If the business press is any indication, sustainability issues have risen up the corporate ladder and are now seen as a central challenge for companies in the coming decades.
In its first-ever green issue, Fortune commends “10 Green Giants” — corporations that are making impressive environmental gains. The editors decided to bypass GE and Wal-Mart, whose eco-endeavors have been heavily publicized, and instead highlight companies whose sustainability efforts have been less high-profile recently — among them, Hewlett-Packard, Continental Airlines, S.C. Johnson, Suncor, and Alcan. While its list focused on big, mainline corporations, its cover went to an idealistic maverick who runs a 350-employee, uber-eco outdoor-gear company — Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia.
Fortune‘s Marc Gunther writes in an intro to the green package that environmentalism in corporate America has gone beyond mere compliance and efficiency: “Now we’re at the threshold of a different era, one in which smart companies are trying to figure out how to profit by solving the world’s big environmental problems.”
Fast Company would seem to... Read more
