Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage

Before reading Daniel Esty's and Andrew Winston's "Green To Gold", people should watch the Film Planet of the Humans (2020, YouTube). The Film shows [if we didnt know it already] that the classic liberal theory espoused by Esty et al rarely happens in practice. This Film gives real world examples about how the commercial business world --driven by short term profit requirements, aka greed-- readily, knowingly and intentionally passes their polluting and destructive operations and products off as "green".

This is one of the better books on the New Green Wave of sustainability sweeping across the business world (2006). It is written by two Yale profs who take a much more objective view of the successess - and failures - of companies who have launched into major sustainability initiatives. As such, it is a more credible assessment of the real value of sustainable business practices. It is well written with many case examples, factoids and stimulating discussion - as well as many "tools" for any company to size up their path ahead. Most books on the topic leave you with the idea that all is rosey and money when "doing the right thing" and developing more sustainable business practices. Not so here - you will find many examples of what HASN'T worked out according to expectations. Case-in-point Interface Floor Covering, a company whose case is in about every book on sustainability. Well, in their pursuit to reinvent the way carpeting is made and sold (many excellent eco-accomplishments), they totally musjudged the marketplace and assumed corporate customers would be happy to switch from buying carpeting (out of annual capital budget) to leasing it (out of monthly operating budgets). They ignored one of the great rules of "Green Marketing": Don't expect the customer to change behaviour to make green choices. So, this book brings these valuable lessons for all to learn and avoid repeating. This is a great book for VP, CEO, COO levels as it highlights the business case in a clear and compelling way and shows how, really, the business case for sustainability has been largely proven. Green to Gold is a quality, believable business book that will help especially managerial staff understand this topic in biz terms most known to them. It also gives some excellent but succict summaries of the top environmental problems that have led to unsustainable activity and how to savvily engage various stakeholders from Greenpeace to shareholder or employees asking tough questions. Also highly recommended is "A Necessary Revolution: How Organizations are Collaborating to Create a Sustainable World" by MIT's Peter Senge (2008).

Green to Gold is a must-read for anyone who (a) holds a leadership position in business or is a business influencer, and (b) cares about the environment we live in. Its subtitle really best describes the book, which is probably the first (or if not, certainly the best) documentation of successful corporate environmentalstrategy on the market. It's a little reminiscent to me of Collins Built to Last and Good to Great in that it is meticulously researched with a mix of company interviews/cooperation and empirical and investigative work. It doesn't have Collins "pairing" framework, but it doesn't need to in order to make its point. If you liked Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, this book will satisfy your thirst for information about what the heck the corporate world is doing or more important, can do, to do its part in not destroying our ecosystem. If you didn't like Gore's movie or didn't see it because you don't like Al Gore or don't think that many elements of the environmental movement are worthwhile, this book is an even more important read, as it brings the theoretical and scientific to the practical and treats sustainability as the corporate world must treat it in order to adopt it as a mainstream practice -- as a driver of capitalistic profit and competitive advantage. This is a really important work in terms of advancing the cause of corporate social responsibility as it applies to the environment. Most important, it proves the axiom here that you can, in fact, Do Well by Doing Good.

When a colleague suggested that I read this--my gut reaction, after just finishing a graduate degree, was that I was not going to cuddle up with a potentially bland business book. After holing up in my apartment for 48 hours, that all changed. A half dozen phone calls had gone unanswered and I had one heck of leg cramp. I had not only finished "Green to Gold", but was enraptured by it--and thankfully freshly emerging from a slight fog in my professional career. For years I've been really unsure about how civil society could better manage its resources both economically and ecologically. Throughout my professional tenure working for government, academia and non-profits, I was not been impressed with the success of proposed solutions. Pay attention here: Esty and Winston's epiphanies are definitely worth implementing. These authors clearly embrace and illustrate the theme--as some anonymous author once said, that "innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity - not a threat." And that is precisely what the environmental community is not doing (e.g. better incorporating the corporate Juggernaut into its strategies) and probably why it has not succeeded in disproving the theory that it's either the economy or the environment, but not both. This insightful book shows exactly how people, whether individuals and businesses, can evaluate and modify their actions both up and downstream to save money and reduce their impact on the environment. So if you are a business tycoon, concerned citizen, emerging entrepreneur, or just a person slightly disturbed by the state of the world and looking to be re-inspired-- this could be the best eighteen dollars you'll ever invest. No doubt, this thoroughly researched and well-referenced book is an ideal corporate measurement tool and certainly, for both business and the environment, is true value added.

I have been interested in the topic of sustainable business for years and yet have found very few well-researched and comprehensive resources on the topic. Green to Gold is just that. In fact, it is the first book I've found that layers a framework for analyzing these business opportunities on top of refreshing new examples of company activities here. I found the frame very helpful in triggering thoughts and ideas about how I could help my own company capture some of the opportunities available in this space.