Adam Werbach poses at the University Club of Toronto, November 11, 2009. REUTERS/Jillian Kitchener

Green is good and blue is better.

Keeping a business sustainable - or blue – goes beyond philanthropic nods to the environment. It needs to be a core business goal, says Adam Werbach, creator of Wal-Mart’s sustainability program and chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi S, the sustainability wing of the marketing and consultancy company.

Blue innovation embraces the social, cultural, and economic aspects of business along with green issues like protecting our last wild places and reducing carbon emissions.

“Sustainability is about long-term profitability. It doesn’t mean just the environment,” Werbach told a room of 100 business professionals in Toronto on Wednesday, pointing to the four-part breakdown of sustainability built on social, economic, cultural and environmental trends in addition to an integral value of transparency.

“The idea is to think a little bit broader. Of course we need to protect the environment, but there are so many other things to connect to it,” Werbach said, exploring a theme in his new book Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto.

“This is an extraordinary business opportunity that’s been left to the environmentalists and we need to steal it back and make it the business opportunity to grow companies that are going to be the companies of the future.”

Victoria Kamsler, chief ethics officer and research director at Greenfiniti Consulting and Investment in Toronto and former professor of environmental ethics at Princeton University, said Werbach was on to something with his ideas about internal changes in business culture having to do with transparency and engagement, and motivating employees to engage in purposes that align with their own values and ideals larger than themselves.

“All across the board major corporations are implementing “North Star” goals and changing the course of business and we find that this goes straight to the bottom line. Not only will they keep their employees happier but they get better work and it’s actually a really effective way to help their bottom line.”

Part of Werbach’s strategy with Wal-Mart was to invite personal sustainability projects (PSPs) from staff members. One of the outcomes of that program now saves the company $1 million in expenses yearly by replacing soda pop machine backlights with LEDs.

But the real challenge is to motivate people to consume less, says Robert Logan, chief scientist of the Strategic Innovation lab at the Ontario College of Art & Design.

“The soda pop machines with LEDS is nonsense. We should get rid of the whole damn machine and just have a water dispenser.”

It’s a movement that needs to involve all levels of a corporation, Werbach told the audience at the Corporate Catalyst event.

What do you think? Is it a company’s responsibility to respond to demand for more sustainable renewable practices and products? Should we do away with soda refrigerators altogether in the office?

What is the latest and most important environmental concern these days? Global warming? Disappearing ice caps and rain forests? Reliance on non-renewable energy?

Wrong. According to a new survey sponsored by Molson Coors Brewing Co, water pollution ranked No. 1, followed by fresh water shortages, depletion of natural resources, air pollution and loss of animal and plant species.

The survey was commissioned by Circle of Blue, a nonprofit affiliate of the Pacific Institute, a water and climate think tank. It polled people in 15 countries, including the United States, Mexico, China and India, about their views on water issues including sustainability, management and conservation.

Molson Coors, maker of Coors Light and Molson Canadian beers, sponsored the survey as a first step in trying to understand how people in international markets -- where it hopes to expand its business -- view water. 

Molson Chief Executive Peter Swinburn said that as the company expands internationally, it must understand what a local community's issues are and try to address them before spending money and building a factory.

"We're a branded organinzation. We live by research and consumer opinion," Swinburn said in an interview. "To try and address a problem without going to consumers and understanding their perceptions is difficult to do."

Of the seven "focus" countries, consumers in Mexico seemed to take the problem of water pollution the most seriously, with 90 percent of respondents calling it a "very serious problem." The rest of the countries ranged from 58 percent in Britain to 71 percent in Canada.

The survey included a "water concern index" which measured people's concern about water issues by aggregating their concerns about water pollution, lack of safe drinking water, lack of water for agriculture and the high cost of water.

According to that index, Mexico and India were much more concerned than average. China and Canada were right above average. Britain, the United States and Russia showed below-average concern.

Swinburn said conserving water can improve its profit margins by reducing costs, while helping people get access to clean water increases the health and economic vibrancy of a community, making it a stronger potential marketplace. 

"From the microcosmic level of our margin through to the broader social impacts, it affects our bottom line," Swinburn said, proving that risks related to the world's fresh water supply ripple through the beverage industry.  

Another interesting point concerned responsibilty for ensuring clean water. Respondents in Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States said they believed that water companies were the most responsible, followed by the government, large companies, citizens, farmers and non-governmental organizations.

In Canada, China, India and Mexico, respondents thought the government should be most responsible.

Following the discussion on water, Swinburn took a few moments to answer Reuters' questions about its business outlook for the rest of the year.

"Sparkling or still?"
 
Remember when that question, asked with a certain downward gaze, would make you feel like a tactless tightwad for requesting tap? Did you try to lessen the shame with a smile and a clever nickname, like "I'll have 'New York's Finest'"?
 
Restaurants and hotels across the country are blurring the lines between these choices, as they stop serving bottled water due to a perception that it is environmentally unfriendly. Critics object to the waste left behind by the plastic and glass bottles, as well as the fuel and other natural resources used to manufacture and ship the bottles all over the world.
 
"In the world of trying to live in a more green, sustainable environment, I think water is the most obvious, simple thing that we can do," said Joseph Bastianich, a business partner of Mario Batali and co-owner of restaurants including Babbo, Lupa, Esca and Del Posto.
 
Bastianich told Reuters he is in the process of phasing out water across all his restaurants, following in the footsteps of other environmentally-conscious restaurants like Alice Waters' Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California.
 
In its place, Bastianich is installing filters made by Natura Water, which purify a restaurant's tap water and allow users to get still, sparkling or room temperature tap water. The restaurants can adjust the amount of carbonation, allowing them to tout the water as made in-house.
 
The Natura system, which comes with reusable water bottles for serving, can be rented for about $400 a month. 
 
Company founder Marco De Plano, whose customers also include L.A.'s  Ciudad, San Francisco's Foreign Cinema and certain Four Seasons hotels, said that with prices of high-end bottled water bubbling as high as $10, high-traffic locations can recoup their losses quickly.
 
"When we started this a year ago, everybody was talking about the green aspect," De Plano said. 
 
Bastianich says a liter of Natura water costs him about 50 cents and sells for about $4. That profit margin is slimmer than before, when he would pay about 80 cents for a liter of premium bottled mineral water and sell it for up to $9. 
 
"We think the loss of margin is an investment that's very worthwhile making," Bastianich said. 

The sacrifice to margins would lessen as sales of house-made water increase.

As the backlash against bottled water heats up across the country a host of local governments have cut bottled water out of their budgets.  Virginia, Illinois and New York are among the states that have banned buying bottled water with state funds.

(Photos: Reuters\Eric Thayer)

 Wal-Mart, which helped promote the adoption of those funny-looking "green" lightbulbs, is making more room in its Sam's Club warehouse stores for environmentally friendly products -- including a water-saving toilet that has one button for flushing liquids and another for flushing solids.

Employees at a Sam's Club in the discounter's home town in Bentonville, Arkansas, have emptied shelves of things like power tools to make way for a variety of green products. Similar efforts have taken place in Sam's Clubs across the United States.

"Our members need and are looking for things that will help them mitigate their energy bills," said Joel Heiligenthal, buyer of home efficiency products at the club store chain.

 Wal-Mart launched its own private-label compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) in 2007 and has been selling them in thousands of stores.  

As part of an environmental push started under former CEO Lee Scott, Wal-Mart also has outlined plans to one day be supplied by 100 percent renewable energy.

Check out this video of new CEO Mike Duke telling reporters about the company's ongoing sustainability efforts in a press conference on June 5.

(Photos: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi; Video/Lisa Baertlein)

Hey guys, this isn't your pop's polyester.

Just in time for Father's Day shopping, Sears will roll out a line of men's suits made of the first high-tech fabric that blends wool with polyester spun from recycled plastic soda bottles.

The suit separates, sold under Sears' Covington Perfect brand, will be on racks in about 500 U.S. Sears stores in May.  Price: $175 for the jacket and $75 for the pants, according to Tim Danser, vice president of marketing for Bagir Group Ltd., the Israeli manufacturer that tailors the garments for Sears' private label.

And get this: This suit is machine washable and can be tossed in the dryer, eliminating the need for dry cleaning and upping the eco-friendly ante, Danser said.

"This isn't the polyester of the 1970s," Moses Cohen, sales and marketing manager for N.I. Teijin Shoji (USA), Inc., the New York arm of Teijin, the Japanese chemical company that makes the suit fabric, said during a men's fashion briefing at the swanky Kitano Hotel on Park Avenue in Manhattan.

Teijin, which developed fabrics made of recycled plastic blended with wool, viscose and cotton or with other synthetics, also partners with retailers to recycle used polyester clothing back into fabric and new clothes.

"This has a nicer hand to it," Cohen said, running his fingers over the sleeve of his own jacket, acknowledging that "polyester still has some bad connotations" due to the quality of the "disco era" fabric of more than 30 years ago. (For devotees of the 1981 cult comedy film, "Polyester," this is your cue: Thanks a lot, John Waters!)

"We do not use any oil," Cohen said of the process used to turn plastic bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, into fabric yarn.  In Japan, men's suits from Teijin's recycled fabrics are sold by retailer Aoki.

"We think the stars are aligned for this," Cohen said, referring to the growing interest in green manufacturing in the United States. "It started with Al Gore and his film, 'An Inconvenient Truth.'  We can also thank President Obama" for his emphasis on saving energy and protecting the environment.

So how did Sears, known for its Energy Star home appliances, decide to join fashion's green front?

As Cohen recalled, Sears was the first retailer to "have the guts and the vision" to commit to the line.

"In addition to providing a handsome suit at a great price, men can feel good about their purchase, knowing they are taking a step towards helping the environment," a Sears spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

The suits tested well in Sears stores in Boston, Chicago and the metropolitan New York area (hello, Hackensack, N.J. and Long Island) -- the three top U.S. eco markets, Bagir's Danser said.

Fun fact: It takes 25 plastic soda-pop bottles (2-liter size) to make enough polyester yarn to produce the fabric for one suit.

(Reuters photo)

The Las Vegas strip (below) and other global icons went dark on Saturday for Earth Hour.

McDonald's powered down in Chicago. Twitter was alight with Earth Hour tweets.

The annual event, launched in 2007 by the World Wildlife Fund, aims to encourage people to cut energy use and curb greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

World emissions have risen by about 70 percent since the 1970s. China has recently overtaken the United States as the top emitter, ahead of the European Union, Russia and India.

 What did you do, if anything, to switch off?

(Photos: Reuters\Mario Anzuoni, McDonald's)

Ice cream seller Haagen-Dazs is investing a half-million dollars to save the honeybees -- and to save us from a future of feeding on gruel. 

Honeybees, which 60 Minutes called the "unsung heroes of the food chain," are threatened in many parts of the world, putting food supplies in danger.

Bees pollenate one-third of all of the natural foods we eat. Just imagine a world without nuts, fruits, vegetables, flowers and even meat and milk from cattle that eat bee-pollenated alfalfa.

"Without bees and other pollinators, the things we that would be left with are corn, rice and wheat," Diana Cox-Foster, an entomology professor at Pennsylvania State University, said in this video created for Haagen-Dazs.

"If we don't have them, we're going to be eating gruel," said Maryann Frazier, a senior extension associate in Penn State's entomology department.

Billions of bees in the United States and Europe have disappeared. Scientists in the United States say that colony collapse disorder, a mysterious syndrome , has wiped out more than a third of American hives in 2008 on top of similar losses in 2007.

Haagen-Dazs just gave a second $250,000 donation to honeybee researchers at Penn State and the University of California, Davis.

The company is running a public information campaign at helpthehoneybees.com and says federal funding is needed to tackle the issue.  

Part of the donation from the company, which sells "bee-built" flavors like Vanilla Honey Bee, will be used to create Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven - a one-half acre bee-friendly demonstration garden coordinated by the California Center for Urban Horticulture.

(Photo: Provided by Haagen-Dazs)