Articles

SustainableBusiness.com and GreenBiz.com both offer regularly updated articles and editorials on the many aspects of sustainable business.

Motivating Business Leaders to Improve Profitability through Energy Efficiency and
Strategic Industrial Energy Efficiency: Reduce Expenses, Build Revenues, and Control Risks (PDFs)
Reports from the Alliance to Save Energy that explore the connection between business performance and energy efficiency, identifying hurdles preventing energy efficiency and benefits of becoming more efficient.

The Next Industrial Revolution
Proposes a new approach to sustainable business that aims to solve rather than merely alleviate the problems that industry makes.

E-commerce, the Internet, and the Environment
A special issue of the Journal of Industrial Ecology reports on research that finds that seemingly small decisions by consumers, manufacturers and shipping companies can have huge environmental impacts, which can be both positive and negative.

Running a Green Business: A Checklist for Action
This checklist of actions was developed by Environmental Building News for firms in the building design and construction industries, but is also applicable in other industries. It recommends in-house and off-site measures relating to travel, purchasing, and other aspects of business operations.

Corporations and Sustainable Development
Postulates that corporations, by taking the lead, can move society toward sustainability far more efficiently and with less turmoil than governments and legislation.

The Corporate Environmental Dilemma: Lead or Look On
Summarizes the challenges faced by corporations in striving to be financially profitable and environmentally sound with their operations.

Educating a Nation: The Natural Step
Profiles The Natural Step as a remarkable nationwide program that has united Sweden in moving from linear to cyclic processes--the hallmark of sustainability.

Homegrown Economics: How Boulder Businesses are Staying Ahead of the Game
In Boulder, Colorado, the Boulder Independent Business Alliance (BIBA) is helping to protect the community economy by encouraging residents to support local businesses, according to a story in Orion Afield. Locally owned businesses recycle a higher percentage of their revenue and profits back into the local economy, compared to chain competitors.

The Natural Step Takes a First Step in the U.S.
Reviews the history of The Natural Step and summarizes its development in the U.S.

An essay in Whole Earth Magazine online suggests that the New New Economy will be based on providing clean goods and services -- energy, water, transportation among them -- that are essential to to daily lives. The New New Economy, authors argue, will be based on principles drawn from industrial ecology and Natural Capitalism. Unlike the New Economy that's emerged with Internet, the next new economy addresses critical human needs, ones that are genuinely global in scale.

Coloradan Helps Towns Rise Above
Documents the strategy of moving entire towns above flood range to prevent natural disasters.

Building for the 21st Century: Industry's Role in the New Culture
Describes sustainability as a strategic option for industry that will reduce pollution, increase energy efficiency, and create new business opportunities.

Code Green: Business Adopts Voluntary Environmental Standards
Reviews the development of private codes of environmental management within industry sectors and compares them with governmental regulation.

Clean Companies Save Money
Profiles a Colorado firm's successful efforts at eco-efficiency.

Industrial Ecology: An Environmental Agenda for Industry
Presents a compelling rationale for Industrial Ecology and outlines its six principal elements.

Industrial Ecology: Concepts and Approaches
Provides a concise overview of the primary philosophy and components of Industrial Ecology.

Making Industrial Parks Sustainable
Introduces the industrial ecology paradigm and profiles efforts across the country to develop Eco-Industrial Parks.

Changing Drivers: The Impact of Climate Change on Competitiveness and Value Creation in the Automotive Industry (PDF)
A report from World Resources Institute and Sustainable Asset Management on how emerging climate change policies, or carbon constraints, will affect the financial performance and competitiveness of ten leading auto companies.

Publications

Building a Sustainable Business
This 280-page guidebook is written to assist farms and rural businesses to create a holistic business plan rooted firmly in personal, community economic and environmental values. It was developed by a team of U of MN faculty and staff, individual farmers and consultants, and was co-produced by the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture and the Sustainable Agriculture Network.

Greening Your Business: A Primer for Smaller Companies is a guide developed by the Green Business Network that covers reducing waste, energy and water efficiency, toxics and hazardous substances reduction, meetings and travel, product life cycle, and green building design and construction. The publication is also available in Spanish.

Buying into the Environment, a book organized under the auspices of the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), examines local and national approaches to green procurement and provides in-depth surveys on pioneering cities in the movement, such as Hamburg, Malmö and Zürich.

Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth
The Earth Policy Institute makes many portions of this book by Lester Brown available online as PDFs. The book outlines what a new economy could include and how a transition process can take place.

Earth Enterprise Toolkit (PDF)
This Tool Kit provides fundamental knowledge for smaller businesses competing in the environmental market place. It draws upon insights of successful business people, new research about the market place, technology development, financing mechanisms, and changing business practices.

Rethinking the way we pursue economic activity in a world with increasingly limited resources is the aim of Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. Written by Paul Hawkins, author of The Ecology of Commerce, and Amory and Hunter Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, this book offers a vision of a new economy, one in which profitability doesn't come at the expense of the environment. To get there, authors contend, requires recognizing the real value of natural capital by building economic activity on four interconnected principles: The foundation of these principles is a "radically increased resource productivity," while the other three call for "redesigning industry on biological models with closed loops and zero waste; shifting from the sale of goods (for example, light bulbs) to the provision of services (illumination); and reinvesting in the natural capital that is the basis of future prosperity." The book, published by Little, Brown & Co., includes examples of businesses already working -- and thriving -- under a natural capitalism paradigm.

Design for Environment Toolkit
Gives companies the resources needed to incorporate environmental attributes early into product design, which can ultimately result in reduced materials use and waste, improved designs, reduced future liabilities and other efficiencies.

Public-Sector Loans to Private-Sector Businesses: An Assessment of HUD-Supported Local Economic Development Lending Activities
Examines the results and performance of economic development loans made through HUD programs to private businesses.

Steps for Improving Your Business and the Environment
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection offers this workbook aimed at helping small- or medium-sized businesses manage environmental issues at their facilities and enhance their energy, environmental and economic performance.

Sustainable Business.com
Serves as a focal point on the web for the full range of environmental business sectors, from recycling to green building, from renewable energy to organic products, from social investing to certified forestry. Read the "Sustainable Business Insider" magazine, post Business Opportunities, find a Green Dream Job, use the comprehensive Library.

Sustainable Business Network
Promotes the growth and development of environmentally and socially responsible businesses, providing the tools and information necessary to make sustainable business a prominent global economic force.

The Green Business Letter (by subscription in PDF)
Provides information to help businesses make decisions that are both environmentally responsible and profitable.

Journal for Sustainable Product Design
Covers economic, environmental, ethical and social issues in product design and development. It aims to be a pioneering publication that examines sustainability issues as they affect product design and development worldwide.

Greener Management International
The Journal of Corporate Environmental Strategy and Practice is offered by subscription, but contents of past issues and sample articles appear online.

Sustainable Industries Journal Northwest
This subscription trade publication for sustainable industries explores economic gain through environmental innovation and covers seven regional industry sectors. They also publish an annual Sustainable Industries Overview, naming leading businesses in the seven sectors.

TOMORROW Magazine On-line
An independent magazine focusing on the integral relationship between business and the environment. TOMORROW believes in both sustainable and profitable business and concentrates on practical solutions.

The New Bottom Line: Strategic Perspectives on Business and Environment
This column on business and environment, is written by Gil Friend, CEO of Natural Logic. The column (originally distributed internationally by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate) is available by e-mail through a free subscription. Back issues of the columns can be read on- line by scanning the subject index or chronological index.

Concise Self-Assessment Guide to Environmentally Sustainable Commerce and Designing Products and Services with Sustainable Attributes
Publications available in PDF from the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum, designed for businesses to use in improving environmental performance.

Eco-Industrial Parks: A Case Study and Analyses of Economic, Environmental, Technical, and Regulatory Issues (Executive Summary in PDF)
Presents the results from a body of research intended to investigate and support the development of Eco-Industrial Parks.

Fieldbook for the Development of Eco-Industrial Parks (Executive Summary in PDF) Provides an overview of the design elements inherent in the development of Eco-Industrial Parks.

Environmental Finance
A monthly magazine covering the ever-increasing impact of environmental issues on the lending, insurance, investment and trading decisions affecting industry. Selected news and features appear online.

Last updated: January 18, 2005

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