Joel Makower

[Editor's note: GreenBiz.com has also published the first of several adapted excerpts from Strategies for the Green Economy, online here: http://greenbiz.com/feature/2008/09/29/makower-from-movement-to-market.]

I'm delighted to announce that my new book -- my first in 14 years -- is just hitting the bookstores. Strategies for the Green Economy is the product of the past few years of speaking, writing, publishing, and working with a handful of both large and small companies.

Though the subject was near and dear, it was by far the hardest book I've written.

The reason? The greening of business -- more specifically, how companies are integrating environmental thinking into...

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As fuel and electricity prices have ratcheted up, so, too, have the queries about what to do: where can companies, especially smaller ones, go for help?

On the one hand, that's a big, vague question. Where you go depends on what business you are in, where you're located, what you need, and how much, if anything, you're able to spend. On the other hand, there's a lot of help out there, much of it low-cost or free, if only you know where to look.

Below are just a few of the resources aimed at small and midsize companies. They will be of help largely to U.S.-based companies — apologies to those elsewhere, though there likely are analogs to these...

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My speaking schedule last week took me to Toronto, to a conference of commercial building owners and developers, along with a corps of product and service purveyors that do business with them. It was a good time to talk about the future of office buildings, looking beyond LEED and other green-building considerations to examine the role of buildings in a cleaner energy future.

First, a little context. I've long maintained that the same constellation of forces that are requiring us to re-examine our energy generation and use — worldwide growing energy demand, depleting oil stocks, constrained and fragile electric grid, climate change, and all the rest — is fueling a...

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Can a major consumer packaged goods company with a name indelibly associated with household bleach become a leading light in the green marketplace? That's the hope of Clorox, the Oakland-based company, which this week is launching its first new brand in twenty years: Green Works, a line of cleaning products that are, in the company's words, "at least 99 percent natural" -- made from coconuts and lemon oil, formulated to be biodegradable and non-allergenic, packaged in recyclable bottles, and not tested on animals. The initial launch includes five products: an all-purpose cleaner, a glass cleaner, a toilet bowl cleaner, a dilutable cleaner, and a bathroom cleaner.

It's an...

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This just in: pretty much every consumer is concerned about the environment and is thinking conscientiously about what they buy - how it's made, under what conditions, and by whom. All you have to do is make good, green stuff and they'll buy it! We've reached the tipping point!

Sound too good to be true? It is, of course. But you wouldn't know it from the marketing studies I've been seeing - and the breathless headlines that result. As they continue to invade my in-box, I find myself getting increasingly irritated. Can market researchers be accused of greenwash? I'm beginning to wonder.

Two examples:

What is the stuff from which sustainability leaders are made?

It's a question that applies to individuals and organizations alike, and can be vexing for both. When one scans the landscape of companies seen to be sustainability leaders, questions quickly emerge: What do they have in common? How did they get there? What was the role of their leadership team, and of everyone below them, in achieving sustainability success?

And, perhaps most important: How successful, sustainability-wise, are these leadership companies? Do they stand a chance of "moving the needle" toward a more sustainable world, or are they simply tinkering at the margins?

A fascinating...

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On the eve of this week's UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, two new reports show how tantalizingly able we are to reduce our climate footprint -- and how frustratingly far we are from taking the needed steps to do so.

McKinsey & Co., the global management consultancy, last week released a report showing how the U.S. can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one-third to one-half by 2030 "at manageable costs to the economy." McKinsey analyzed more than 250 options, including efficiency gains, shifts to lower-carbon energy sources, and expanded carbon sinks.

The McKinsey study follows on the heels of other studies over the past year or so (see, for example, ...

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Is green marketing just a series of lies?

That's one conclusion to be drawn from a new study that examines hundreds of environmental labeling claims and found pretty much all of them wanting, suffering from sins of either omission or commission.

Is it any wonder that consumers are overwhelmingly wary of green marketing and view it as "just a sales tactic"?

Or that while market researchers swear that majorities of consumers want to make green choices, most green products garner only small slivers of the market?

This past spring, TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, which consults on green marketing and administers its own labeling and certification program, sent...

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