The point is that it's important to assess what your customers and other audiences -- activists, regulators, the media, etc. -- know, need to know, and want to hear to ensure that you are meeting or exceeding their expectations. And then you must marry whatever environmental attributes you are promoting with all the other attributes customers expect for that product. "We call this 'twinning the benefits,'" explains Shapiro. "You're trying to talk about the environmental benefits while also emphasizing whatever else is appropriate -- quality, durability, price, performance, style."

By the way, the principal reasons for doing this may not be your customers at all but rather your employees. They're the first group that needs assurance that any claims you make hold water and the first to become cynical if they find out otherwise. Thus, supporting data can be important to getting your number one constituency on board.

RELEVANCE

This is using green to create value with key stakeholders. How do you craft a strategy that's not only going to meet your immediate business objectives -- to move product, increase revenue, and be seen as a "good" company, for example -- but also is going ensure that your efforts have staying power internally because they are generating business value for the firm? In other words, how do you ensure that they are sustainable from a business perspective?

Companies that don't leverage their environmental achievements and commitment in a way that produces business value often find that green is the first thing to go when times get tough -- when there's a change in leadership, when shareholders raise questions, or when your company otherwise finds that being seen as an environmental leader is no longer convenient. On the other hand, if you can say, "Our sustainability initiatives have reduced costs and boosted revenue by creating new markets, adding new products, and deepening loyalty with customers," this creates a long-term justification for a sustainability strategy and for environmental issues broadly.

"It's critical that a company figure out the difficult task of aligning its sustainability initiatives with its core business objectives and its growth trajectory," says Shapiro. "If a company is in a product-introduction mode or a geographic-expansion mode or a cost-cutting mode -- whatever mode the business cycle requires -- it can leverage and use sustainability as a source of value creation, as opposed to simply something that is a marker of good corporate citizenship."

Companies run into trouble when they get too far ahead of themselves or too far away from their core business goals. Bill Ford, when he was president and CEO of the car company his great-grandfather, Henry Ford, built, took his eye off the prize partly in the name of building a greener image. Bill Ford was, arguably, one of the most committed environmentalists among CEOs of major companies and certainly within his sector. Under his leadership, he placed a major emphasis -- and a lot of his political capital -- on greening his company's historic manufacturing site, including increasing the building's energy efficiency, putting on a green (planted) roof, and transforming the surrounding site from an industrial eyesore to a community gem.

What about his company's cars? During this same period, Ford made and then retracted a commitment to achieve a 25 percent improvement in fuel efficiency in the company's light truck fleet, including sportsutility vehicles (SUVs); backed off from a pledge to build 250,000 hybrid vehicles a year by 2010; and terminated the company's ongoing electric vehicle program as impractical and unaffordable.

The obvious question: How relevant was the grass on the roof of the Rouge River manufacturing facility to the end customer compared with creating more fuel-efficient cars, producing more energy and environmental innovations, and marrying green attributes with high style, performance, and technology? Ford's financial woes aren't based entirely on the company's green focus, of course, but the timing suggests that the company's particular green focus and messaging weren't relevant to the marketplace.