Many companies striving to be good corporate citizens today face an internal tug of war between giving attention to community initiatives that address social problems and the growing demand to make environmental issues paramount.

At Cummins Inc. they found a solution not by making a choice but by facing a challenge.

On the occasion of the company’s 90^th anniversary in 2009, 62 teams of Cummins employees from 11 different countries accepted a challenge to develop projects to improve the environment in their community. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone knows that today, “green” is the new “black.” But how are companies creating new strategies that can move a company from looking at the environment from a philanthropic perspective and instead using environmental programs to create business value? Stan Mierzejewski at the Tennant Company, Michael Dupee from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, and Bruce Klafter at Applied Materials showed that their diverse companies – one’s a coffee roaster, one’s a floor-cleaner manufacturer and one’s in nanotechnology – were each benefiting from introducing new products, cutting costs and/or differentiating themselves from competitors using green business strategies. Read the rest of this entry »

Study after study, including the Boston College Center’s 2009 State of Corporate Citizenship Survey, has found that environmental sustainability efforts have continued to grow even during the deep recession of 2007-2009. Moreover, they have become even more important. Driven by bold government actions, customer and consumer demand, and opportunities to cut costs and diversify, a growing number of U.S. companies are trying to “ride the green wave.” But not every environmental strategy is successful and challenges include difficulty developing the business case and ensuring successful execution.

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Wanna be green? Who doesn’t? But the reality of acting green sometimes runs into a hard economic wall. Projects that on the surface make perfect sense get stalled when the accountants get involved.

Case in point: alternative fuel vehicles. UPS would love to have 100% alternative fuel vehicles in our fleet of package cars. But the reality is that the math doesn’t work. Most alt fuel choices cost 30-100% more than traditional diesel. The fuel savings usually doesn’t equal the extra costs, even over a decade. Read the rest of this entry »

Retailers have long made “the customer is always right” words to live by at the checkout counter. And now some stores are putting a price on how right they think their customers are about efforts to protect the environment. Read the rest of this entry »

The trucks may be brown on the outside, but UPS is taking steps to let customers add a tinge of green to the cargo they carry inside.

For pennies a package, UPS customers can now offset the carbon dioxide emissions generated by the transport of their packages within the United States. Read the rest of this entry »

The mass media love the power of lists to attract readers or viewers. Pick a topic from music to politics to sports to movies, put together a ranked list that starts with “Best…”, “Greatest…” or “Top…” and it becomes a must read or must watch if you don’t want to be left out of the water cooler debate.

There is now confirmation that the green movement in business has risen to the level of a hot topic, at least around corporate water coolers, as Newsweek magazine has come out this week with its ranking of the Top 500 Greenest Big Companies in America. Read the rest of this entry »

How can companies do good business with a reduced environmental impact? That was the focus of a very well organized conversation in a large unconference held recently in Boston. Read the rest of this entry »