Other Sustainable Business Resources

Earth Policy Institute
WorldWatch Institute Founder Lester Brown has created an institute dedicated to building an environmentally sustainable economy. The Earth Policy Insitute focuses on an eco-economy "designed to mesh with Earth's ecosystem" and will be a research organization that will publish issue briefs.

GreenBiz.com
An online resource center on business, the environment and the bottom line. The site features current news, green job listings, a business toolbox, calendar of events, and extensive references on business and the environment.

Sustainable Development International Corporation
On-line information on Greening Your Office and on Greening Your Business. 

Business and Sustainable Development: A Global Guide
This website developed by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) explains the strategies and tools that companies can draw on to translate an aspiration of sustainability into practical, effective solutions. Case studies from around the world are provided. 

The Global Commons Project  
The Houston Advanced Research Center is a multi-year effort to better understand the challenges the world will face over the next fifty years.  A central focus of the Global Commons Project is on private sector strategies that will contribute to sustainable development. 

The Good Neighbor Project for Sustainable Industries  
Provides technical, legal and strategic support to concerned plant neighbors and workers to promote pollution prevention at local industries and to prevent chemical accidents. 

National Centre for Business and Sustainability (NCBS)
Based in the UK, NCBE offers practical and focused sustainable solutions to a range of businesses and organisations.

Coop America’s Business Network  
Features practical advice, resources and contacts to help companies turn social responsibility into business success. 

World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) 
Provides business leadership as a catalyst for change towards sustainable development and promotes the attainment of Eco-Efficiency through high standards of environmental and resource management in business. 

ISO 14000 InfoCenter  
Provides access to extensive resources and information on ISO 14000, a collection of voluntary consensus standards to assist organizations in achieving environmental and economic gains through the implementation of effective environmental management systems.  

Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) 
Encourages companies to endorse and practice the CERES Principles, a framework for commitment to continuous environmental improvement and accountability. 

National Industrial Competitiveness Through Energy, Environment, and Economics (NICE3) -- U.S. DOE 
Provides U.S. DOE grant funding to state/industry partnerships for projects that develop and demonstrate advances in energy efficiency and clean production technologies. 

Industrial Assessment Centers Program -- U.S. DOE 
Sponsors energy audits to help industry conserve energy, reduce pollution, increase productivity, and save money. 

Global Warming - Industry Actions -- U.S. EPA
The EPA sponsors a volunteer program for industries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by implementing energy efficiency and pollution prevention measures.

BestPractices -- U.S. DOE Office of Industrial Technologies 
BestPractices works with industry to identify plant-wide opportunities for energy savings and process efficiency.

Inventions and Innovation Program -- U.S. DOE 
Provides funding and commercialization training to develop energy-saving inventions, with particular attention to assisting individual inventors and small companies. 

Enviro$ense -- U.S. EPA 
Provides a single repository for EPA’s pollution prevention, compliance assurance, and enforcement information and data bases. Includes links to EPA’s Common Sense Initiative, Design for Environment, Project XL, Energy Star, Environmental Leadership Program, WasteWi$e, WAVE, and the American Institute for Pollution Prevention. 

Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) 
Helps member companies achieve long-term commercial success by implementing policies and practices that honor high ethical standards and meet their responsibilities to all who are impacted by their decisions.  The BSR website includes The Global Business Responsibility Resource Center, with a number of online reports on various aspects of corporate social responsibility available.

Business Enterprises for Sustainable Travel (BEST)
Encourages the adoption of sustainable practices within the travel and tourism industry; helps stimulate demand for sustainable travel and tourism among the industry's customers; and helps selected communities that do not currently benefit from tourism with the development of pilot travel enterprises.

Entrepreneurs for Sustainability
An organization whose mission is to support a community of entrepreneurs who will implement sustainability principles in their new or existing businesses and encourage new ventures, which will capitalize on emerging opportunities in a sustainable economy in Northeastern Ohio.

Global Business Network 
Specializes in scenario thinking and collaborative learning about the future in order to help business mangers and executives reframe their mental models, increase their range of vision, and ultimately increase their organization's perceptive powers. 

Global Environmental Management Initiative 
Strives to help business achieve environmental, health and safety excellence. 

Global Futures Foundation 
Focuses on systematically integrating programs which lead to source reduction, pollution prevention, low-cost market development, and incentive market driven regulatory structures which tend to reduce both economic and environmental costs. 

Global Reporting Initiative
An international, multi-stakeholder effort to create a common framework for voluntary reporting of the economic, environmental and social impact of organization-level activity. The GRI mission is to elevate the comparability and credibility of sustainability reporting practices worldwide. Guidelines are posted online.

Green Star, Inc. 
Encourages businesses, schools, and government agencies to incorporate techniques of waste reduction, energy conservation and pollution prevention in their places of business. 

Green Seal 
Promotes sustainability by setting environmental standards and awarding a "Green Seal of Approval" to products that cause less harm to the environment than other similar products. 

Institute for Corporate Environmental Mentoring
This project of the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation seeks to transfer the expertise of corporate environmental leaders to small and mid-size businesses. Reports on mentoring are available online in PDF format, including Environmental Mentoring and The Mentoring Handbook.

Social Venture Network 
Works to change the way the world does business and to promote progressive solutions to social problems. 

CleanerProduction.com
This website offers Cleaner Production Resources for Business Managers, organized by industry sector and including case studies and links to resources for numerous facets of environmentally preferable business operation.

Businesses for an Environmentally Sustainable Tomorrow (BEST) Program of the Portland Energy Office
Provides assistance to Portland area businesses and recognition for their accomplishments in pollution prevention, energy efficiency, waste reduction and water efficiency. 

United Nations Environment Program Division of Technolog, Industry and Economics 
Promotes cleaner and safer industrial production and consumption patterns through consensus building, assistance in formulating policies and strategies, defining and encouraging the incorporation of environmental criteria in industrial production, and information exchange. 

Dow Jones Stoxx Sustainability Indexes
This index tracks the financial performance of companies, accounting for environmental, social and financial criteria, including environmental reporting, product design, and human rights and corruption policies.

STAR Project
The Sustainability Team for Action and Reward shifts companies toward more sustainable practices with regard to office documents, creating models and tools for document management.

Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Awards
These awards recognize organizations that use disciplines of the corporate world to tackle daunting social problems.

World Environment Center Gold Medal for International Corporate Achievement in Sustainable Development

The WEC Gold Medal honors a multinational manufacturing, processing or service company for its outstanding corporate environment, health and safety innovation, leadership, performance and policy achievements, as well as the discharge of its social and economic responsibilities. Previous winners are listed online.

Books/Publications 

The Greening of Industry Resource Guide and Bibliography, Island Press, 1996. ISBN 1-55963-397-2 

The Ecology of Commerce, HarperBusiness, 1993. ISBN 0-88730-704-3 

Lean and Clean Management, Kodansha International, 1994. ISBN 1-56836-037-1 

EcoManagement: The Elmwood Guide to Ecological Auditing and Sustainable Business, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1993. ISBN1-881052-27-3 

The Art of the Long View, Currency Doubleday, 1991. ISBN 0-385-26731-2 

Videos 

Greenbucks: The Challenge of Sustainable Development 
Greenbucks looks at the first positive steps major corporations on five continents are taking to change their ways. Chief executives from some of the world's largest companies, such as Volkswagen and ABB, discuss their changing attitudes and their attempts to contribute to environmental solutions - from developing new, cleaner technologies and recyclable cars, to producing "green cotton" and investing in alternative energy. The film also looks at how an energy utility and environmentalists made energy efficiency profitable.

CD-ROM

The CDROM Greatest Hits Collection for Cleaner Production and Pollution Prevention
An online collection of information on how to improve business performance in general, and reduce waste and pollution in particular.

Last updated: March 16, 2004

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