems, and Timberland.

At a briefing in Washington, D.C. in early March, the coalition unveiled its priorities: cutting emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and creating an economy-wide cap-and-trade system that auctions 100 percent of carbon credits.

The group is also calling for aggressive policies that will at least double the country's energy efficiency; the creation of green-collar jobs in low-income communities; and a national renewable electricity standard that will require 20 percent of electricity to be generated from renewable sources by 2020.

Starbucks Director of Environmental Impact Jim Hanna noted that global warming will affect the climate of coffee-farming regions in Central America and Africa. "It's important for us to realize that there is a direct risk to our companies," said Hanna. "It wasn't altruism."

Ceres President Mindy Lubber, speaking with Grist after the briefing, stressed the need for more business leaders to be involved in the national discussion about climate change. "The public face has to be more than environmentalists and scientists," she said. "These are business leaders saying it is good for the economy to act, because it's a mandatory cap that will send the right market signals, that carbon has a real cost, we have to stop willy-nilly putting it into the air." The members of BICEP want a price on carbon so they can better plan for the future, she said -- and so that businesses already working toward sustainability can be rewarded for their efforts.

The BICEP agenda is more ambitious than the plan put forward by the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of major companies like ConocoPhillips and General Motors plus green groups like Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council. USCAP calls for emissions cuts of 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050, and a cap-and-trade program that would give away a significant portion of the carbon credits. While USCAP's members include more energy-intensive companies, both coalitions represent big players in the U.S. economy.

Lubber called the BICEP plan "much more aggressive" than USCAP's, but said the two should be seen as complementary. "We need multiple voices, we need hundreds of voices on this," she said. "Members of Congress need to hear that acting on climate is not bad for our economy, but is an important piece of jump-starting our economy, which we sorely need."

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It seems everyone’s going green these days—but some couples are doubly committed to the cause. In honor of Valentine’s Day, we take a look at 14 prominent pairs who share a certain planetary passion.

Brad and Angie
Yes, the ever-expanding footprint of this family might raise a few eco-eyebrows, but they make up for it by, oh: green-rebuilding New Orleans, funding a wildlife sanctuary in Cambodia to the tune of $5 million, narrating a PBS series on green design, supporting Haiti’s Clean Streets Project, partnering with an eco-cosmetics company to raise funds for charity, and buying an organic winery (OK, that one’s a glittery indulgence). Angie reportedly ate organic to get back into shape after having the twins, and buys bamboo pants for her kidlets too! How do we get adopted?

Photo: Jerry Bauer

Michael Pollan and Judith Belzer
Let’s say you’re the country’s leading voice on food politics and sustainable agriculture. Wouldn’t it be convenient if your life partner were not, say, a PR flack for Big Ag, but a landscape painter? Indeed it would, which is why it’s lovely that Michael Pollan is married to Judith Belzer. The college sweethearts, who met in 1974, have pursued their overlapping passions through a 22-year marriage, several moves, and Pollan’s rise to fame. No slouch herself, Belzer landed solo exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston while Pollan kept himself busy writing eye-opening titles like Omnivore’s Dilemma. As she wrote in one artist’s statement, “No one view of nature prevails because nature itself—not just the observer—is constantly changing.”

Portia and Ellen
Amiable talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres is, along with her partner Portia de Rossi (also known as “Really? Wow, good for her!”), raising awareness of a lifestyle that’s often marginalized by the mainstream. Yeah, we’re talking about veganism. After celebrating their marriage last year with a vegan ceremony, the two have apparently converted to a 100 percent vegan diet. De Rossi is designing a vegan shoe line, and DeGeneres promotes vegan companies on her show. Over the years, she’s also hosted eco-guests ranging from Al Gore to a six-year-old recycler from Columbia, S.C. Plus, did you see her dance with Obama? Maybe teh veganz are OK after all.

Ed Begley and Bill Nye
No, they’re not technically a couple. But thanks to their neighborly eco-spats, the actor and science guy have become nearly inseparable—in the media, at least. Taking the idea of “keeping up with the Joneses” to fierce new heights, Ed and Bill have made improvements to their respective homes that include solar panels, rain barrels, and recycled-milk-jug fencing—and broadcast their story every step of the way, to outlets ranging from USA Today to PBS. Skinny white homeowners unite!

Photo: Joli

Eddie Vedder and Kelly Slater
Another eco-bromance we’re wild about: the sun-and-fun-and-sustainability relationship between musician Vedder and pro surfer Slater. Besides frequently catching waves together, the two pair up to raise big bucks for reef protection and environmental awareness through the Kelly Slater Foundation. Vedder, in between songs at a benefit show for the foundation last year, explained his motivation: “Half of every song I’ve ever written was written in the ocean, so that’s sort of my way of giving back.”

Photo: TheHundreds.com

Erykah Badu and Jay Electronica
Soulful singer Badu, who’s been a vegetarian for 20 years, converted to veganism two years ago and has taken her family along for the ride; in one interview, she referred to her children as “vegan vegetarians, organic babies from birth.” Her charity organization, Beautiful Love Incorporated Non-Profit Development (BLIND), focuses on building culture and community in her hometown of Dallas; in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, she sponsored programs for young evacuees. On top of it all, Badu and her rapper boyfriend tweeted the birth of their child this month—think of all the paper they saved on birth announcements.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer and Margaret Kirkpatrick
The dreamily progressive, bow tie-sporting Congressman from Oregon is known for his vocal support of sustainable development, energy efficiency, clean water, and public transportation. His contagious enthusiasm has convinced fellow pols to join the 160-member Congressional Bicycle Caucus, which he founded upon being elected in 1996. And his wheel-vangelism apparently extends to his personal life: His wife “frequently bikes to work,” he told Outside Magazine last fall. Her job? She’s an environmental lawyer and VP at Northwest Natural Gas Co., vice chair of the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission, and co-chair of the American Wind Energy Association Siting Committee. Now that’s a power couple.

Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton
When the actress and her playwright husband took over as artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company in 2007, they made greening the facility a priority. While it’s no small undertaking, the pair has made some headway—printing brochures on carbon-neutral paper and reviewing the waste-management contract—and still hopes to undertake a massive solar installation and water-system overhaul. The couple reportedly put $1.5 million into eco-renovations at their own home in Sydney, and Blanchett has been involved with Earth Hour and the Walk Against Warming. “As I see it,” she said in a 2008 interview with Marie Claire, “there’s no greater challenge we face as a species than dealing with climate change and its effects.”

Laura Dern and Ben Harper
The eco-leanings of this actress-rocker duo seem to have expanded with the addition of their two children, now 6 and 3. Dern is an active spokesperson for the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition, spreading the word about household toxics and how to avoid them. The two drive a hybrid (OK, two hybrids); Harper has also been spotted bike-hauling his daughter home from school. On the road, he tours in a biofuel bus, and his most recent CD was packaged entirely in recyclable materials. As committed as he is, Harper admits that his spouse leads the green charge, and told one interviewer, “She’s my environmental hero.”

Brian and Nancy Schweitzer
As governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer has earned kudos for his ability to address environmental issues without sounding like some kind of—how to put this?—East Coast weenie. Since being elected in 2004, the gun-lovin’ former rancher has hit the national scene by talking up clean energy and staring down climate change. Back at home, he and his wife, both scientists by training, have launched an initiative to get the state’s children engaged in science, both in school and through programs like roadside signs, trading cards, and a youth forest monitoring program.

Pierce Brosnan and Keely Shaye Smith
There’s more to this green couple than their splashy Golden Globes arrival in a hydrogen-powered Beamer. The former James Bond met his future wife, an environmental journalist, while participating in an eco-campaign in Mexico. Since then, they’ve been actively involved in marine conservation, as well as fighting a proposed salt factory in Baja California and the LNG terminal off of Malibu. The couple has donated money and time to several green groups over the years, and taught their kids to compost. “I continue to be a student of the world,” Brosnan told [PDF] Bon Appetit last year when asked how he got interested in eco-causes—then listed his wife among the people who inspire him.

Barbara Kingsolver and Steven Hopp
The couple bared all in 2007’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, in which they chronicled a year of growing and locally sourcing food for themselves and their two daughters. But the book was no dilettantish dip into the eco-well. Kingsolver’s best-selling novels feature natural themes, and Hopp is an environmental studies professor with a vireo fixation. The “Hoppsolvers,” as they’ve jokingly referred to themselves, moved from Arizona to their farm in Virginia to escape the eco-unreality of a desert existence. They continue to blog about life on the farm, and retain a down-to-earth attitude. As Kingsolver puts it, “I’m sort of allergic to sanctimony.”

Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck
Their eco-efforts first struck us as modest: Yeah, Jennifer was spotted shopping at a farmers’ market. OK, Ben dressed up as an ear of corn for a flex-fuel film! (Don’t watch it. Seriously, you can’t get that 5:31 back.) And fine, Jennifer and Ben made PSAs for Live Earth. But then we read that The Dimpled One campaigned against former California Rep. Richard Pombo in 2006. “Our fight to unseat Richard Pombo is ... a fight for the ecological preservation of the United States,” Garner said at the time. “It’s a fight for the world I want my little girl to inherit.” Yes! Only now it’s little girls, plural—congrats, you sorta-committed cuties.

Michael and Mary Brune
As executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, Mike Brune has helped convince major companies including Home Depot and Goldman Sachs to change their business practices, protecting millions of acres of rainforest along the way. On the Huffington Post and in his recent book Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal, he works to raise awareness about energy and conservation. Meanwhile, Brune’s wife Mary is an activist in her own right: she co-founded and is the director of Making Our Milk Safe, a member organization created in 2005 to raise awareness about industrial pollutants in breastmilk. The Brunes live in California with their two children; after having the first, Mary remarked that “we hope that she’ll be one more soldier on the front lines who’s going to fight for the Earth when she grows up.” With genes like this, the chances seem good.

Bono and Ali Hewson
In 1975, Paul Hewson met a girl and joined a band. The girl would become his wife; the band, U2. Over the years, the eco-causes taken up by Bono and Ali Hewson have included anti-nuclear activism, poverty and AIDS relief, and fair trade. In 2005, they launched EDUN, an eco-clothing line whose goal is to support sustainable business in the developing world.

Courtesy of New Belgium

Jeff Lebesch and Kim Jordan
We love a good love story, especially when it involves beer. In the early 1990s, Lebesch and Jordan turned a curiosity about amateur ale-making into New Belgium Brewing, the county’s fifth-largest craft brewer. The company is partially wind-powered, makes organic varieties, and gives bikes to its employees. Before going commercial, the Colorado couple hiked into the Rockies to write their mission statement; one of the 10 items is “honoring nature at every turn of the business.”

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim
The co-creators of the Forum on Religion and Ecology, an international, multifaith organization that explores the connections between faith and environment, are giving voice to a key constituency in the green conversation. The Yale-based brains have edited several books on ecology and spirituality; Tucker is also a member of the Interfaith Partnership for the Environment at the United Nations Environment Program.

Photo: Bart Nagel

Kit Crawford and Gary Erickson
Seventeen years ago this month, Gary Erickson debuted a snack that became a household name: the Clif Bar. He and his wife, who both grew up camping and hiking, now serve as CEOs of the company; they count “sustain the planet” as one of the five tenets of their business. Now living in Napa Valley with their children, they’ve branched out into the wine business, with a focus on organic and sustainably farmed grapes.

Photo: Ode Magazine

Jurriaan Kamp and Helene de Puy
This Dutch duo co-founded Ode magazine in the mid-1990s, with an eye toward telling the other side of the news—the side that shows social, environmental, and economic promise. Since then, their publication for “intelligent optimists” has found an audience of 100,000, and in 2004, they moved to California to launch a U.S. version. Recent topics have ranged from green search engines to sustainable banking.

Photo: greencouple.com

The Green Couple
OK, it’s not exactly a business, but we couldn’t resist: these kids are young and in love—and in love with the planet. The self-dubbed Green Couple blogs from the heartland to show others that it’s possible to care for each other and the earth without spending a ton of money or getting overwhelmed. NSFW, but only if your boss doesn’t like hope and earnestness bleeding from the page.

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They say it's a "no-frills holiday season" this year -- with the economy hitting the skids, many companies are putting the brakes on lavish holiday-party spending, and some are nixing their parties altogether. But just because you have to cancel the fireworks show doesn't mean you can't have a good time. If your company is celebrating the holidays this year, consider this a memo on how to plan a lean, green, and still-enough-fun-that-you-regret-it-the-next-day occasion.

Here's where to start. Got more ideas, or examples of stuff your company is doing? Let us know.

Make yours a paperless office. As frequently noted, society hasn't done so well with that "paperless office" prediction. But when it comes to holiday cards and invites, that's the way to go. Send an electronic invite, send a plain old e-mail, or heck, stand up and shout your invite through the cube farm. If you must print on paper, look for a company that uses recycled stock. (See Resources for a few to get you started.)

But load the copier with used or recycled paper. Hey, if people are gonna get drunk and photocopy their asses, you don't want them wasting perfectly good sheets.

Work the pretty. When it comes to decorations, keep it simple. Buy a few plants, gather up some others from around the office -- yeah, even the half-dead ones -- and cluster them for an outside-in décor (just be sure you know whose desk they go back to). Ask staffers to contribute a favorite holiday item or their kids' artwork to brighten up the scene (just be sure you know whose kid they go back to). Or use food as decoration -- it's pretty, it's colorful, and when it all gets eaten, your Decorations Clean-Up Subcommittee will be happy. For lighting, try LED strings or candles (the non-yucky kind) -- or have your party in the daytime so lights aren't necessary.

Eat and greet. The best thing about a holiday party should be the food. If your affair is catered, ask about local and organic options. Request linens and silverware instead of disposables. If you're planning to have your shindig at a nearby establishment, support a local business instead of a faceless chain. And if you're inclined to raise the bar, consider biodynamic wines, organic beers, or your own occasion-specific organic cocktails. Provide recycling bins, and either compost leftover food or donate it to a local organization.

Cut the crap. Don't give out pewter pens or umbrellas stamped with your company logo to every staffer -- it creates waste and inspires frustration. Instead, if you have that money to spare, put it into the next paycheck or a gift card. If staffers are pushing to uphold gift-giving traditions, consider a white-elephant exchange, and make it the kind where you bring an item from home, not purchase something new. And if custom dictates that you absolutely must give something to your (greedy, planet-fucking) clients, look into green options geared toward corporations (see Resources, below).

Call the whole thing off. Follow the lead of companies like Viacom, which is giving employees extra paid days off this year instead of splurging on a holiday bash. Or look into a "Big Little Holiday Party" -- these collaborative events, catching on around the country, bring small groups together for one whopper of a good, impact-sharing time. Or hold your holiday party in January -- after the frenzy of the holiday season is over, when people need a diversion, and when food and facility costs aren't jacked up beyond all reason.

Whatever you do and however crunched your finances may be, be sure to show your employees the love. After all, where would you be without them?

Recycled-stock invitations
My Good Greetings
Tiny Prints Corporate
Invitation Consultants

Corporate gifts with a green twist
Green with Envy Gifts
The Green Office
Greener Printer
Eco Promo Gifts

Party-planning tips from Grist
Birthday parties
Earth Day parties
Climate-pact parties
Weddings

Related Links:

You don’t have to be big to go green

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting

The environmental community is mourning the death last week of Joan Bavaria, a pioneer of socially responsible investing and founder of Ceres. In 2007, she opined in Grist about the future of SRI.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen