A look at 10 powerful men who have grown to become better people who in turn, better our lives.

We continue to seek leaders among movers and shakers capable of making a difference. Who is out there, we ask, in these bleak times to govern, protect and prosper? Here is a look at some men who have proven able to rise to challenging tasks, become better people with stances of substance, and capable of changing our world in a myriad number of positive ways.

1. Steve Jobs

We can’t help but think of Apple founder Steve Jobs, the single most important figure to date to spring from Silicon Valley, who leaves behind an enormous legacy after losing his battle with pancreatic cancer at 56. Likened to titans Ford and Edison by The Globe and Mail, he lives on in downloaded songs, finger swipes and sleek white headphones – “a man whose vision ended up disrupting almost every creative and commercial industry on Earth” thereby changing the earth as we know it. While cynics have said there is a special place in hell for technology peddlers who insure gadgets are readily replaced, Jobs gave us the convenience factor which made it easier to do what we do most: cyber speak.

It appeared everything he touched turned to gold, from the Macintosh and mouse to the iPad and Pixar. True, he changed the world with his visionary acumen but also the world changed him as he confronted his mortality, telling a graduating class of Stanford University grads that the notion of dying was the biggest catapult in following his heart. “It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

He also cited his firing from Apple at age 30 after taking the company from a fledgling computer brainstorm built in a garage to a $2 billion giant with over 4,000 employees as the best thing that ever happened to him. “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. ”

2. Louis Rossetto

The co-founder of  Wired Magazine  has been called a Fair Trade Willie Wonka for his success of adapting Silicon Valley start up tools to the chocolate industry. Rossetto became the first investor and then CEO of TCHO, launched in 2005 on the premise that chocolate should be measured by flavor and not percentage of cacao content, using the Flavor Wheel approach established by NASA contractor Timothy Childs and chocolate industry veteran Karl Bittong.

Shifting the focus to taste and flavor labs and cutting out notorious slave labor practices on plantations in the Ivory Coast and elsewhere, TCHO collaborates with growers and co-ops in cacao-producing countries like Peru, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, teaching growers how to improve methods and secure better prices. “It’s the lowest-cost, most-efficient technology to get the job done,” Rossetto says about the labs, adding it’s not unlike grape growing in Napa Valley where growers can either sell commodity table grapes or get top dollar for premium wine grapes for really good wineries.

The producers now sell from 75 cents up to $8 and margins, boasting big customers like Whole Foods and Starbucks. Across the globe, the chocolate is sold at famous restaurants like Mario Batali’s chain and at Paul Young in London and Fresh and Fresh in Japan. It’s also sold on its website. In 2010, sales were up eight percent across the spectrum and expected to reach double-digit millions and beyond by 2012. First revenues for TCHO started below $1 million in 2009 and tripled last year – demonstrating that fair trade and organic is viable if well supported by believers. Rossetto got friends and family to invest. Today, TCHO produces 10 to 20 tons of chocolate every few weeks from its factory in the heart of San Francisco.

3. Blake Mycoskie

Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes was a kid kicking around in Argentina when the light went off – footwear is a basic need like water and air, and many are without the coverage to protect their feet from harsh environs. He not only launched a fashion movement (the new must-have uniform of school girls) but a charitable movement – distributing over 600,000 pairs of new shoes in 2010 to kids in need through giving partners around the globe.

What changed in him in 2006? Prior to that he demonstrated an entrepreneurial spirit starting five businesses before TOMS including a national campus laundry service. Most visionaries see a  hole needing filling, but with TOMS, he changed the way much of the industry sees its role – the ability not to just churn out profits but also to help children around the world. As a result, others are following suit with programs like the Good Shoe Project introduced by Payless ShoeSource and World Vision and the Shoes2Spare project.

The bottom line for the man behind the little shoe that could? Stuff doesn’t make you happy. “When I started distributing shoes in Ethiopia, South Africa, and South America, I saw that the people had so little, yet seemed to worry so much less than my friends and family back home,” he says. “Instead of stressing over gadgets, they were talking around the campfire.”

 4. Michael Moore

Clearly not everyone’s cup of tea -  Michael Moore can rub audiences and subjects the wrong way with his overwrought hubris, and that is entirely the point. But as he ages, he is learning to be a less obnoxious man of the people, something that has overshadowed supporters and detractors alike as his provocations drew attention away from the filmmaker with a focus on the film character. As one of his fellow filmmakers sees it: “Moore is a genius, who created an entire genre of documentary film making using the reflexive mode, and I view him as a pamphleteer, say a modern Thomas Paine, who says provocative things that aren’t always meant to be taken literally.”

Not the academic ilk of a Kevin Burns nor the inconspicuous diplomacy of Michael Apted, Moore has changed in the way he doesn’t so much get in your face and slap it silly but continues to rock the boat like no other documentary film maker, not exposing tainted meat and animal cruelty as much as exposing our inexcusable apathy in accepting corporate crime, insurance fraud, imperialism via drummed up invasions and tolerance of school bullies.

Is it any wonder he joined protesters staging Occupy Wall Street? Coming to their aid, he said “What you see here, and what you’re seeing across the country, are millions of people who’ve had it.” Moore promised to donate proceeds from his book, Here Comes Trouble, to their effort and to deliver wi-fi to the park and to other demonstrations being held across the nation. “I’ll do what I can do,” he offered, “because these bankers overplayed their hand. They were already rich, but filthy rich wasn’t enough. They are trying to turn our democracy from a democracy into a kleptocracy.”

The Flint native and so-called poster boy for the working class does boast nearly 900,000 Twitter followers who have been stirred and shaken by his bawdy cocktails like Stupid White Men and Fahrenheit 911. And while critics have tried to expose Moore as a hypocrite for owning a million-dollar apartment or sending his child to private school,  Moore remains a bigger than life figure who gets us to think.

 5. Dr. Mehmet Oz

“Who is the new great and powerful Oz?” asked the New York Post about the heart surgeon in scrubs who has taken over Oprah’s time slot and the health-bound viewing audience by storm. Described as a genuine medical folk hero in the making by turning genital warts and controversial diets like HCG into entertainment, the TV doc goes further than Dr. Phil by bypassing tabloid tactics in favor of a bare bones anatomy lecture. Like most successful physicians, he started out wanting a good career without fame, but has become the ear for a world obsessed with dieting, aging, longevity and stress, spending 40 minutes answering studio audience questions which many other arrogant doctors would dismiss out of hand or tell patients they don’t need to know the answers.

“Folks are desperate to have a relationship with their healer,” he says. “Marcus Welby is dead today, and they want a regular doctor who they can have a dialogue with and get truthful answers from. I reach a whole lot of people this way.”

As close to a regular guy as a rock star TV celeb can get, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and four kids and considers himself a hermit who shaves rarely, plays basketball with friends and meditates.  One of his assets is his listening skills – which shouldn’t be undermined as most of us are starved for listeners to our complaints and concerns. A big sign of his ability to change us – patients quoting his advice when visiting their own internists. If Dr. Oz thinks something is kosher, then it probably is kosher.

6. Douglas Holtz-Eakins

Who doesn’t love a conservative who changes his course when needed? Among the new directions in the sails of the conservative economist, praising the once debunked American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 as a stimulus that operated exactly as intended, growing the economy and spawning millions of jobs. The former Congressional Budget Office director and former chief economic advisor to Sen John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, pledged in August to throw support behind the bill.

Meantime, while the Tea Party elements insist global warming is a science fiction concept, Holtz-Eakin is now working with the New Hampshire-based Clean Air-Cool planet, addressing the economic benefits of addressing the very real issue. One proposal that entices him is tax-swapping, imposing a levy on carbon emissions while eliminating the payroll tax.

“We have watched with foreboding as powerful forces in the Republican Party want to close down this debate and reject the idea that this is a problem that needs to be solved,” says Brooks Yeager of the climate policy advocacy group. “Our interest in working with someone like Douglas, who has enormous credibility in conservative ranks and economists and agrees with our fundamental position that needs to be solved, is that he is exceptionally well positioned to reopen this debate.”

7. John Stewart

First, he changed his name from John Leibowitz, then he changed his game from his breakthrough comedy role on The Larry Sanders show to the serious business of changing mainstream media. The Daily Show with John Stewart is highly respected for its moxie in telling it like it is while everyone else tiptoes through the tulips and kisses the backsides of corporate sponsors. Or, as aptly put by Hub Brown of the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University: “The stock-in-trade of The Daily Show is hypocrisy exposing hypocrisy and nobody else has the guts to do it. They really know how to crystallize an issue on all sides, see the silliness everywhere.” A prime example was second guessing the war in Iraq while mainstream press was towing the line of national leaders. Stewart decided to take them to task, lampooning Bush policies.

The Comedy Central staple has scored nine consecutive Emmy awards  validating that yes, perhaps the industry has a liberal slant, but also that the truth hurts less than we think when it comes to bashing the Tea Party or even criticizing our leaders, including President Obama’s failure to make inroads with a ridiculously stubborn congress. “Conditions are what they are and Obama is president,” says the host. “You are judged by how well you negotiate those conditions, not by how excusable the shitty end result is based on that it’s difficult.”

 8. Brad Pitt

While some of our moms refuse to forgive him for what he did to Jen, Pitt has revamped his image from willing victim of a home wrecker to determined home repairer in New Orleans. There has been much banter of him there switching to politics, as he rubs shoulders with Nancy Pelosi and the Chief on the New Orleans Housing Project while his better half works for UNICEF.

It’s an accepted fact no one wields more clout than celebs like Pitt who have huge followings among all age groups and tremendous visibility. While Dave Eggers’ poignant prose draws attention to the flood aftermath in Zeitoun, Pitt is allegedly considered a great mayoral candidate of the city – but it is one of many causes he embraces which led Newsweek Magazine to list him as one of 15 People Who Make America Great. Among his contributions is shedding light on neglected causes in Africa as cameras follow him wherever he and his extended family travel. This was the thinking when he and Jolie say they sold the first picture of their daughter, Shiloh, to People magazine for a reported $4million saying all proceeds would go to charity.

“Knowing that someone was going to hound us for that first photo — and was going to profit immensely for doing it — I just couldn’t live with it,” Pitt told the magazine. “We were able to turn that around and collect millions for people who are really going to need it.” Now as he makes the round to plug his film Moneyball, interviews on NPR and elsewhere highlight the intellectual Pitt – whose sensitivity emerges in the film, just as it did in Benjamin Button illustrating old dogs can learn new tricks at any time.

9. Warren Buffett

Read his lips: Yes, new taxes!!! And please let my rich friends step up to the plate. Billionaire Buffett- who inspired Obama’s millionaires’ tax – challenged owner of Fox News Rupert Murdoch to make his own federal tax returns public, after admitting he pays a lower rate than his secretary and the government should stop coddling the super rich “as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species.” A recent CBS news poll showed most Americans agree with Buffett including many who have taken to those Wall Street protests. Militant conservatives are up in arms about it – no doubt viewing Buffett more of a trader than hero, but hero he is for more ways than one.

His stock went way up when joining forces with Bill Gates to urge the wealthy to join the campaign Giving Pledge and to give away at least half of their fortunes during their lifetimes or after their deaths. The 80-year-old Berkshire Hathaway CEO who wants to work past age 100 is famous for maintaining a frugal lifestyle – living in the same home he bought in Omaha in 1958. But his change has come in the way of being much more bold and out there, so to speak, despite how he might be viewed by fellow rich guys and their heirs. As a philanthropist he has set the bar and in seeking more revenues to fund programs, he shows not all billionaires are out for personal gain.

 10. Van Jones

There were such high hopes when Jones became the top green man in the White House – only succumbing to a malicious Tea Party campaign and resigning. ”It has been a tough couple of years,” Jones  confessed. “We went from hope to heartbreak in about a minute…We have the wrong theory of the presidency.”

So he is a changed man for the better in terms of seeing bureaucracy only muddles progress. He is now the leading evangelist of the American Dream Movement in partnership with his own organization, Rebuild the Dream – something he told Alternet was for real progressives in 2012 with the goal to train a million new leaders.

“We’re just glad that the volcano is starting to erupt,” he shares. ” We just want to fight. And there are some pre-existing grassroots assets that need to be re-aligned or redeployed; we’re trying to do that here.” The plan calls for house meetings (with real leadership) as well as protests, networking leaders online and locating dream candidates.  Jones sees his new mission as a social battle like no other in history.

“This is thrilling stuff! The dream-killers on Wall Street — who are so disgusting and so despicable; they are ingrates who are sitting up there laughing at us. I mean, every other bloc of capital that has this much weight, they try to do something to make you like them. Even the polluters, they say, ‘We’ll get clean coal.’ They try to do something. But these people on Wall Street – they just don’t care. So it’s just going to be an epic battle now between the worst people in America, the most selfish people in America, and the most selfless. And that’s going to be amazing.”

Images: Acaben; TCHO; Kwaku Alston; Shankbone; Nayrb7; Atlantic; The jointsstaff; Giving; Tedizen; Americanprogressaction, gadgetdude

ExclusiveLast month, we began a series of articles looking at progressive issues in the world of equity investment. Our first piece, VCs, Angels and Investing in Women: What Are They Not Thinking?, explored the female business community’s relationship with those groups that play such a major role in driving our economy and business values. What follows is the second article in the series. It focuses on entrepreneurial investment in clean tech and green business.

At the opening of what would become the legendarily (and to some, notoriously) “pro-business” 1980s, President Ronald Reagan took clear and immediate steps to show his commitment to supply-side capitalism. He weakened and busted unions, initiated an unprecedented deregulation movement, and changed tax law to favor corporate interests. He was the champion of “trickle down” economics and, depending whether one sees the man as heroic or demonic, his legacy casts a bright light or dark shadow on us to this day.

In the shadow department, Reagan took an extremely dim view of alternative energy and the budding green movement, in general. This was in part evidenced by his halving the Solar Institute’s budget from 1980 to 1982 and, in 1986, symbolically removing solar panels from the White House.

The panels were clearly a symbolic gesture in the first place. President Jimmy Carter had placed them on the Pennsylvania Avenue mansion in 1979 as a display of American ingenuity and to send a message to that we, as a nation, were committed to exploring environmentally friendly ways to wean ourselves off foreign oil (a national addiction that continues to grip us 30 years later and would, less than a year after the panels went up, play a key role in Carter losing the Presidency). At the installation ceremony, Carter said: “No one can ever embargo the sun or interrupt its delivery to us.”

What was Ronald Reagan saying to the entrepreneurial community when he ripped those solar panels from the roof of the White House – and, through his policies, the nascent alternative energy industry up by its delicate new roots? How did this figure into a free market proposition? Was it a really pro-business? Or simply pro-existing-business?

Better Late than Never

Thirteen years after Ronald Reagan took office, Nancy Floyd got into the green-energy investment business. It was 1993 and it was, as she puts it, “a lonely game.”

Floyd had the chops: In 1982, she founded NFC Energy Corporation, one of the country’s first wind development firms. There she put together more than $30 million in projects and three years later sold the company for a 25-fold return on the original investment. Then, in 1985, she helped found PacTel Spectrum Services which was sold to IBM in 1987.

Yet despite the financial gravitas of the messenger (and a few others like her), the question in the early 1990s remained: when it came to raising green funds, were investors ready to listen?

“At the time, the only market driver was the deregulation of utilities,” remembers Floyd. “There were really no other players or considerations. And though the political winds had changed [with the entrance of the Clinton Administration], our crisis memories are short. OPEC, gas lines, all of it had had been forgotten. Gas was cheap, consumers were apathetic, and the climate crisis was anything but mainstream. Right now, only 50 percent of people believe that [global warming] is real. You can imagine what it was like 20 years ago.”

But Floyd and her small community set out to educate investors as to the possibilities. It was a forward-thinking proposition, but some saw the opportunity (read: a looming crisis) and a discussion around clean tech and “doable” alternative energy began to take shape. This discussion was broad based, and included both environmentalist concerns as well as ROI to be realized by dealing with national and global energy challenges.

Slowly, things began to change, and as we entered the new millennium, says Floyd, forces subtle and less so had brought some hard realities to consumer (and thus investor) consciousness. From Al Gore to Osama bin Laden, climate and cultural realizations had exposed a powerful new marketplace. For investors, an opportunity for “doing well by doing good” had arrived.

“We were [by 2004] and continue to be at a true inflection point,” says Floyd. “Globally, the status quo is untenable. It’s not a spot crisis any more. Big issues have to be resolved and they represent [market] drivers that will play out over decades. It’s not a matter of politics or tree hugging. This is about national and consumer requirements, and business – not on an ideological level, but on a bottom line level.”

Indeed, green investing seems to have come of age. According to Cleantech Group, 13 percent of all venture capital dollars are now going green – making it the largest sector in VC. Comparing just the last quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of this year, investments in clean-tech deals were up 26 percent (54 percent over the same time period last year). Since January, green companies have raised $1.1 billion, and a accompanying surge in green technology jobs appears to be in the wings. Not bad for a down economy – if it wasn’t clear just a few years ago, it’s clear now: this once “progressive” investment arena has achieved lift-off.

For her part, Floyd is no longer a lone wolf. She is founder and Managing Director of Nth Power, a “nothing else but” green tech venture capital firm focused on “energy technology, materials and other related businesses.” The San Francisco-based group currently manages $420 million that’s invested in 58 companies, including “market leaders” in renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.), energy efficiency, smart grid, clean transportation and green buildings.

And while her efforts clearly target the “doing good” part of the equation, “doing well” for her investors remains paramount. “Our investors are big pensions and corporations,” she points out. “’While we’re differentiated as clean tech, consciousness is a small issue. What they want from us is to look at teams, strategies and execution plans. What’s important is money. And it can be made in clean tech.”

The Game Board – Clean Tech and Double Bottom Line

To understand today’s robust, green equity-investment community, it helps to understand two primary investment angles – “clean tech” and “double bottom line.”

Floyd’s Nth Power is a VC firm dedicated to clean tech. “It” believes that “the way society values and uses energy is in the midst of a significant transformation will lead to the widespread adoption of energy technologies and the creation of new companies led by a new breed of energy entrepreneurs. With the growing consumer demand for reliable, digital quality power, questions regarding the viability (and price volatility) of coal, oil and other fossil fuels, and the growing threat of global climate change, the opportunity for technology innovation in the energy sector has never been greater.”

Quite a mission/vision/pitch. But the bottom line is that there are clean tech markets to be tapped and mastered. Aside from those market leaders mentioned earlier, these also include biofuel, conservation, recycling and waste reduction, sustainable agriculture and manufacturing, and much more.

The other camp, or investment approach, is the much-discussed double bottom line (or triple or quadruple or whatever the case may be). This view says that one should measure the pay off of investments in more than one way: hence the – at least – “double.” Cash return on equity remains the driver, of course. But another measurement might be, say, job creation, or literacy or poverty alleviation – or an environmentally positive impact. (We’ll further explore the broader benefits of double bottom line investing in an upcoming article in this series.)

A perfect example of such a VC firm is DBL Investors, which was created from the spin-off of the Bay Area Equity Fund I from JPMorgan in January 2008. The group’s double bottom line strategy is “to invest in companies with the potential do deliver top-tier venture capital returns while working with [its] companies to enable social, environmental and economic improvement in the regions in which they operate.”

One of the firm’s two Managing Partners is Nancy Pfund. Formerly a Managing Director at JP Morgan, her financial background and focus on wealth creation is matched by her commitment to outcomes such as eliminating poverty. She explains her firm’s relationship with green investing: “Our second bottom line is having a positive impact on the communities where our companies end up doing business. That can be a positive environmental impact, and that can be by creating jobs though clean tech. Many of our companies do many positive things, not just one.”

Her partner, Cynthia Ringo, is formerly a Managing Director of VantagePoint Venture Partners. “We play in the venture capital space, which is of course driven by innovation,” she says. “Any venture capitalist is looking for disruptive companies that will displace incumbents and generate wealth. We also happen to be looking at poverty alleviation – sort of giving a lifeline to people. Clean tech is fantastic at that.”

As it was for Floyd, 2004 was an important transition time for Pfund and Ringo’s double bottom line approach. “Our target was $75 million,” says Pfund. “It took us a few years to do it but we did close in 2004. We had lots and lots of investors, including banks, pension funds, foundations, etc. At that time, clean tech was not what it is today, so we didn’t focus our marketing on that, per se, but we did focus on a broader double bottom line. In the end, though, 60 percent of the fund went toward clean tech.”

Says Ringo: “Clean tech is perhaps the most obvious way to accomplish our mission, because we will not take a reduction in a financial return in order to accomplish a social goal, and this concept is well understood in this sector. The business factors related to clean tech are very strong.”

Raising their second fund in 2008 was even tougher, given the economic environment. “But we just had our final close,” says Pfund. “It was for about $140 million, so we almost doubled the size from the first time around. Part of that is because our focus is now on the Western United States and not just Northern California and the other part is out strong track record. But, still, 50 percent of this fund will be green focused.”

The reasons for success in clean tech investment are increasingly consumer driven, and they’re not just about climate change. “Where’s that consumer pull coming from?” asks Ringo. “Maybe it’s because people want to reduce the amount of money that they’re spending on their utilities or on transportation. Maybe they are concerned about the health impact of certain types of products. Looking back [prior to the changes of the early ‘00s], there was not a lot of consumer pull and those that were making demands were called tree-huggers and other derogatory names like that. It was a much smaller demographic than it is today. Now, if you speak to a panel of mothers who range in age from 25 to 45, how high do you think their concerns around issues of health for their family go? Very.”

Where Angels Come to Play

Whether the focus is in pure clean tech or double bottom line, angel investors are, of course, also in the green mix. By definition, however, these have traditionally been individual players in arena, gathering their own contacts and research to make smart decisions. But one group, Northwest Energy Angels, is taking a pooled intelligence approach to mining these rich opportunities.

The Seattle-based non-profit is a membership organization of private investors that only funds clean tech entrepreneurs. They believe that through such investment they can find “the intersection of our desire to make successful angel investments, our personal values and the world we want to leave our children.” The group is comprised of “seasoned angel investors and venture capitalists, as well as new angels learning by participating in a cooperative and supportive environment” that place “a high value on sustainability, the ecosystems that support life on earth and social responsibility.”

Kiki Tidwell is a leading clean tech angel investor who sits on the Northwest Energy Angels board of directors. Last July, she was admitted to the Kauffman Fellows Program, “a highly sought-after two-year program dedicated exclusively to the world of venture capital and the cultivation of new high-technology, high-growth, high-impact companies.”

Her background leaves little question as to why she’s sought out that clean tech sweet spot where making a profit meets making a difference.

“I was in computers back in 1982, teaching people how to use the first mini-computers,” she recalls. “I was right there during the start up of that industry and to me clean tech has the same vibe. We don’t know what will be the next Microsoft but there will be huge winners. On the philanthropy side, I’ve seen how renewable energy and our tremendous natural resources can have a major impact, especially in rural economic development. (Tidwell has lived in Idaho since 1981 and is the president of the Tidwell Idaho Foundation, as well as Idaho Land & Pine, Inc.)

“When I was serving on the board of the Idaho Community Foundation – the Governor’s Council on Families and Children – I saw these tiny farm communities struggling to meet their social service needs and keep their farms going year round, even when the cost of irrigation pumping runs into the millions. Approaches using geothermal, solar, wind and biomass resources are going to be critical to these farm communities.”

Tidwell says angels face a different investment proposition than VC investors. “I think one of the main differences is that because it’s our own money we [angels] are investing, we have the luxury as to invest in the one out of a hundred opportunities that looks good to us. And we don’t have to deploy capital in a ten-year timeframe. That said, the venture capitalist has resources devoted to understanding some of the issues, as well as more time to devote to helping companies post-investment.”

The point of her group, then, is to deal with some of these issues by promoting clean tech and educating angels around some of the science and business issues that are in play.

“By banding together, we can share a lot of information,” she says. “We have speakers who come in to address specific technologies. We have discussion groups between investors about issues in our portfolio companies. We have presenting companies giving us pitches once a month.”

A Leg Up

Whether it’s clean tech or double bottom line investing, VC or angel money, what was once a cutting edge approach to equity investment is now not only big business – it’s big politics and policy, too.

“It’s a very complex sector,” says Floyd. “There are so many considerations given the policy and regulatory overlay. Federally and globally there are a multitude of regulations to be aware of and, of course, there’s a whole world of incentives out there.”

Mastering these polices, regulations and incentives thus becomes a major value-add for groups like Nth Power and DBL. For green investors, working with the likes of Floyd, Pfund and Ringo is like having the combination of a good agent who knows the people you should know, and a good financial specialist who knows how to work every regulation and incentive detail to your monetary advantage.

DBL realized this early on during their first play. “It started with the first fund and actually morphed into a big idea,” says DBL’s Pfund. “We had to think of what’s in it for a company to site in a low-income neighborhood. And so we thought, well, when you go into these targeted economic zones like Richmond or parts of Oakland [California] you can get benefits in terms of tax treatment or low interest loans or even grants at times. We saw that worked very well, so we kind of layered on other ways to navigate that public/private sector interface to the benefit of both parties.”

This approach is particularly important in the green sector. “You are being watched by everyone from the local chapter of the Sierra Club to the mayor to the governor, and they can either help or hurt your business,” explains Pfund. “Reaching out and embracing that is part of what we advocate; we have been able to show how that’s beneficial and companies end up doing it themselves once they get off the ground.”

Shifting Winds

It’s no secret that this thriving arena has been the beneficiary of a type of affirmative action in recent years, with government playing a helpful role and, in some ways, simply getting out of the way. As the nation has warmed to the notion that Washington and State Capital USA do have roles to play in encouraging clean tech and environmental protection, the flames of this investment community are stoked.

Conversely, as seen during the ’80s, a lack of attention and accompanying incentives can allow those flames to all but die out. And it’s also no secret that there’s clearly a different political climate now than there was just two years ago when Barack Obama took office – and, incidentally, replaced the solar panels on the White House.

Yes, enter the Tea Party and science-deniers and the success of campaigns well-financed by a Supreme Court-loosed, corporate political-giving system that’s hostile to those potentially “disruptive” entrepreneurs that DBL’s Ringo speaks about. Add to that a growing public intolerance for government subsidies – at least for those that are on the agenda of media savvy interests – and, well, what’s a well-meaning, robust-but-still-requiring-incentives investment community to do?

“The pitch of the entire discussion [around green tech and the development of green-friendly business] has to change,” says Pfund. “We have to ask, what’s the subject matter that we’re speaking and thinking about when it comes to green investing? Certainly it’s very political and we get huge questions about the role of the Tea Party or the Republican Congress on a lot of the programs that are subsidizing clean tech. And those are good questions that are not easy to answer, so you have to develop a plan B. Clean tech is cleaner and getting cheaper, but it’s not as cheap as coal and natural gas. We just aren’t there yet, so that’s not the story.

“It gets back to this notion of connectedness,” she says. “I made a speech at Stanford [University] recently on large-scale solar in the deserts and [Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan] George Schultz was in the audience. He more or less said ‘I agree with you but you should ditch the environmental argument and just focus on energy security and our over-dependence on foreign oil.’ He’s not alone in saying that.

“Some Republicans, and some Democrats for that matter, hate the clean tech argument. They like the energy security argument, so he is saying face facts. The Republicans are a potent political force, so we need to speak their language. You do whatever you can to get it sold. And you don’t want to be pigeonholed into saying that this makes sense only from a global warming point of view and have people not want to talk to you. You don’t want to sabotage your argument by making it unnecessarily narrow.”

All told, it’s like any effective marketing strategy. You size up your audience and figure out what will be most appealing message. Says Tidwell, who is particularly interested in smart grid technology, about positioning: “This is not about tree hugging. This is about financial gain for investors, consumer benefit and energy security.”

The Color of Money

In the end, it might be counterintuitive to think mindsets that have been saddled with identifiers ranging from “progressive” (the most diplomatic) to “environmentalist wacko” (dismissive) could not only point to money-making propositions, but to the money making propositions that have the power to drive our economy and national security for decades to come.

Looking back, Ronald Reagan’s (and other “pro-business” leaders like him) commitment to existing enterprise at the expense of entrepreneurial activity was shortsighted on its surface. Forward-thinking government support, if not outright incentive is the cornerstone of what it means to be pro-business. 

For now, the Floyds, Pfunds, Ringos and Tidwells of the world go to sleep dreaming about two kinds of green.

“What I wake up thinking about is what any entrepreneur thinks about,” says Floyd. “The challenges faced by individual young companies.”

Image: quinn.anya

Pop-ups fill more than just empty storefronts; they fill our need for discounts.

As far as winsome, widespread trends go, we just might pop till we drop. It started with those makeshift outlets for Halloween costumes and Christmas trinkets peddled in vacated storefronts that can’t possibly lease for what the landlord is asking. But these days, with more empty storefronts begging for a refill, we’re witnessing the rise of the highly respectable pop-up. It’s the hybrid vehicle of choice for inventive chefs, green fashionistas, artists and even compassionate educators, as seen from Brooklyn’s indie designer venues, L.A.’s vintage pop-ups all the way to Egypt’s Tahrir Square.

As reported in Good, the makeshift daycare for toddlers was set up by demonstrators to accommodate mothers wishing to join the historic protests amid the closing of schools in Cairo. Along with ordinary moms, some teachers were among the many professionals storming Tahrir, and the kids were kept at a safe distance and entertained with activities like painting or doing their own micro-marches around the square.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then the pop-up is the brainchild of a needy entrepreneurial spirit frustrated by banks, greedy landlords and bureaucracy – the father of convention. If a bunch of anti-war hippies could transform Yasgur’s Farm in rural New York into a weekend music festival venue, why can’t eager foodies in our cities strut their saute pans in makeshift cafes in empty storefronts or parked alongside a street fair? It’s all part of what EcoSalon has described as part of a foodie underground movement – which is stirring great excitement in L.A., NYC and San Francisco, where foodies feed.

Take the now-closed Mission Street Food pop-up feed house, housed until June in the unassuming Lung Shan Chinese take-out joint in San Francisco. Each week, a guest chef prepped top fair for diners in the Mission District, a veritable indie culinary ghetto known as the go-to place for innovative small plates and ethnic fusion. By infiltrating underused kitchens here and elsewhere in the Bay Area, young talented chefs can live out the fantasy without the risk of losing their coats.

It all sprung from the creative vision of chef Anthony Myint and his wife, Karen Leibowitz, who started out vending pork belly sandwiches from a taco truck before moving the operation into the Chinese restaurant. Myint also has opened Commonwealth, a progressive American high-end eatery which donates part of its tasting menu proceeds to charities. It serves as a charitable model in haute cuisine, perhaps the same way pop-ups serve as a business model in an economic downturn and beyond.

“I don’t think the pop up is specifically tied to the recession as much as it is to social media,” Myint explains, citing the advent of blogging as expedient advertisement. “Let’s say 20 years ago, if you had a pop up you couldn’t get any attention because you would basically be depending on word of mouth but now blogging has facilitated the trend with a lot of street food vendors using Twitter to get out their whereabouts to customers.”

Myint believes that people have segued into pop-ups as a culture, something that is perhaps here to stay for open-minded diners looking past what Myint terms the “white tablecloth experience.” In his case, the pop-up experiment has given way to a new eatery called Mission Chinese Foods, named in the top 100 Bay Area Restaurants by The San Francisco Chronicle.

“Business is overwhelming,” boasts Myint, whose other accolades include being named one of Chow.com’s 13 most influential people in the food world, Eater.com’s empire builder of the year for San Francisco, and Charitable Chef of the year by SF Weekly. It’s all a far way to travel since his days as line chef at Bar Tartine. His story demonstrates the brilliance and ingenuity lurking behind many pop-ups, which might first give off an impression of being transitory and unstable.

Such would seem the case with fashion reps hosting pop-up shops in various towns, such as A Current Affair, which hosted a pop-up marketplace in downtown Los Angeles delivering rare vintage garb from Halston, Lanvin, Comme des Garcons, YSL and Chanel for a $10 admission fee. Even EcoSalon got into the act last year, hosting EcoSalon Shops!, selling an array of sustainable garments produced by 20 emerging designers at a green venue  in Manhattan.

“Pop ups are a great way for small brands to have an audience with customers they might not have had,” explains EcoSalon Fashion Editor, Amy Dufault. “So far, I don’t know of any pop-ups enabling designers to have their own venues, but there are lots of designers within the community for events like these, where they can create solid relationships and continue in the vein of more pop-ups together.”

In this way, the temporary booths are not much different than the accessible parking lot flea market, where sellers can circumvent the red tape to market their wares – the same way East Village pop artists like Kenny Scharf and Keith Haring bypassed the exclusive agent and gallery system to take their graffiti art directly to the people in the streets. They put themselves on the map, earned recognition and ended up in the major leagues with high priced sales and clout.

In fact, the pop up concept is an age-old way of doing business by carpet and tea traders, milkmen and flower growers pushing carts long before we relied on small business loans, rent control and foreign fuel to put food on our tables. Pop up power to the people? It might just be the new modus operandi of generations tired of banking on the traditional route to visibility and viability. As with everything, it will be up to consumers to decide if the temporary movement gets a firm footing in the marketplace.

Images:  Charleston’s Thedigitel; Good; A Current Affair; KQED; Museyon

In a former life, I worked at an agency and I can remember the day we celebrated landing Starbucks as a client. The young-at-heart caffeine king had some hip and clever style, which got our creative department’s juices flowing, and they were based in Seattle – a bonus for quick runs from SF to a city that was a pretty cool place to suffer business trips. Most important, though, was Starbucks’ relatively positive reputation. Though all agreed that the coffee monster was a local-corner-coffee-shop killer, clients with an earth-and-employee-friendly rep were few and far between.

I also remember the first time I arrived on-site at the company’s headquarters. Behind the well-designed doors, past the state-of-the-art eco-office interior, and inside the elegant, glassy and awesomely coffeed conference rooms, our kick-off meeting was (drum roll) … just like any other. It was about time and money and effective communication and, you know what? It occurred to me that that was just fine. That’s what a corporation is supposed to have meetings about, and despite a recent and inane court ruling, they – excuse me – it is not human and it should not be expected to display human qualities. I mean, the people were nice and all, but the purpose of our being there couldn’t have been clearer: It was time to do business.

That said, the Starbucks story – and the fact that as we speak the company is so frantically trying figure out what to do about its damn paper cups – is a pretty good one.

Here’s the deal with the cups: About 3 billion of the more than 200 billion paper cups that end up in U.S. dumps each year are from Starbucks. This is a bad thing and the company has been flailing around for years now trying to figure out what to do about it. Reports Triple Pundit, Starbucks says “disposing of the cups is the top environmental concern of its customers. The angst over the problem has reached the highest levels of the company.”

Supposedly, eco-focused CEO Howard Schultz has promised that by 2012 all Starbucks cups will be recyclable.

They even had a really big meeting about it. Earlier this year, Starbucks hosted its second Cup Summit at MIT, hosting “municipalities, raw material suppliers, cup manufacturers, retail and beverage businesses, recyclers, NGOs, and academic experts together to drive the development of solutions that will make both paper and plastic cups more broadly recyclable.” Attendees even included competitors such as Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s.

This all fits in with the Starbucks’ green-and-all-around good-guy thing, says Fast Company, as “the company is pursuing more LEED certifications and working toward a goal of purchasing 100 percent fair-trade and Coffee and Farmer Equity-certified coffee by 2015.” Indeed, the Starbucks as standout corporate citizen story is well documented – and well marketed.

Now this shouldn’t translate into a non-critical or even a non-judgmental approach to the whole Starbucks phenomenon. Anti-union issues and the previously mentioned local-shop carnage aside, no matter how green a process and product, more stuff – and more stores – means just that, and no spin can erase that footprint. (See “Green? Perhaps. But iPads Don’t Grow on Trees.”) Says Fast Company: “Environmentally… Starbucks has bigger concerns than disposable cups. Its 8,832 company-owned stores and its international supply chain both affect resource use and climate change more than cups in the trash.”

On the other hand, I’m not calling into question the intentions of Schultz and his reportedly hopped-up-on-the-environment team. They do seem to be doing some good in a world where big business is more known for its trail of slime than caring about what is left in our dumps. Nevertheless, they are corporate folk and they represent a money-making team that’s busily trying to bounce back after their stock hit a “multi-year low” in 2008.

What’s good about all this is that a major corporate player knows the concerns of its customers and that it sees its competitive advantage, its winning formula, if you will, as pounding out a constant and consistently green drumbeat. Yes, the only establishment to ever make Cat Stevens seem corporate knows that a good many of us care about those cups and have a habit of buying into, literally, feeling better about our ourselves. (I’m partial to Triple Grande Lattes and my editor, I’m sure, has her own formula regarding the relationship between my word count and my caffeine intake.)

And it’s here where we note what famous criminal Willie Sutton supposedly told a reporter when asked why he robbed banks: “That’s where the money is.” In today’s marketing world, to a growing extent, green is where the money is.

So consider Starbucks a bit of gauge regarding one of our biggest hopes – the extent to which committing to the approach makes sound economic sense in terms of how it plays with consumers. This is not to say that the corporate world will ever see the light. In fact, it has no eyes to see. What it does have is a nose for coin. And Starbucks is following its nose. As a result, hopefully, they’ll figure out what to do with their damn cups.

Image: serendipitys

Squeezing community after community, farmer after farmer, and attempting to camouflage and clean up its heavily packaged inventory with so-called green initiatives, the behemoth Walmart appears more tenacious than bed bugs as it keeps creeping in expected and unexpected places around the globe.

The discount retail giant, which operates in 14 countries, has now set its blights on Africa, namely the Johannesburg-based Massmart with an offer of $4.2 billion to buy out the business. Massmart is a combo of Walmart and Home Depot and the biggest peddler of basic foods in the region, selling in 14 sub-Saharan countries with sales of about $6.8 billion this year. No wonder Walmart is considered a global superpower. It is more than a force to reckon with; it is a planet with a life force of its own.

It’s hard to believe this is what Sam Walton had in mind in 1962 when he set up shop. Yet in the nearly five decades since the enterprising son of an Oklahoma farmer founded the discount chain, it has morphed into one of the 100 most powerful economies in the world, ranking #19. Meanwhile, it has emerged as the anti-green in putting mom and pop stores out of business, planting its own cheap farm sources and peddling affordable bulk to a growing base of consumers buying the concept that quantity over quality is the way to get ahead.

The post-war aspiration of a car in every garage has been reinvented as the goal of a flat screen in every den, as Walmart makes it possible for low-income families to afford the luxuries that define the viral American dream. In fact, the company operates like bankrupt attorneys, growing fatter during a recession, benefiting from hard times. And as the economy recovers, sales at Walmart suffer. That tells you something about perception.

In efforts to recover, the company is doing what it has trained serotonin seeking consumers to do: Go shopping. After using up its credit allowance in small towns and suburbs, it is trying to locate urban hoods that have rejected the retailer in years past, along with new international ventures like Africa. It figures it can disguise its box stores and still offer cheap goods that will appeal to cash-poor shoppers in cities like New York and Chicago.

But we wonder if Walmart’s journey will end when its influence peddling no longer charms decision makers or when consumers can no longer fill their trucks with gas to drive to the stores to load up their reusable bags.

According to Joel Makower, Executive Editor of GreenBiz. com, the company’s influence is huge but doesn’t guarantee a sustainability as a business.

“I don’t believe Walmart will ever be a sustainable business in the classic definition of being able to operate indefinitely in the way they current do,” he tells me. “Eventually, they’ll run out of resources of permission to operate or something else. But I also believe that they are extremely resourceful and clever and powerful, so like so many other companies, they may find a pathway through this. Time will tell.”

Meantime, Makower points out that box stores aren’t the enemy of the green good movement, arguing that they might work to introduce local and organic ideology to the masses.

“Farmers markets are flourishing in record numbers, and more big stores – including Walmart and Whole Foods – are learning how to source locally when possible and affordable,” he suggests. “And these big players have scale, which we need to make these products mainstream and affordable. If we relegate green products to a few small niche players, we simply won’t make the different we need to make.”

Still, its a mixed grocery bag, according to food writer Vanessa Barrington, who says Walmart’s touted Heritage Agriculture  Program is just another scam to undercut farmers, citing the profit margin in 2006 when farmers received a mere 19 cents for every $1 consumers spent on food. She says the company could end up displacing the very farmers it set out to support with this initiative. In other words, there’s no business like show business.

“The problem is that Walmart doesn’t do anything without a compelling business reason,” Barrington wrote in a recent EcoSalon article. And often when a whale as large as Walmart moves an inch, it displaces everything around it.

Is there cause for concern? Makower believes Walmart may look unbeatable on the outside but is a long way off from from truly transforming into the good, green, sustainable brand the marketing geniuses are spinning.

“What makes Walmart interesting is its influence, both upstream with its 60,000-plus suppliers, and downstream to its 300 million or so consumers,” he observes. “They can make a big different. If they can succeed as a business along the way, that’s terrific, but they’re a long way from that.”

Images: Koonisutra, Walmart

The world will be saved by western women.  Or so says the Dalai Lama. But feminism in the 21st century can be problematic. That is, unless you’re watching Sex and the City 2, where formerly relatable post-feminist characters enthusiastically embrace an outstanding materialism and emotional mediocrity. In this world, even burkas are just fun gift-wrapping for Gucci and Prada! Right?

Wrong – and it was never more wrong than a recent breezy day in Los Angeles. Saturday, June 12th saw the first-anniversary of the Women of the Green Generation with a one-day interactive event dedicated to green women. Founded by eco-preneuer Kris Willey in 2009, Women of the Green Generation aims to create a space where women can share their ideas and passions for solving social problems with economically viable eco-solutions.

Kris Willey, Founder of Women of the Green Generation

Over 300 women and 50 green businesses came together last Saturday to inspire, motivate and empower women in the green world. The event was hosted at Evo-South, the only LEED silver certified eco luxury high-rise in down town Los Angeles. Along with the other guests, I had the chance to check out the latest in eco design, green lit, beauty, fashion and more.

But what was way more impressive that the goods displayed were the women speaking about them. I spoke with green fashion activist Jennifer Miller of Mission Savvy. Marilyn King of Tia’s Bakery offered up her gluten-free cakes. At a panel discussing women in green business, Siel Ju, aka GreenLAGirl, shared tips with the likes of Micki Krimmel of NeighborGoods. Randi Ragan of Green Bliss Eco Spa gave green beauty tips.

And the reoccurring theme of each speaker? We need to get educated. Tata Harper of Tata Harper Skincare stressed the importance of green knowledge. “I won’t put anything on my body that I wouldn’t eat,” she told a crowd of guests and reporters. Randi Ragan of Green Bliss Eco Spa pointed out that the greenwashing in the beauty industry is so bad that many of it is just “bald-faced lies.” Consumers need to teach themselves to read labels and turn to the Skin Deep database for their best information on healthy products. And as Ragan concluded about this gathering of green women, “Everything I see here today is a feminist issue. It’s not about what’s on the surface.” High five, green sister!

Check out Randi Ragan of Green Bliss Eco Spa giving her best tips on how to keep it green:

When a bike wheel builder friend of mine asked if I would like to attend an anniversary party for a local bike-related business, of course I said yes. In Portland, it’s never a good idea to turn down the opportunity to hang out with bike lovers and enjoy a few free drinks and hors d’oeuvres in the process.

But this was no regular bike throwdown; this was a full-on celebration of a commitment to better, more sustainable urban living. It was B-line’s one-year anniversary, and the people that came out to support this pedal powered delivery service were abuzz with positive energy.

B-line launched last year with the goal of partnering with businesses to take care of their urban delivery needs and, in turn, reduce the need for conventional trucks and vans. In the last 12 months, the company has certainly succeeded, pedaling over 6,000 miles to complete 3,000 deliveries. The results are pretty astonishing.

They’ve been able to reduce CO2 emissions by 11,000 pounds and they’ve helped delivered just about 191,000 pounds of organic produce; that’s on top of all the bread, coffee, tea and other things they pedal around town. As I listened to B-Line Founder and CEO Franklin Jones rattle off these statistics, I was impressed, not only because a pedal powered business is making it, but because they are making real change and influencing others to do the same.

It’s a common tendency to encourage people to “bike more, drive less,” but in cities without the necessary infrastructure to do so, making that choice is difficult. Granted, Portland is a city already known for its biking prowess, but with a company like B-line as a big local business player, the impetus for having better bike policies in grows even stronger. Case and point: Portland’s Mayor was invited to speak at this party.

Fewer trucks and vans on the road mean better streets for bikers and pedestrians, as well as less pollution. An increasing number of local businesses committed to using bike delivery shows their full-fledged support of cycling culture. That, in turn, equals less CO2 emissions and happier, healthier lifestyles, which benefits everyone in the urban community.

There’s a cello sitting in my office, sadly neglected and getting dusty. I bought it nearly two years ago because I’ve always wanted to learn how to play, but because my fingers are nimble on a computer keyboard, they fumble the movements needed to make anything but an awful abrasive sound with strings and a bow. 

I soon gave up, but perhaps I shouldn’t have – as practice really does make perfect (or something close to it), according to a recent study.

It isn’t necessarily natural-born talent, luck or any of those seemingly mystical qualities that make certain people wildly successful where others aren’t. It’s “sustained, intense, and deliberate practice in a particular area of expertise, in order to improve performance and cognitive thinking levels,” says study author Dr. Robert A. Baron.

Even experience doesn’t count as much as dogged, dedicated, repetitive practice.

“Across many different activities, most individuals show relatively rapid increments in performance up to levels they and others view as acceptable. This is then followed by a plateau and no further gains,” notes the study, currently published in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal (PDF).

In other words, if you want to be really good at something, raise the bar. The kind of deliberate practice that gets results is carefully focused; you’ve got to be fully absorbed in it, constantly challenging yourself and demanding accountability. Set specific goals, raise those goals as you go, reflect on what you’ve learned and evaluate the results.

Oh yeah – and don’t worry if it’s not all fun. In fact, scholars in the field of expert performance describe the kind of practice that yields extraordinary results “the opposite of fun”. No pain, no gain? It’s a cliché, but it’s true. I’ll have to remember this myself the next time my back hurts from sitting in the correct position with my instrument and my fingers are blistered from the strings.

So, in sum: don’t let a lack of experience or natural talent get you down, dedicate yourself to your goal every day and never accept “good enough”. This attitude could bring you success in practically any kind of new venture – whether you’re starting a business, learning a craft or getting in shape.

Image by: Firepile

Vanity Fair once got its color chart done, and for a few years, it looked very becoming in green. In May 2006, it birthed the first of three star-studded eco issues. The book’s cover featured four Hollywood power players shot by Annie Leibowitz and was entirely devoted to the environment. Julia Roberts as Mother Earth? No wonder Annie went for a mythological imagery. It sells. And so does green.

See the pretty green phat-pack celeb spread? I’m not sure Angelina’s neon wig is even a color found in nature. But this addition was needed to break up all the wonky talk. It sells. Maybe more than green.

But after three years, Conde Nast killed the annual green edition, arguing the eco movement is so ingrained in the news that a dedicated issue wasn’t really needed. A fair weather friend is Vanity, indeed.

“It’s so last year,” is how the UK’s Independent dismissed the move, pointing to slipping coverage of climate change and other concerns on the media’s agenda as the economy takes center stage. The economy is surely front and center at Conde, since it folded four of its magazines, and is at risk to lose more in a climate of social media, e-readers and emerging blogs.

Green Trend Still on the Shelves

Despite Vanity Fair’s retreat, newsstand shelves remain remarkably heavy on eco covers, from hard news weeklies like Newsweek and Time to business journals like Fortune and flatten-your-belly titles Elle and Glamour. But cynics and media insiders highlight the irony between the pages, arguing the magazines are more about making green than protecting it.

As Dan Gainor, director of the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute points out: “Fortune has a 10-page special advertising feature. Newsweek, Time and others turn thoughts of climate change into climate dollars with environmentally friendly ads.”

It all begs the question: Are green issues just marketing greenwash aimed at saving the dying rags?

Apart from design magazines that are home on green turf, such as Dwell and the recently bedded Metropolitan Home, reader reaction to the trend has been largely negative. We are most suspect of the fashion journals, which have always been sympathetic to fur, waste and digital make-overs. Regarding the Vogue green issue, Jezebel observed: “Despite its Style Ethics page and photo shoot of Cameron Diaz in organic hemps and cottons, the green this month’s Vogue really cares about comes from a wallet, not a tree.”

A Jezebel “Cover Lies” graphic.

Besides editorial, there is the business of green practices, and print magazines fall short here, as well.

In its feature, Deconstructing Vanity Fair’s Annual Green issue, Mother Jones (which prints on recycled paper) hammered at the inconsistencies in the 2007 issue: These included the estimated CO2 emissions from flying Leonardo DiCaprio, Annie Liebowitz and an entourage to Iceland and Germany to shoot the polar cover (89 tons); Features printed on glossy paper (2,35o tons of pulp emitting 2, 300 tons of CO2); Actual green content (117 pages), ads (150 pages; 7 for SUVs, 4 for hybrids).

Can magazines by their very nature avoid these inconsistencies in an effort to do good? Well, dozens of magazines hailed as “paper heroes” by Green America Today have converted to recycled or post-consumer paper. But by checking them out (here), you will find the majority are green in nature: Adbusters, Sierra, The Herb Companion, Yoga Journal and Vegetarian Times.

It boils down to putting your money where your mouth is, and prioritizing living things over corporate dollars. It figures neocons like The National Review write opinion pieces such as It’s Not Easy Reading Green. It’s also not so easy being insured and changing our health care system. But guess what? For both print media and our planet, these kind of real changes are do or die. Read all about it on the web.

Images: Mannobhai, Business Insider, Treeugger, Vanity Fair, Environmentalleader, Jezebel, Mother Jones

Have you ever bought a product on impulse because of some vague claim like “green,” “natural” or “earth-friendly,” brought it home and found it’s not green at all? Not all companies are trying to deceive us, but with the lack of a unified standard for green labeling, it’s all too easy for consumers to be confused.

Of course, some companies like it that way, because it means they can get a piece of the green market without putting forth any real effort. That’s why, according to a Brandweek editorial by Andrew Benett and Greg Welch, businesses that want to be trusted by consumers need to think beyond green.

“In sum, green can mean virtually anything,” write Benett and Welch. “And that suggests it will eventually mean absolutely nothing. What today’s more mindful, savvier and more demanding consumers are seeking are brand partners that have evolved beyond green to something else: clear.”

It’s all about transparency – something the business world could use a lot more of. The “clear brands of tomorrow” won’t have mission statements packed with ambiguous language about improving people’s lives, they’ll outline specific actions and goals and invite consumers to track their progress.

But that’s just the beginning of “going clear”, say Benett and Welch. “Consumers are no longer willing to let businesses exist simply for the purpose of making money; they want them to contribute to the greater good.”

Open lines of communication between company leaders and the public are vital, but most of all, what businesses will need to do is prove that they care by raising the bar. For example, XYZ Beauty Co. can’t cut parabens from its products and be content with that lone action – they’ll need to continuously strive for the next improvement and find ways that they can take sustainability even further.

Perhaps we’re a long way away from green business, let alone clear business, being the norm, but it’s important to aim for a world where companies are truly held accountable for their social and environmental impact.

Image: Neubie/Flickr