The Banana Republic. GREEN TO GOLD uses real-life examples of companies that have deployed green strategies to their advantage including BP, IKEA, Toyota, Ford, McDonald's and GE. Some have been more successful than others in changing the long-held corporate mindset and redirecting their organizations - and Esty and Winston explain why.

One of the most compelling examples in the book is the story of Chiquita Bananas. For many years Chiquita held perhaps the worst reputation in the business world for its callous resource management and poor corporate responsibility record. At its nadir in the 50's, the company funded a CIA-led coup of the democratically elected government of Guatemala because it had a few differences of opinion over the new leader's agricultural policies. The term "banana republic" was born and Chiquita's corporate image went into a swift, downward free-fall for the next few decades.

Remarkably, a transformation began in the early 90s. Food distributors around the world began to more closely examine their suppliers and break ties with those who specifically had poor corporate responsibility and bad environmental records. The threat to profit at Chiquita and other companies like it gained traction and momentum, and the specter of significant economic loss forced Chiquita to reconsider its policies. Economics drove the initial push, so no one could have predicted how committed the company would become to the mission of reinventing its operations and image.

Chiquita took the first steps toward transformation by forming a "deep, lasting, and unlikely" partnership with the Rainforest Alliance, a powerful non-governmental organization (NGO), and a vocal critic of Chiquita's practices. Although it seemed doomed at the outset, both sides sat down together, turned their swords into ploughshares, and eventually began to work in harmony. The results have been remarkable, to say the least.

Chiquita dove in, making a full-fledged corporate commitment. The company spent $20 million over the first decade to roll out changes across Central America (The Better Banana Program), but found that it saved $100 million in operating costs at the same time. The re-engineered farms are more efficient and more profitable, with productivity up 27 percent and the cost per box of bananas down 12 percent.

Esty and Winston share other dramatic tales of reinvention as well. They lay out in detail Toyota's meticulous development of the hybrid Prius automobile and how that has positively affected the brand; they explain how 3M made a pact to cut pollution, a decision that sometimes resulted in short-run costs but has generated many hundreds of millions in profit. And they recount how McDonald's successfully changed its packaging to limit environmental impact.

These success stories, and stories of hard lessons and failures, have led the authors to conclude that "companies using an environmental lens find ways to be more innovative and entrepreneurial than their competitors. These WaveRiders see emerging issues ahead of the pack. And they are better at finding new opportunities to increase sales and enhance brand value."

Esty and Winston have written a stirring and encouraging review of what works and what doesn't when folding environmental strategy into the overall business plan. GREEN TO GOLD is sure to be the guidebook for corporate America as it ventures into the new, green world ahead.

_____________________________________________________________
GREEN TO GOLD:
How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value and Build Competitive Advantage
Authors: Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston
Yale University Press
Publication date: October 9, 2006
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 0-300-11997-6

Why environmental issues matter:
"The business world and the natural world are inextricably linked. Our economy and society depend on natural resources. To oversimplify, every product known to man came from something mined or grown."

WaveRiders see the potential:
"As the business world wakes up to the fact that many natural resources are finite, a second reality is emerging in parallel: limits can create opportunities. Companies that manage nature's bounty and boundaries best will minimize vulnerabilities and move ahead of their competitors."

How to seize the opportunity:

Practicality and Common Sense:
"Sometimes close is good enough. No business can be sustainable if it pursues environmental purity without regard to business consequences."
"Prepare for and accept tradeoffs. Flawless solutions are few and far between. WaveRiders know this. They don't search solely for win-win answers because they know that the quest for perfection too often leads to inaction. ...successful companies find incremental solutions that steadily improve environmental performance."

Inspiration:
"In the end, green business is about a new way for inspired people--executives, managers, and workers--to build companies and industries that are not just innovative, powerful, and great . . . but good too."

Dan is Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy at Yale University. He holds faculty appointments in both Yale's Environment and Law Schools. He is the Director of the Center for Environment and Business at Yale (www.yale.edu/CBEY).

Dan is the author or editor of nine books and dozens of articles on environmental strategy, policy, and regulation. He comments frequently on environment issues on television, radio, and in such publications as The New York Times, The Economist, Foreign Policy, and The Financial Times.

In government, he helped to craft air and water pollution regulations and government policies affecting waste, food safety, and other issues. He negotiated the 1992 framework convention on climate change on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He was also the principal architect of the environmental provisions for the North American Free Trade Agreement. He has testified before Congress on environmental issues numerous times.

Dan holds a B.A. from Harvard, a Masters degree from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from Yale. Dan lives in Cheshire, CT with his wife and three children.
Currently the director of the Corporate Environmental Strategy Project at Yale's renowned School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Andrew Winston has significant on-the-ground business experience as well as a passion for innovative business strategy. With the Boston Consulting Group, Andrew helped Fortune 500 companies grow and prosper. Later he served as Marketing and Development Director for Time magazine and Director of Business Development for MTV and VH1. Prior to his work with Yale, he was the VP of Marketing and Business Development for the online arm of a national retailer.

Andrew now works with companies to develop environmental strategies that create lasting value. His clients have included Timberland, Staples, and Coca-Cola. Andrew sits on the Environmental Advisory Board of the $6 billion industrial manufacturer Invista. He holds a BA in Economics from Princeton, an MBA from Columbia, and a Masters of Environmental Management from Yale. Andrew lives in New York City with his wife and sons.