These days, everyone in business seems to be trying to figure out one of 3 things: How to start a green business, how to make an existing business greener, or how to market a business to the green crowd. And Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business, written by long-time green business expert Joel Makower, appears like a business self-help book of sorts for achieving these green goals.
But if you’re looking for a simple green to-do checklist, you’ll be disappointed. Strategies for the Green Economy is no basic step-by-step guide . In fact, if this book teaches anything, it’s that there are no easy green one-size-fits-all method to follow.
That’s not to say that would-be green entrepreneurs can’t learn from Strategies for the Green Economy. It’s just that the lessons will be less directly instructional than anecdotal. The organization of the book, in fact, is a loose collection of stories — stories of what companies have tried and are trying, stories that’ll hopefully help other companies slowly cobble together and forge their own unique green paths.
Through the anecdotes, Strategies for the Green Economy lays out an informative history of green business and its relationships with both consumers and activists. Often, Joel’s sympathetic to businesses’ travails, detailing the confusing and often thankless task of greening a business. Enviro activists are “adept at confronting and challenging companies for their shortcomings and misdeeds but relatively inept at praising them when they change,” Joel says, and even points out that consumers that demand drastic green changes from companies are rarely willing to make anything beyond token changes in their own lives.
But while I agree with Joel’s assertion that consumer-activists often DO have knee-jerk anti-big business reactions, I also felt Joel too often praised token changes on the part of big companies. Case in point: One of my biggest greenwashing pet peeves is companies’ tendency to tout new green packaging — while doing little to green their actual products or services. This practice literally puts a green cover on an otherwise ungreen product to hook the would-be eco consumer. Yet many of the great green moves Joel touts have to do with improved green packaging!
Joel praises Coca-Cola for its plans for a new bottle-recycling facility (the plant recently opened) — no matter that soft drink’s bigger problem has to do with the carbon footprint of its unhealthy ingredients and the company’s “global corporate water hogging,” as Umbra puts it. Joel touts Hamburger Helper’s switch from wavy to flat noodles as a laudable eco-feat that reduced packaging, never mind the points made by Shannon Arvizu at TriplePundit: “Should we stop eating bow-tie or fusilli pasta on environmental principles? It’s not the shape of the noodles that really matters. In this case, it is what it’s made out of, how it’s made, and what it’s packaged in.”
That’s not to say all of Joel’s examples have to do with packaging — though the examples of more significant eco-moves were generally hard-won battles by enviro-activits. And of course, I get Joel’s point that the very LOHAS people that yell greenwashing at Hamburger Helper’s ironed-out noodles may be the same people buying the stuff — or at least the equally processed and overpackaged organic counterpart at Whole Foods.
For those who seek specific directives, Strategies for the Green Economy does give out a few absolute answers:
>> The vast majority of people aren’t going to buy an inferior product just because it’s greener. And people really, REALLY aren’t going to buy a more eco product if it’s way more expensive. Lesson: Don’t think you can sell crappy goods at high prices because you’re a green company.
>> Transparency on green initiatives is becoming business as usual. Lesson: Having no green plan is no longer an option. Joel provides a useful framework for crafting green strategies and messaging called CRED — Credibility, relevance, effective messaging, differentiation — that companies may find helpful.
And what’s the lesson in this book for enviro-activists? The lesson I’m taking away is that just as companies need to look at their unique challenges to create a green plan for themselves, enviro-activists need to also take into account these unique challenges for each individual company instead of blindly raging against the machine.
Thanks to Mark Pawlosky for reviewing this book earlier in Grist — which alerted me to the fact that I’m in the book because of The Starbucks Challenge. I’ve always wanted to see my name in an index!
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Turn to page 67 in the L.A.-focused July 2009 issue of SELF magazine, and sandwiched between scary side effect warnings for an eyelash grower and tips for sculpting a bikini bod by walking, you’ll see a small blurb about me:
Your turn to help me –
Longtime green LA girl readers know 
Looking at my holiday wish lists from previous years (
That said, the gifts I did receive, I love and use. I’m not sure what the lesson is here, exactly…. except that this year, I’m only asking for stuff I really need (I think) for blogging purposes. This decision’s made for a decidedly less-girly list than previous years:
2. Photos. Yes, many of the pics on this blog suck, because Pixelle, my camera, hasn’t lived up to my expectations. Get me a 
4. Better bio page. [Received! 
