The conversation on college and university campuses about environmental issues has grown more robust in recent years. Nearly every school — four-year and two-year schools alike — seems to have a program aimed at, variously, reducing energy and water use, harnessing renewable energy, increasing recycling and composting, ramping up green procurement, reducing toxic materials, and promoting driving alternatives. Everyone from deans to janitors have gotten into the act, making commitments on climate, cleaning, computers, and more. But all this green action seems to be cutting class. That's one conclusion from a comprehensive new study aimed at assessing "the extent to which college and university leaders value environmental performance and sustainability and are putting these values

The push to get electric and other alt-fueled vehicles into the market has gone from zero to, well, 20 over the past year — that is, from a standstill to a puttering pace. But recent announcements about product launches from Ford, GM, Honda, and others are only the beginning of what's to come. In the coming months and years, we'll see a stream of new products and services that, together, herald the era of not just greener vehicles, but greener mobility. In recent weeks, Enterprise, the largest car rental company in the U.S. (it also operates the National and Alamo brands) launched WeCar, a national car-sharing program. WeCar, which boasts an all-hybrid fleet, allows users to go online to reserve and locate the cars, which are typically parked nearby at a designated spot. Customers

[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 their operations in a way that aligns with core business strategy and bottom-line success -- is a moving target,

Much like a healthy ecosystem, biomimicry is flourishing. Biomimicry, for the uninitiated, is based on the premise that nature has done everything human beings want to do, but without destroying the biosphere or mortgaging our future. It brings the biologist to the design table, answering the question "How would nature do that?" and tapping from a seemingly endless wellspring of solutions. The emerging science of biomimicry --  "innovation inspired by nature," in the words of natural-history writer Janine Benyus, who coined the word in her 1997 book, Biomimicry -- is a relatively little known but powerful means of transforming industrial systems, creating efficient means of energy production and use, and solving problems on the scale of global climate

General Motors turns 100 years old today, a milestone for any company. And while like any centurion, the moment offers a chance to look back, GM is hellbent on looking at the road ahead -- where it's going, how it will get there, and whether it will idle and sputter to a halt before it regains the cruising speed it once enjoyed.

I've been chronicling GM's environmental opportunities and challenges for the past few years (and previously disclosed that GM is both a client of GreenOrder, with which I am affiliated, and a sponsor of GreenBiz.com, of which I am executive editor.) Along the way, there's been the company's push for flex-fuel vehicles, the move to revive the electric car, and the company's need to help create a plug-in infrastructure. All are part of the GM's vision to

I spoke this past week to a group of senior marketing professionals from a major consumer products company. It was a half-day workshop to explore the question, "How good is 'good enough'?" That question has been at the heart of speeches and presentations I've been giving for the past couple of years, and is at the core of my forthcoming book, Strategies for the Green Economy (about which you'll be hearing much more in the coming weeks). The question, for the uninitiated, is essentially this: Given that there's no standard for what it means to be a "green business," how can a company know that its environmental commitments, performance, and progress will be viewed as substantitive and authentic in the eyes of employees, customers, activists, the media, and others —

There's a classic, geeky science joke that "Chemists have all the solutions." That's starting to appear true from an environmental perspective, though it remains to be seen whether those solutions will actually come to market. Green chemistry, a common-sense discipline that's less than twenty years old, has been emerging in recent years from the lab and into the marketplace, making inroads in conventional chemical companies and creating opportunities for upstarts. As I've noted in the past, this has been taking place at a slow, almost imperceptible pace, with relatively little fanfare, considering the implications. And there's a long way to go before green chemistry fulfills its catalytic potential to transform the way we make things, doing so in a way that reduces risks to

In recent weeks, former vice president Al Gore challenged Americans to commit to producing 100 percent of electricity from "renewable energy and clean carbon-free sources" within 10 years. And former senator John Edwards launched a Half in Ten campaign "to reduce poverty in the United States by 50 percent within 10 years." Two bold, audacious goals. Same starting dates. Same decade-long trajectory. So, is there any chance that Messrs. Gore and Edwards might possibly join forces? Not likely, based on what I've seen and heard to date. That their respective laudable and ambitious goals could possibly be synergistic seems beyond the grasp of these two leaders and their acolytes. I've covered this topic — the job-creation potential of clean technology and renewable

This week's announcement by General Motors that it has joined with more than 30 utility companies across the U.S. to work on issues related to electric vehicles got a great deal of media play. But the coverage only began to scratch the surface of the complexity of bringing plug-in electric vehicles to market in mass quantities. In reality, the GM-utility conversation isn't entirely new. It began in January, at a Vehicle Electrification Workshop held at GM's research center in Warren, Michigan. I had the privilege of attending the meeting, which was facilitated by my colleagues at the sustainability strategy firm GreenOrder. The meeting included more than two dozen utility executives, including a team from the Electric Power Research Institute, the industry-funded consortium that served

Jeffrey Hollender, the founder, CEO at Seventh Generation, published a counterpoint to my recent post, How Bad Is Greenwashing, Really? I encourage you to read it here. I just responded on his site, and thought I'd share the conversation here. To wit: Jeffrey, Thanks for your comment. I've long admired your outspokenness on the topic of the green marketplace, and your willingness to be, as you describe yourself, an inspired protagonist. I don't disagree with some of your points, but I think you missed mine. It wasn't about companies that can't handle criticism. And it wasn't about condoning companies that are being misleading or dishonest. As you well know, I have been an outspoken critic of greenwashing myself over the past twenty years. But there is a tremendous amount of